Create a Blank Estimate Template for NPOs Effortlessly

Blank estimate template for NPOs

hey this is Kyle at projection up and today I'm going to show you how to create a business plan for a non-profit organization that you're trying to launch and so what I'm going to do today is using this free business plan template which is available down in the description below you can grab it no strings attached I'm going to basically use this as a guide we're going to go through here talk about the structure of the business plan it's pre-filled out with a fictitious non-profit example so we can use that as a starting point and you can use that as a starting point when you're building your own business plan to have kind of a reference point when you're filling that out and so my goal though is as we're going through this I'm going to highlight five key points that you should really try and make sure you get nailed down in your business plan so if you need to secure some funding whether that's even a loan or you know you have potential donors or whoever that want to see the the business plan you can show that to them and make a compelling case and so obviously this video is going to be a little bit different because business plans are very common for for-profit businesses projections are very common for for-profit businesses and it's all about you know your target market and attracting that customer base and everything's a little bit different for a non-profit and so I'm going to do my best to to outline some tips and tricks here so who is projection hub we've helped more than 50 000 businesses organizations Founders business owners create Financial projections for their for their Ventures you know for loan applications for business plans for pitch decks and so we we've helped several non-profits create their their financial models for their organizations and for their Endeavors and their campaigns and who am I I've mentioned my name is Kyle before this I spent seven years as a lender a small business lender during that my time admittedly I didn't work on many loans for nonprofits but the organization I worked for was a non-profit and was very transparent with their operations and how we manage things and how we we ran the business and you know grew that organization and so just having some some context from there in both of these careers that I think will be helpful and just having a lot of experience from for for-profit businesses that I do think applies to the management and the growth of nonprofits there's just some nuances there so if at any point you like this content give it a thumbs up subscribe to the channel if you'd like to to get more information you know kind of like this one and we'll go ahead and jump in okay so why is your business plan important you know again the stakes are a little bit different than a for-profit business and so you know with if the goal and the purpose is very missional and is very pragmatic you know we're less worried about proving how much money we're gonna make but it's much more about identifying that there is a need that there is ample funding for the need that you're going to be able to secure the funding to do what you need you're going to do because especially if you're going to in this use case we're going to be you know creating a business plan for a 25 000 loan right so your lender is still going to want to see that you're going to have what it takes to keep operating you're you're going to be able to secure funding or generate you know income to be able to pay back that loan and then in the the mission that you're trying to so our business plan needs to do a little bit of educating in this case and a lot of for-profit businesses I usually say the business plan doesn't need to educate because they're probably familiar with it but in a non-profit case I think you do need to do a little bit of education and make sure that they're aware of of you know the issue you're trying to address and who you think potential supporters are of your cause and so we need to do that but then also outline our roadmap forward it's our roadmap to fundraising for business development for finding partners for deploying the resources that we've you know are collecting and how that is going to make an impact so I'm going to talk about that kind of at a high level again try and look through this through the lens of your specific nonprofit and how you would kind of apply these things we're going to talk about to that because it may be different for your use case and I just want to try to help get the the gears turning a little bit for you so first thing I'll mention is you see here this table of contents it's not super long okay so a common misconception is that business plans need to be really long to be effective and I think actually quite the opposite can be true during my time as a lender you know if someone would provide a really long business plan then chances are the whole thing is not going to get read a lot of it's going to get skimmed just from like a time saving standpoint and so that means that some important details might get missed or might get overlooked so if you need to create a much larger business plan to you know get all your thoughts down in paper and feel like you're covering all your bases definitely do that but what you hand to your lender or potential donor should be a refined version of that that really is just jam-packed of all the highlights and the important details so that nothing gets left out so as we're kind of going through here let's start out with the executive summary kind of think about this as like a cover letter for a resume you know for a job application so we want to talk about you know who we are what we're doing where we're doing it and how we're doing it it's kind of really what we're going to cover another thing to mention is the structure of this business plan template is you're gonna have headings and then you're gonna be subheadings and then you're gonna have a brief description of what should be included in that subheading and then like a one to two sentence example for our fictional use case and so don't take this structure so literally that you might want to elaborate in more of these sections than what the template has like in an organization overview like non-profits tend to be very unique in the mission that they serve and the way they operate so take some extra space to explain what you're doing and how you do it and the importance of what you're doing don't limit yourself to two sentences in those cases where it doesn't make sense and then your organization description you're going to talk a little bit about you know maybe who founded the organization your entity structure would be important to including here who's your target beneficiary like who are you going to be supporting in the community and yeah so very important to include this information here not one of those five key points yet that I'd mentioned okay first one your market analysis now that probably sounds a little bit more business speak but I still think it does apply right so we're not going to be identifying a customer base in this case but we're going to be trying to identify the the group of people or the community that we think exists that we want to support and we need to try to come up with ways so the key point you know you're gonna over the overview that here industry that's more like you know what's the need you're overviewing the need collaborator collaborator collaborators and competitors now I've I came from the non-profit space so I understand that competitor is kind of a taboo name for things but in reality there's competitors right there's there's only so much grant funding and there's multiple organizations that are competing for those those grants oftentimes and even if they have over some nonprofits have overlapping services and so that can mean the difference between being funded and not so but in this case competition is good because the the beneficiary or the the communities that get to receive these resources so it's good for there to be non-profits multiple you know engaging in the same activity so identify if there's any overlapping organizations offering similar things to you do and you know how that Dynamic plays out and then again targeting your target beneficiaries so in this market analysis typically what this would look like for a for-profit business is let's show some tangible research that is evidence and supports the fact that we do think there's room in the market for that business or that product so we're going to kind of do the same thing for a non-profit except we want to try and demonstrate some research and examples that the need exists to the level that we say it does and that there is people interested in funding that need right and there's a need for that to be funded and so you likely are familiar with if there's any studies or research that's been done go out and find that try to secure that information maybe you've done the survey yourself right so any sort of empirical data you can kind of collect to support what you're saying you know is the need you want to support that including as much of that as you can if there's any precedent for grant funding and different things that are happening in in different communities like maybe in a different state or a different city that's similar to yours highlight those as examples that there's a precedence for what you're trying to accomplish and for those to be funded well and include that now this is like kind of a really poor man's version of explaining this I would kind of do this in a for-profit version but I'm going to try to do this in a non-profit version where this is a free tool you can make a free Google AdWords account and then they have a free tool called the Google Keyword Planner and basically what this does is it enables you to simulate search volume for keyword search phrases so I've said that our fictitious example and I think we we mentioned it's called Safe Haven and we're offering like Mental Health Services and counseling services to underserved communities so we want to try and get some sort of a grasp on like what is the need for those services in minneap Minneapolis now what I'm about to show you is likely not the best way to do this but for the sake of doing this video do some research right talk to your local governments talk to your local Representatives talk to other local non-profits talk to National organizations that are doing that type of research to understand you know what resource resources they might have to be able to help you identify that need so this is again a poor man's version to do this but I've set my location as if I was in Minneapolis and I want to see how often people are searching for things like Mental Health Services near me counseling near me mental health counseling near me now there's a long list of other search phrases now what this is going to do is one recommend some other related search phrases which are helpful it's going to provide how often that's being searched per month in that area and then it's going to give us some Trend data so this is this is helpful for us to see not only how much of that being searched there you know and let's find out let's see we've got mental health therapists near me mental health clinic near me trauma therapist near me team therapist near me psychotherapist near me so you can kind of pick out the relevant ones to what your kind of mission is there because if you're not gonna do marriage counseling or couples therapy then that isn't relevant to your case so you can look at how many how often that's being searched because that could be in theory like a new potential person you could support each month if there was a service available and then another one I want to focus on is the trend data so if your claim is maybe that mental health is becoming an increasingly more common issue and people are seeking out those resources but especially for maybe an underserved area they're not finding those or they can't afford those then we can see the growth there right so we can see that there is growth psychologists psychologists is up 85 percent mental health therapist near me 24 so you can kind of you can kind of pick those out you know that are Mental Health Services near me up 50 three months so this is just one example of like a free tool to go out and just try to get some some you know street level search data that's just raw that can kind of support that but again looking at studies that are being done by other nonprofits and organizations and any data that you can see from that fact include that in your business plan to reinforce the market analysis you know what is the need in your community and then again if you can find precedence of those organizations like yours being funded in other states and other cities I like that as well to to demonstrate the fact that the people are becoming more aware and supporting organizations like yourself so moving on to marketing and fundraising here you're going to just talk about again the types of programs and services you're going to offer what is your plan to continue to raise funding I mean when it comes to nonprofits that's the name of the game typically you're not going to be you know charging for your services or if you do you know like why is it that you're charging for them but and maybe you're just subsidizing those costs based on you know grants and donations and gifts but talk a little bit about your strategy when it comes to identifying potential funders that are going to support your organization and then key Point number two is going to be now if this was a for-profit business we'd be talking about customer acquisition like how are we going to actually acquire our customers and in this case I think we need to you need to highlight two things one how are you going to acquire funders Financial supporters and two how are you actually going to get those in need of yours your services and your resources to come to you and to engage with you and so so we want to provide tangible examples of both of those two things so you know that might look like outlining our ideas for a fundraising event or maybe let's try to split those two two up so maybe for tracking down investors you've already done some some research and networking and reaching out to like high wealth individuals or organizations that want to get involved and maybe you start creating a list of those people and those organizations and that they are interested it doesn't even need to be like a dollar commitment or maybe it is that they say they want to be supportive of what you're going to be doing and then you know another example of how to maybe come up with an example of how you're going to get in touch with the actual people who need your services you know you can organize a grand opening in the event and just try to build you know event in the community to build awareness that your your resources are are open you know going to be open you're going to be accessible and going to be used and then maybe connect with like the city to work on an initiative to to get those resources accessible to kids in schools and you know different things like that so I would say the more detailed examples you can give to demonstrate that you're actually you're already working on connecting within you know funders and connecting with the people who are going to be utilizing your services is good right you don't want to you don't the one thing you want to avoid in your business plan is giving this a mentality that like or given the impression that you're going to build it and people will come right people will come to support and people will come to use your services now that might be true in some cases but you know we want to you want your business plan to be a little bit more proactive you have a game plan outlined to kind of hit the ground running so moving on your organizational structure and management this can be I guess a little bit more focused on just on like the logistics of your organization so where you're going to be located what is your facility going to provide your Staffing plan and volunteers like you know that's a whole other thing like how you're going to attract volunteers and be able to actually execute the services and programs that you're going to be providing and then you've got obviously your government your governance and how's your board structure going to work out and you're going to manage your finances and and all of that so key point three would be kind of your relevant expertise in this field so you want to highlight whether it's you or people who are on your team already what relevant experience do you have to be able to know what you're getting yourself into both in the actual field of the the support and the resources you're going to be providing that you know what you're doing and you're gonna be effective at offering that and two running and operating an organization now obviously nonprofits are not the same as a for-profit business but it does still take you know strong leadership in business management expertise and just managing the financial aspect of the business and in the operation of the team so highlight any experience you have related to those in the business plan either for you or you know the founding team or any key employees are going to have that you guys are equipped actually provide to provide the resources and programs but as well as lead and manage an organization effectively so moving along to the financial plan of financial projections obviously a big component of this we're a little bit biased being projection hub but it is a very important aspect of your business plan probably the most important aspect when it comes to from like a lender's perspective on deciding if they're going to make you know decision to approve funding for you and so here you're going to outline things like your startup costs right so what do you actually need to get the organization up off the ground you know in this example we need 150 Grand we've already raised 125 000 and we're just looking for a 25 000 loan to get us all the way there you can see our income projections now you're going to see some of the financial projections like when it comes to a non-profit there are some different terminology around them but it's sometimes it's it's safe to look at it in the through the lens of a for-profit business because that's the most prominent example we have of of running businesses and just remembering the goals that like the goal is to isn't to generate an excessive amount of profit right that's we can track profitability and net income but that's not the ultimate goal right so that a lot of times it's just going to get reinvested or distributed to the resources that are being provided or expanding the team so you can you know grow the the capacity of the team to even provide more resources and do more things for the community so keep that in mind that it's not a No-No to like you know mention a word like net income or profit or something like that in a non-profit but obviously the goal is just not to grow that you know exponentially without continuing to expand our resources so anyways we got a breakdown of a little high level Five-Year Plan for like income and the profitability quote unquote in our our overhead or operating expenses some key ratios to manage the success of the organization our monthly operating expenses our overhead is going to be included in that we have you know this as profit and loss statement that would be what it is for a for-profit business but you know a lot of times that's called a statement of financial position for a non-profit and cash flow projection statement of cash flows very you know similar to that you know we have a break-even analysis which I wouldn't say super applicable to a non-profit just because it's not the goal but again you can't run at a deficit forever unless you're just going to continue to support that with donations and that's okay so I guess the point being it's okay if there's not a break-even point right if that's your strategies is to just always continue to supplement that with donations and gifts and whatever that's going to be that's okay just highlight that in your in your business plan so all those charts and graphs though that I'll mention they were generated with this template we have a non-profit projection template it's available you can get it down the link below at the end of the video I'll give you a promo code so you can even get it really cheap and just to show you really quickly it's very simple you just edit the blue boxes here relevant to your situation you're just going to put in you know your different streams of projected income you've got grants if you have membership dues other Revenue business income and that will consolidate that down into your income calculation you can have your operating expenses so it'll include your overhead in here any salaried employees will go on here and then it's going to generate you know all of these charts and financial statements for you everything your lender is going to need or anyone you know potentially reviewing like if your board needs a report or even potential donors want to see an annual report of sorts or I guess this is forward looking so that would be a little bit backwards but anyways that that's still going to generate you know your forecast for them if anyone's wanting to to look out ahead instead of at the Historical so key Point number four though is not to create projections because you need to have projections in there key Point number four is to have realistic projections now again nonprofits this is a little bit tricky because nonprofits can be so come in so many shapes and sizes and the way they generate income is different and so it's kind of hard to compare one nonprofit to another so you just need to find I I don't want to give a specific example on what the number should be because for your case it might be very different my recommendation to you would be just to go to Google create your projections and then some of the important metrics that the things that you deem to be important go and and just Google or even use things like chat GPT or Bard to like search for comparable benchmarks so for example a ratio that's important to some nonprofits is an overhead rate right they don't want to you don't want to exceed 35 overhead so that you don't become so overhead heavy that you're only funding the business just to take care of the overhead right you still have you still have Capital to deploy to different resources and different needs and so that might be something you want to calculate and look to see where you are you're comparing to that so just this again this is a little bit tough one for nonprofits but as you are filling out and creating your projections you're going to know what type of numbers are important for your specific nonprofit and then just do specific searches Google searches chat AI searches to find out what would be typical industry benchmarks so you can see if you're within the right realm of possibility or the right you know right ballpark there and so that is going to be key Point number four but we're missing one then we've got down here demonstrating commitment so this is going to be again nonprofit can be a little bit tricky to outline this so I guess the for-profit version of this would be called Skin In the game and that would be an example like if you're going to get a loan the loan needs to have collateral right so the bank wants to to mitigate their risk lender wants to mitigate their risk by having some collateral that for some reason the load wouldn't be paid back they can liquidate that collateral and you know try to recover some of their money and there's a similar that's going to still kind of exist for non-profits right if you're trying to get a loan you know they might want a personal guarantee of leadership or a board member or you know they might want some collateral fit exists if you have a building that kind of thing so demonstrating commitment is just be prepared and just because you're a non-profit A lender is going to say no it's okay we don't need collateral they're still going to require those things so just be kind of prepared on like what you have available you have a leadership you have governance that's willing to sign on to that kind of thing to support that and yeah just be mindful of that so there you have it business plan template free business plan template for nonprofit go ahead and grab that down in the description as promised here is a promo code ph20bp that'll get you 20 off that non-profit Financial projection template if any questions reach out to support projectionable.com we will be happy to help and please like the video If you enjoyed this content and we will see you on the next one thanks foreign [Applause]