A guide to third sector trading - WCVA

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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 − check the result; if its still showing a huge profit you’ve probably missed something, so try again! • So far you have proved nothing. But if you are doing the job systematically and you are committed to making progress, at least you will be beginning to be aware of the hundred and one things you still have to find out before you can get your business started. Step 4: Time to take stock Now reflect on the progress you’re making … Start thinking ahead: The next steps will involve serious effort and expense. Think seriously about what you need to do to make further progress. Take care: The switch from work in the non-trading third sector to social enterprise is like exchanging a spade for a JCB. They’re different tools with the same basic purpose, but one of them requires a lot more careful control to avoid the risk of burying yourselves. Keep a sense of perspective: Your steering group needs to acknowledge that this is an early part of the planning process, and things could still go wrong. Allow yourselves to be smug: You can take satisfaction from knowing that if your planning has been serious and you’ve got this far, you are already better prepared than many other more reckless groups. Keep your values: Some members may feel that thinking commercially means abandoning the charity or the community or losing their souls. They won’t if you don’t want it to. 52
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 3: Business planning 3.1 Do we really need a business plan? The funding of third sector trading projects in the UK often does little to encourage well-planned projects, and may even provide a disincentive to serious business planning. The problems with European funding for social enterprise – which seems specifically to have excluded business which might become successful enough to be competitive – is perhaps the most obvious example. This chapter describes what funding applicants are up against, exposes the weaknesses of grant applications which set out to deceive the funders, and shows how inexperienced workers can produce good quality proposals which attract funding and create sound enterprises. Planning terminology: There is no universally agreed terminology for different kinds of research and planning documents required by funders and produced by project managers and consultants. At the risk of offending purists, here’s a rough guide to what the different names mean. • ‘Business Plan’: This is a general term for any planning document, which is now widely used as much for conventional non-trading community activities as it is for commercial activities large and small. It can refer to an overall plan for an organisation or to a specific business activity either being planned or at any stage in its development. Its precise content is commonly governed by who is intended to read it. You should assume nothing. • ‘Feasibility study’: Strictly speaking this is research carried out to determine whether an activity is worth pursuing. − It specifically answers questions such as: is the idea practical?’, ‘is there a market?’, ‘what will it cost?’, ‘could it earn enough’ and ‘can the obstacles be overcome?’ 53
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