Business Plan Outline

Section 1      Introduction & Vision

The introduction provides the opportunity to outline the main reason for building the plan whether this is to focus on the development of the strategy of the charity, such as becoming more sustainable, or to create new forms of funding streams.  The vision should be stated clearly and is to both engage and inform the reader.  If you do not have one, this is an ideal opportunity to get everyone engaged together to define the charity’s vision.

 

Section 2      Profile  

The next section should go into detail about the background of the charity and the core services and other activities that are carried out.  Provide examples of successes or references and quotes to show that you understand the impact of what you do and that it is worthwhile and beneficial to those the charity supports.  Another tip is to put in key achievements focusing on best practice developments and things that have had the biggest impact on both the charity and the environment it operates in.

 

Section 3      The Market Place & Competition

It is important to show that you understand the environment or market in which you operate.  If you do you have more chance of successfully achieving the aims and objectives of the charity.  If you do not, it may be difficult to develop as you may be competing for funding and someone else may be doing the same thing but with a stronger focus.  Key areas to review are the geographical area the charity works or is hoping to work in; the characteristics of people that you may want to reach (income, culture, age, etc.); and what their needs are. 

In addition, identify any other charities or service suppliers in this area and what they can offer that you cannot (or do not).  This will help you identify alliances that you can look into as well as identifying risks such as duplicate services which will raise the question whether you need to change what you offer.

 

Section 4      Influencing Factors, Opportunities & Risks

One of the key areas of any business plan is the identification of factors that will influence you going forward.  Research into things that impact the charity from outside of the operation such as legislation, funding restructures, or changes in society (for example, more people staying in the community which results in an older age group of service users). 

As well as looking at outside factors, look at what happens within the charity.  What are the strengths and weaknesses?  Look at your procedures, staff skills, culture, current users and beneficiaries, management, range of services, technical systems and of course, finances.  Can you turn any of the weaknesses into opportunities?  What are the threats to the charity?  One of the main outputs to this exercise is the ability to identify what you excel at.  This is your core competence which should be used as a focus in any development plan.

 

Section 5      Strategies

After all of this work, the strategies should come easily!  This is the time to use your team and get ideas on what you can do.  Use the information gathered in the first few sections to use your core skills to provide services which will reach as many people as you can with as much support and benefit as possible.  Pick a few areas that you want to focus on such as Education Activities, Membership Growth and Infrastructure & Staff Development.

From here and for each area, work out what the objective is.  Once defined, think of strategies on how to achieve this objective.  For example, an objective may be:  To develop a staff development programme by 2007 in order to fulfil the charitable aims & objectives, to motivate and to ensure staff retention.  One strategy to achieve this objective may be to develop objective and feedback plans for each staff member.

 

Once you have identified strategies (that you think are achievable!), look at tactics on how to support the strategies.  From the above example, one tactic may be to engage a consultant to help develop the plans. 

 

The last area that should be defined within the plan is outputs.  These are what you are looking for once the strategies are put into action.  An output from the example above would be ‘Performance Management Objectives’ for each staff member.  It is important that each objective is measurable otherwise how do you know you have achieved it?

 

Section 6      Board of Directors and Management

Information about the main players is critical at this stage as this provides information on the skills and experience of the people that will be helping to implement and manage the business plan.  Place emphasis on skills that tie back into the charity or the part of the sector that you are in.

 

Section 7      Financial Information & Requirements

Last but no means least come the numbers.  Once you have identified the things you want to focus on you should develop a fully costed plan of how to get them up and running.  You should remember and include and overview of the charity accounts including any budgets you have for future years.  The budgets should be based on including any changes or new activities that you have identified in your business plan and should include such things as staff costs (including training); property costs (rent, rates, insurance, etc.); administration costs; project costs, management costs; and capital costs (new computers, furniture, buildings, etc). 

 

Section 8      Appendices  

If there is anything you feel is important to back up your plan, put it into an appendix.  Things to include could be: detailed objective plans for the strategies outlined in Section 5; Case studies providing examples of successful projects; and detailed organisational charts.