At the Ideas Stage
A good idea for a social enterprise?
Many of us have good ideas for a social enterprise or income generating projects for our voluntary of community group, from starting a community café to producing and selling bio-diesel (see our Clients section for more examples).
The question we have to ask ourselves however is how do we turn these ideas into reality? One that has enough customers, who pay enough money, to enable you to pay your bills, employ people and have enough surplus or profit over to put some money back to help the community or society at large.
Some people may think that all they need is some money, perhaps a small loan to start with. This is understandable, but mistaken. All potential Investors look for evidence that you already have customers lined up. So, even before you start you need to test whether your idea is really feasible or needs some fine-tuning before you start.
Test Your idea
All businesses, whether social or not, need paying customers. So a good place to start is to talk to them and 'test' your ideas. It's amazing how useful it is - but how few of us do it. One or two days spent on this will save weeks or months of work in the future.
From the menu on the left we have details of an inexpensive service to help with market research and basic business information, and details of a comprehensive book covering all aspects of setting up a social enterprise.
One of the most useful aspects of basic information gathering, is to help you write a basic business plan. At this stage it doesn't have to be huge, just a few pages - enough for you to ask yourself some questions to check that your idea is viable, whether you will have to 'fine-tune' your approach, or even give up and develop a different idea.
- So you need to write down and work out:
- How much you need to earn to run the enterprise and pay the bills and your staff
- How much surplus will be left for 'profit' to run and develop the business in the long term
- Who will really buy - not just be interested - in what you are offering
- What testing have you done with these potential buyers and what did you learn?
- What real problems and barriers will you face when you start and how will you get round them?
Further Sources of Help
Our free Business Planning Toolkit will help you model and plan your business, and will show you what work you need to have done before you approach LRS or other organisations for funding.
If you have identified gaps in your knowledge, our range of training courses might provide the answer - see Events/Courses for what's on currently.