A guide to third sector trading - WCVA

It’s an idea, but is it business? A guide to third sector trading
1: Getting
started
2: First steps 3: Business
planning
4: Legal and
governance
5: Funding
and
resourcing
6: Financial
controls
7: Managing
growth
8: Management
and
governance
9: Social
enterprise
10: Sources
of support
A suggested approach: The steps described below involve:
• Step 1 – Working as a group to brainstorm a number of
different possible trading ideas.
• Step 2 – Preliminary assessments of all the ideas to reduce
the list to a small number of possibilities.
• Step 3 – Some initial financial calculations to see if any of
these ideas still stand up.
• Step 4 – Now stop and plan carefully how you will take you
trading idea forward.
Step 1: If you want one good idea,
think of several
The general approach: In many cases, including community
regeneration projects and development trusts, your aim should be
to build up a short list of possible trading ideas for your business.
Later you can refine your list systematically to find out which is the
most promising, and fix your sights on starting that one.
• If your group starts with no idea at all of what you want to do
(except vague things like ‘create jobs’ or ‘improve the quality of
life in our community’) you will need to have a brain storming
session first to list all conceivable possibilities and then to refine
that into a short list.
• Aim for a short list of at least 4 or 5 suggestions even if you think
you already know exactly what you want to do. If your original
idea really is red hot it should stand up well against others, and,
if it isn’t, the time to find out is now and not later.
• Be flexible, open minded and inventive, especially with ideas
which seem to you to be winners already.
• Don’t dismiss anything at this stage, even off-the-wall ideas
because they just might be winners.
Ask the community: A public consultation exercise (calling a
public meeting or circulating questionnaires, for instance) can be
extremely helpful for many reasons:
• finding out what types of commercial services and community
services people would like to see
• identifying services which already exist – and which you should
probably avoid
• producing a hopefully lengthy preliminary wish list to select from
• encouraging your steering group to broaden its thinking, since
even unrealistic suggestions can stimulate other ideas
• providing a general indication of whether business markets
might exist
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