Funders often ask for a Business Plan to accompany funding applications, and most lenders will ask for one. They want to see that your organisation is well run and knows what it is doing, to see clear evidence of the need for what you are planning and that the activities proposed have been thought through and properly costed. But a Business Plan needs to be about more than meeting funders’ criteria. It needs to be part of your internal planning processes, assisting you to see where your organisation is going, to manage your activities and to plan for the future.

If your Business Plan is being presented to a third party, remember that first impressions do count, and you may well be proud of being “voluntary” but won’t want to be thought of as amateur. A cover, contents page, and executive summary will all help here.

A Business Plan is a statement of what you are proposing to do, by when, what resources are needed, when they will be needed and where they will come from. This could be money, but could also be skills your organisation will need to develop or links you will need to develop: in fact anything you will need to do to make your proposals a reality.

For voluntary and community organisations the term ‘Business Plan’ may feel alien. You may prefer to call your plan(s) a Strategic Plan or a Development Plan. Whatever title you use, the essential ingredients involved in producing one will be the same. You might develop plans for each area of activity or project as well as an overall plan covering the whole organisation – or just one master plan with sections for different activities. As with most things the level of complexity involved in producing one depends on how complicated your organisation is. A small group running a limited number of activities can take a simple approach — larger organisations running more activities need a more sophisticated approach.