An introduction to planning your future needs
Sound planning underpins all income generation strategies. This section will enable you to identify the key stages of developing and implementing a plan, including analysing and preparing for any potential risks, think about how to define and assess outcomes, and how marketing can be used both to generate income and extend your reach.
What does planning mean?
Forget planning as a purely bureaucratic, number-crunching or statistical exercise. Planning is a continually challenging yet energising journey, beginning with big vision, ending in specific service delivery.
Certainly numbers are an essential component. But planning starts with vision and ideas. And planning should be seen as an invigorating process: it is about taking a thorough look at an organisation top to bottom and inside out.
Planning can, and should be, a creative, energetic, even enjoyable activity.
There are many different methods of moving through the planning process but broadly speaking; it can be seen as a 3 part continuum:
- Beginning with the defining of a mission and building of a vision
- Moving on through defining and setting objectives
- Developing and writing annual plans and budgets, arriving at the final destination – the specifics of product/service delivery and the implementation of the planning process
Put another way, the planning continuum takes an organisation through 3 broad questions.
- What are you here for?
- What should you do?
- How do you actually make that happen?
Why plan
No matter what their size, all organisations need to plan. Doing so will highlight both the opportunities and challenges it faces. This will not only strengthen the organisation, but will also enable it to deliver more effectively to meet the needs of its beneficiaries.
Planning can be simple and straightforward. It can be a creative process that brings demonstrable benefits. There is a direct link between effective planning and long-term sustainability. As such, it is the first step towards developing a sustainable income base.
Financial sustainability begins not with funding, but with planning – before organisations start thinking about money, they need to decide exactly what their mission, aims and goals are and plan how they will achieve these. Only once organisations know what they want to achieve, and have planned accordingly, are they in a position to assess which income streams are appropriate for them and begin to pursue them:
- All organisations need to plan no matter what their size
- Planning highlights opportunities as well as challenges
- Planning allows organisations to approach income generation strategically, and enables them to meet the needs of their beneficiaries more effectively
- Strategic planning is a key driver for sustained organisational effectiveness
What are the advantages of planning?
A sound, evidence-based plan can:
- improve your chances of gaining the funding you need, by demonstrating to funders and commissioners that you can deliver your overall aims within identified resources.
- break down your aims into manageable chunks, allowing you to work out the step-by-step processes and actions that will enable you to achieve your desired outcomes. Achieving your overall aim can be much less daunting when broken down into manageable chunks.
- get everyone pulling in the same direction, with a clear sense of their own role in achieving your organisation's overall aims. Understanding the importance of their particular tasks helps people to stay focused and fully engaged with the challenges they face.
- help each team member to manage their own time and resources to best effect.
- help your organisation to evolve and adapt, to stay on top of budgets and track your progress. This in turn enables organisations to build on strengths, address weaknesses and manage risk.