Business Writing Articles: Questions for Building a Business Plan

Questions for Building a Business Plan

This set of questions is designed to support not-for-profit organizations in need of a business plan.  They are a way for you to develop the information you will need in order to propose a program or seek funding from an outside institution.  Your first step is to put together answers to these questions.  Your responses will form the basis for your second step, the business plan itself.

Articulating a vision

First, what is your vision for this project?  The more specific you are, the stronger your proposal will be.  These examples suggest the range of possible goals:

• We intend to have a paid coordinator for the acupuncture program.  This will, in the long run, support our complementary medicine programs, but our goal is limited to a coordinator salary and perhaps some scheduling support.

• We intend to have a fully-staffed program in complementary and alternative medicine, with adequate office space, research capacity, and links to programs at other hospitals.

• Within the year we will have moved to a new building with adequate, and appropriate, space for our school programs, both current and future.

• We intend to establish a senior home care program serving our surrounding community and building on our current community health service program.

Spend some time articulating your vision, using your imagination and your knowledge of the current situation, to expand on these basic statements.  Think about how the project—the new building, the new program, new staff, the changed facilities—will look, sound, and even smell.  What will your institution feel like after the plan’s implementation?  Let your imagination and your enthusiasm run free while you get your ideas down on paper.

Why this project?

What is the rationale for the project?  Why should you go ahead with it?  If you will need funding, why should a foundation support it? How does the project fit into the larger “marketplace”? 

Internal support

Ask yourself who, and what, entities must be involved, in one way or another, in making the project a reality, regardless of its scope?  For example, your senior leadership, your board of directors, your faculty or physicians, your members.  How will you enroll these people in building the project?  What support do you already have?

The nitty-gritty

Once the project is defined as a whole, begin to think about answers to these questions:

• What is your current situation?  What data do you have about current activity?  e.g., numbers of participants or patients, satisfaction rates, current staff participants, current time commitments.  Or, describe the current available space and its uses.

• What is the time period for the project, once it is defined?  Is it a short-term, one year activity?  A five-year program?  Is it ongoing?

• Who, and what, entities inside your organization will be involved in the ongoing project?

• Who, and what, outside entities must, or will likely be involved?  Do you have measurements or estimates of the demand for your project, e.g. senior population in the community, projected student enrollment.

• What are the project’s long term goals?  Will these goals be used to measure project success?

• What costs do you anticipate?  Salaries, construction expenses, supplies, overhead? At this point these are rough estimates, but the more you can anticipate them, the better.  Many foundations have budget forms that can be useful.

• In the long run, how will the project be funded? Will outside funding be needed or, if the project becomes permanent, will there be other sources?

• How will you raise money for launching the project?  for funding it long term? 

• Staffing:

• How many FTEs, and with what qualifications, will the project call for?

• What department will have responsibility for the project?

• What positions will be called for?  e.g. coordinator, administrator, nurse director, statistician, building contractor?

A schedule for making it happen

What is a realistic date to have the project in place?  What kind of time is needed to make it real?  Consider factors such as turnaround time at foundations; the pace of decision-making at your institution; the complexity of the project.  Once you have a final date, you can work backward to establish internal deadlines.

Highly skilled writing for health care organizations as well as business, academia, and the not-for-profit sector.

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