Spotlight Youth Centre business plan

The business plan is one of the most important things when looking to set up a new venture. It is not a small document (probably likely to run well over 100 pages long) and needs to be detailed and professional. However, that is easier said than done, and it is often the business plan that projects require help with.

During the Support Team's Business Plan Check and Challenge we came across one particular business plan that stood out as an example of leading practice. That business plan in question was for the Poplar HARCA project and their Spotlight Youth Centre.

Having been so impressed with how they had developed their business plan we asked them to put something together that other projects could use and learn from, and they came back to us with 13 top principles they used when putting together their plan.

A massive thank you to Poplar HARCA for providing us with this and hopefully it will be of great use to all of you.

13 key points to writing the Spotlight Youth Centre business plan

Relationships are essential

The relationships we had built with key partners and stakeholders over the years before the Youth Centre's development were invaluable to writing the Spotlight Youth Centre business plan. This included the local secondary school (Langdon Park School) whose land we are going to build on, the Council (Tower Hamlets) and a local Boxing Club (Poplar Boys and Girls Club) who are moving into the Centre. Other key organisations consulted with included the Police, NHS, the local FE College and a special needs school. Most importantly, we had built a solid foundation of expertise in working with young people through running the youth service in the Poplar area on behalf of the Council. This has allowed us to get to know our young people really well. Without these relationships which we built over the years working together on a range of projects and initiatives, the business plan would not have had as much local relevance to the needs of young people and would not have meshed the skills and resources of the partners.

Vision and values

We spent a lot of time working out our vision for the Centre and the core values that underpin that vision. That vision and core values in turn, set the tone for the business plan. We went away for a weekend to a youth centre already built (Open, Norwich) and spent time with our partners and stakeholders - including (of course) young people, architect, youth workers, project managers - to work out what values should be central to the design of the building and the services in the building.

Doing our homework

We spent a lot of time consulting with young people - 1600 conversations plus - at different times of day, and in different venues, such as youth clubs, schools, and on the streets. We went out of our way to talk to groups of young people who were perhaps less well represented in local youth services including young women, disabled young people and LGBT young people. We spent time finding out what would prevent them attending the new Centre, as well as asking about what would make them really want to come. The combination of what young people told us, our partners' knowledge, as well as our own experience, produced a model that was based on sound evidence of need.

Don't do it all on your own . . .

Building a team of ‘experts' (we had 5 different people write one to four sections each) to write different elements of the business plan was really important for us. It helped that we all knew each other and through this, the assurance that we were getting the best quality input for each of the different sections. For example, a youth charity with a strong track record wrote the volunteering section, our monitoring/performance lead for the youth contract wrote the monitoring section and so on. The team approach helped to cement the partnership approach to building the vision, and to keep the momentum going through the redrafting phases. It also meant that we had different eyes on different sections when it came to proofreading - for the quality of presentation (checking for typos, grammar, layout etc.) but also for consistency of the message, and telling a story that flows. We also utilised the expertise of Council officers, and even hired a former Council officer for their specialist input.

. . . but use your expertise

Drawing on our own organisational experience was an essential part of producing a successful business plan. We run the youth service in the Poplar area delivering services ourselves and managing the work of an additional ten local youth delivery partners. We manage five Neighbourhood Centres, and operate another fifteen satellite facilities, and we have won awards for Resident Involvement, Resident Empowerment (governance delivered by a majority of residents including a separate Youth Empowerment Board), and innovative resident-led projects.

Spread the load

We worked hard at signing up a wide range of partners (including Half Moon Young People's Theatre, Hi8us-South film producers, Greenwich Leisure Ltd. sports providers) to deliver the Spotlight Youth Centre's outcomes. These partnerships will be essential in making sure that we are working together to fundraise and deliver services.

Matching resources up with delivery

A lot of thinking went into working out the resources needed to run the Centre - in terms of cash and delivery by partners. Working this out took a long time and was probably the toughest nut to crack in making sure the budgets proposed (which included cash and ‘in kind' financial values) were sufficient for running the Centre. Simply, persevering with the calculations and testing and re-testing assumptions and resources as the design developed - both from an operational and strategic point of view - was key for us.

Have a plan to write the plan

We found working out a timetable for completing the business plan on time needed to take into account the team's other commitments, but still build in an early first draft date, subsequent drafts and a final draft date which would allow time for external proofreaders to have a full run through. Completing a full first draft early on was particularly important in creating time for an external expert to comment and give input early on, and to plan how to approach future drafts. One practical thing we did was to have a big visual countdown on the office wall '10 weeks to go', ‘9 weeks to go' and so on, and tasks to be completed by these milestones. Another practical tool was a tracking list for all the additional documents (appendices) that we had to submit. One member of the team was given the responsibility for tracking these and chasing them all to come in by the deadline.

It was worth going through the detail pain barrier

We felt that whilst there were some operational aspects that we could legitimately put off until after the building development was further on, we decided that there were other things that needed tackling early on. A specific case in point was developing a detailed timetable taking into account use of all the spaces in the Centre from 8am to 11 pm, Monday to Sunday. As the Centre is shared with a School 6th Form during the day, it really helped us understand how the building would work, the design and layout considerations and staffing resources/costs associated with delivering that timetable.

Presentation and style

Having the plan laid out by a professional designer, professionally printed and bound, really helped communicate the plan clearly especially graphic additions such as tables and plans. It did add a bit of extra time to the process, but was well worth it when it came to presenting the plan to funders. We also tried hard to only include strategic and operational aspects in the plan that were core to the vision of the Youth Centre (appendices formed another 10 lever arch files!)

Independent check

Having external people read through the business plan was very helpful. Expert consultants and also youth work policy people really helped us as well as internal people who were not working on the project. At all levels, these people checked basic stuff like typos, grammar spelling - but also made sure we were consistent with the latest policies and youth work strategic thinking. Most importantly, they were a check on consistency to make sure the different sections - written by different people - cross referenced effectively and that the plan was cohesive and coherent.

Rewriting, rewriting, rewriting

We knew that due to the level of detail (140 pages) and the complexity of the project, we would need to rewrite a number of times to iron out all the issues and make it work. We certainly found that there weren't any shortcuts on this. The plan definitely improved the more we worked on it.

Start early, stay focussed, and meet the deadline

Getting started, in some ways, was the hardest part. Seven months from the deadline (over half a year we reasoned!) felt like a long way away, and we didn't do much work on it for the first two months as the building design was still developing. Once we had the bare bones of the building's layout and form we felt we really needed to focus and not delay any longer. Once we'd got a first draft done, we all felt a lot better and morale (and problem solving) was definitely on the up.

Poplar HARCA
July 2011

Poplar HARCA business plan guide (250.77 kB)