Your business plan is the story of how you create and sustain your news organization. It helps you focus your ideas, make action plans, show funders how you will measure your progress and impact, and minimize risk and prevent financial losses. We cover the basics of business planning in our Startup Guide (chapter 6) and offer additional resources here for established news organizations.
Maintaining Your Value Proposition
- Knight Community News Network has resources such as case studies including this 2010 report on the outcomes of grants awarded to 55 local nonprofit news projects.
- What is the “Secret Sauce” of Online News Sustainability? (2013)
Business Model Canvas
This tool for creating a business model, introduced in the Startup Guide, can also be used to assess and enhance your current business plans, evaluate new opportunities and develop and implement new strategies and business models.
https://canvanizer.com/
Maintaining and Updating Your Business Plan
- 1-Year and 3-Year Plans*
- Sample Business Plans*
Budgeting and Financial Projections
- Creating a Budget (2014 video course covering how to create a budget by identifying costs and revenues. It provides templates for budget design and directions and examples to guide you in creating and analyzing your own budget.)
- Sample Budgets and Charts of Accounts for the video course above.
- Management of Nonprofit Finances (ManagementHelp.org)
- Nonprofit Cash Flow Statements (Brighthub.com)
- Building and Using Financial Capital (Video Webinar from Nonprofit Quarterly)
IRS Requirements
- Charity Registration and Taxes (From Startup Guide)
- Earned Revenue (From Startup Guide)
- IRS Publication on Unrelated Business Income Tax
- What Nonprofits Need to Know about Form 990
* Check back later for this section.