Add reports such as cash flow statements, balance sheets, income statements and your budget. This is the place to include a summary of your past financial picture and what you hope that your future financial picture will be. They’re not looking for a guarantee here They just want to know that you do have a plan. Your donors are aware that it will be difficult to manage your finances without a financial plan. Donors will also be interested in knowing how you plan to measure the impact of your efforts. This is the place to talk about your goals in a meaningful way and relate them to the kind of change your organization hopes to make.
Impact Planĭescribe your nonprofit’s plan to achieve your mission and vision. Explain whether you will need to hire new staff and when you’re projected to start hiring. Include the number of employees, type of employees, pay structure, and whether you use contractors or freelancers. Add a section that describes your staff, along with their roles and responsibilities. List your permits, licenses, insurance coverage, trademarks, patents and copyrights. Outline your governing and leadership structure, including the board, consultants and advisors. Paint a picture of your employees, processes, locations, etc. In this section, describe what your nonprofit looks like on a daily basis. You might decide to include details of some of your more successful marketing campaigns. Include information that describes your promotions, advertising, budgeting and marketing methods at various growth stages. Make your nonprofit stand out, as donors may have been asked to support your competitors as well. Include some details about who your organization’s competitors and collaborators are. Add information about how your organization improves the lives of these individuals. Outline the demographics of those you serve by including details about age, gender, location, income, occupation, education and any other important details. Identify your target population or beneficiaries, including their characteristics, needs and locations. Include research that’s been published by others as well as any research that your own organization has done. Add these four sections to your marketing plan description: marketing research, constituency, competitors and collaborators, and strategy. You don’t have to include the entire marketing plan in your business plan, but include a brief version of it here. Your nonprofit may have an extensive marketing plan. Make a deeper impact by adding details about how your fund programs and the benefits they provide.
Expand on it by describing the positive impact that your program makes. This is a great place to add some illustrations or photos of your nonprofit in action to give it a personal feel and help your donations feel connected to it. You may choose to add a short description of the programs you currently offer and the ones you hope to offer in the future. Use this section to highlight the products and/or services that your nonprofit offers. Write the summary in a tone and voice that captures your reader’s attention and motivates them to keep reading. It should tell a bit about the nonprofit’s history and how your nonprofit meets the needs of the community. It should include a short description of your mission and vision. Your executive summary page should come immediately after your table of contents. Table of Contents (include page numbers) Executive Summary Keep it as concise as possible while making it long enough to include all the information your donors want to know.įollowing is a sample of a nonprofit business plan template: Nonprofit Business Plan Template It’s helpful to begin with a nonprofit business plan template, but there’s no set length for the number of pages that a business plan should be. Nonprofit boards should consider it a living document and update it frequently. A nonprofit business plan also includes your goals and your action plan for achieving them. The business plan outlines who you are, what you do, where you do it and how your organization makes a positive impact. This is an important reason for board directors to take their business plan seriously and not just dismiss it as an outdated process that takes up valuable board time. That’s really not a lot to expect from an organization that’s interested in supporting your cause. Large donors will almost always ask nonprofits for a copy of their business plan because they want to know what nonprofits are doing and how they plan to accomplish their goals. As technology helps nonprofit organizations to streamline processes, it calls many of the longstanding processes into question.