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
• tell you whether you can afford to run your business
• alert you to future financial dangers
• help to give you a detailed understanding of your proposed
trading activities
• help you to identify new or alternative possibilities and
encourages flexibility
• clarify what you need to do and who you need to manage and
staff the organisation
• create a blueprint for future development
• provide the targets and measures for monitoring progress
• highlight the weaknesses you need to tackle and the reasons
why you may not be successful.
Clarifying objectives: Planning is important for development
trusts and other initiatives with multiple social, economic and
environmental objectives which may have only a vague idea of
what they want to achieve and what their priorities are.
• Defining these issues in writing will help to specify your project
to yourselves and to the outside world.
• Working together to write objectives for your business plan will
help to cement your group’s shared purpose and focus on any
divisions which you need to be wary of.
Teamwork: If you have not had the chance before to work
together as a team, now is the time to learn about your colleagues
and your project at the same time. Planning can be an intensive,
practical process which encourages collective problem-solving,
collaboration and compromise. With the right approach it will be
creative, productive, social and usually enjoyable. [See also section
3.2 on using consultants.]
Understanding and forethought: The more you examine the
planned activities and finances the more you will become aware
of flaws, problems, limitations, options and solutions. This applies
to almost every other aspect of your planning, whether you are
fitting staff into offices, work into jobs, or widgets into spigots.
Flexibility: Facing up to real and potential problems which
emerge during the planning stage will stimulate you to be flexible
and inventive, and perhaps to come up with completely new ideas
for generating income or managing your operation.
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