While SlangDang is unabashedly a for-profit venture, I still want to post this email I sent to a friend looking for advice on starting a non-profit and writing a business plan. I wrote a few grants back in the day for a non-profit, AIESEC, and I think this could be useful for anyone thinking about going into social entrepreneurship:


“Before you start doing anything, here are questions you need to have 100% clear in your head. If they aren’t clear, then you need to do research or speak with people to get everything 100% straight and sensical even if just for your own thought process:
- Mission: What does the organization do? (what is the end result of the org: Are you building cars or building a community?)
- Methods: How does the organization do what it does? (does it outsource everything and just market? Does it do everything itself? Is it partnered with other orgs?)
- What does the organization need to exist? (Is it purely volunteer needing few/no resources? Does it need 15k for a part time director? What is the budget, and break the budget into two parts: Programming costs [variable - cost per person served] and administrative [fixed - office space, supplies, etc]).
- How long will the organization need to be around? If there is no set date on when the organization expects to fulfill its mission, then how will the organization continue to support itself (perhaps indefinitely)? This is the sustainability piece: Foundations like to see that they wont need to support you forever. For a non-profit usually this is broken into 3 pieces: Revenue (charging people for a service, like AIESEC does), donations (from the community or individuals) and foundation/corporate sponsorship. Initially, foundation support can be percentage-wise dominant, but in the long run 50%+ of your funding should come from revenue or small donations.

So those are must answer questions. Next, who are you going to approach and what is the purpose of the “business plan”? The above questions are all necessary to answer before you seriously start anything, however, they dont all need to be in the “business plan” depending on who your target is. Here are some ideas on different targets and what a business plan would kind of look like:
- Volunteers: two pages tops going over what the organization is doing and how you do it.
- Businesses/individuals for small donations of money/goods/services: Same two pager as above, plus a personalized letter asking them for what you want and how it will specifically help your mission.
- Other organizations / gov agencies to partner with: Full business plan going into depth explicitly how you will operate and achieve your mission and with a goals timeline stating when you will meet impact bench marks. They only thing they probably dont need is a budget. This should be 10 pages+ in length.
- Foundations: Everything above plus a budget of what resources you need and how you are going to get those resources.
Overall, my suggestion would be write a full business plan including budgets and timelines. Even if you dont need something that planned out now, it will help getting everything straight right off the bat and make you think of some of the longer term stuff.

Aside from a mission, methods, timelines, and budgets: The business plan should have all that is important for executing the mission. You may want to talk about online involvement, events, your marketing plan, target organizations you want to approach, etc. When we were writing the HoboHookah business plan, we used a template from Microsoft: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/default.aspx and then added and subtracted sections as needed. Its a very iterative process with many drafts and things will change by the time you may want to apply for grants or corporate sponsorship.

One final resource is the foundationcenter.org. Their website isnt that useful, but the libraries are very useful. There is definitely one in DC. Aside from having a free database at the libraries that has every foundation known to man, they have a library with all sorts of good books on writing non-profit business plans, setting up 501c(3) corporations and writing grants.”

Pardon the bottles on the table, we were psuedo-celebrating Cinco de Mayo during the filming of another project, the Hobocans Happy Hour, shortly before. This video is long, but worth it if you need some guidance on building up your personal network.

- Team America