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Preparing a fresh business plan
Tower Hamlet Parents Centre has six staff
(three full time, three part time) and four volunteers, and
an annual income £107,500.
The centre provides advice, information, education and training
to parents, guardians and carers of young children to enable
them to be more involved in their children's education.
| 'You
can't really sell your organisation to funders without
a business plan.' |
Mibi Ismail, the director, produced a business plan when
she started in the post more than three years ago and is now
preparing to do another, because the centre's three-year
grant finishes next year. 'You can't really sell
your organisation to funders without a business plan,'
she says. 'Monitoring and evaluation are really important.
We need to be able to show what services we are offering,
how many people visit the centre and what they do when they
are here. Every teaching session has a register of attendance
and when people visit the centre we record on a simple registration
form what services they use, because they often use more than
one.
| 'We
produce a monthly
output report which keeps the management committee informed
of what is going on.' |
'All the information is collated on a database, and
we produce a monthly output report which keeps the management
committee informed of what is going on. We also have a users'
representative on the management committee, which is also
a good way of getting clients' perspectives on what
we are doing. We are currently looking at developing a quality
assurance system.'
| 'I
can include information in our new plan about the partnerships
and networks we have with other organisations, which
is really important information for funders these days.' |
Mibi's approach to the fresh business plan will be
slightly different. 'The first plan focused on the internal
aspects of the organisation,' she says. 'I didn't
really include much information about external factors that
impact on us, such as developments in the community sector
or the funding environment. This time, I can really see the
value of including that kind of information because it encourages
us to think about our relationship to other agencies and the
wider policy environment. Also, because we have been in existence
for three years, I can include information in our new plan
about the partnerships and networks we have with other organisations,
which is really important information for funders these days.'
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