At the end of April a number of Big Ideas were put in front of the community to get the juices flowing. No decision was made, but a very simple process of stickers and markers was used to test basic enthusiasm. There was sufficient positive interest in all the ideas to be worth some further development and discussion. If you’d like to be involved in developing any of these ideas, reach out to the person whose name is on it or contact knunn@holytrinity.to and I’ll put you in touch with the right people.
The ideas are all posted here again. We’ve asked those who submitted or were interested to develop some more detailed answers to important questions. Essentially this will form a draft “business plan”. We recognize we’re not and can’t be a business, but these are useful tools for assessing the challenges and opportunities of any new project we undertake.
Here is a link to a government site that has a guide for writing a business plan. We recognize that not all ideas will be self-funding or even have a revenue component, but most of the questions are relevant regardless. If you don’t think a question is relevant to your idea, just say why and move on to the next question. There may be questions that require more research, that’s ok too, but please describe those gaps you are leaving as well.
Some key questions:
- who is the target of the idea?
- who will this benefit?
- what revenue and/or funding possibilities are there and how will they be pursued?
- what staff and/or volunteer resources are required?
- what does a first year and ongoing budget look like?
- what will make this succeed?
- what challenges are there?
However, rather than simply answering those few questions above, we encourage you to read and dig in to the idea of a business plan by reading this page: https://canadabusiness.ca/busiWe know we need to be an active and vibrant place and that means thinking differently and actively into what the community needs are. We hope this request won’t scare you off from a good idea, but help make it more possible for us to actively pursue it.
Keith
(on behalf of VEC and Strategic Planning)
