Putting Meat on the Bones: Business Plan Structure, Pt 1

I must confess that when the concept of a business plan as one of the products of my senior research project was proposed, I was skeptical. Weren't business plans just simple outlines of an organization? Would this really take that much effort? As it turns out, however, business plans are mammoth documents that quite literally cover every aspect of a business. There are few minor differences between the format of a regular business plan and a nonprofit business plan. The major areas of a business plan are the executive summary, organizational plan, marketing plan, financial plan, and additional documents:

1) Executive Summary

     The executive summary must summarize the entire business plan. This is so that a potential donor or benefactor of GFGF can get a quick overview before deciding to read the rest of the plan. It must also include a clear mission statement and highlight why your plan is unique. For a nonprofit, there must also be a focus on the problems you have identified and how you will address them. 

2) Organizational Plan

     In addition to a clear mission statement and a business model, the organizational plan must incorporate how a nonprofit's activities and current resources will support this model and detail an administrative plan with brief profiles of board members. It must discuss any relationships the nonprofit has with other people or organizations as well as the results of the "SWOT" (strengths-weaknesses-opportunies-threats) analysis that I mentioned in the previous post. Finally, the organizational plan should describe organization products/services and the benefits of these endeavors.

I'm working on fleshing out the first two sections (pun intended), but the marketing plan and especially the financial plan are where things get more complicated. We'll pick up with those next time!
~Priya