People, management and governance

Describe the people who are crucial to your organisation

For voluntary organisations, your people are often your most important asset. The knowledge, passion and experience of your team are probably what sets you apart from your competitors. In this section, describe the people who are crucial to your organisation and who will be involved in delivering your business plan.

It’s also important to state whether you’re lacking any particular skill sets or if you’re heavily reliant on one person.

Describe your plans to bring in new skills or transfer knowledge across a wider team.

Give brief biographies of your core management team

Describe how their skills and experience are relevant to your aims.

If your work requires specialist skills or qualifications (for example clinical/medical training, childcare qualifications or IT training), highlight the members of staff who meet those criteria or where you need recruit new staff.

Give brief biographies of your board

Highlight any experience or connections that are particularly relevant to your business plan.

If you’re applying for social investment, it can be useful to highlight any gaps in your board’s skill set, as investors are often keen to get involved as a non-executive director (depending on your constitution).

If you’re a new organisation, it’s important to show that you can access a team of people who have the skills and experience to support you as you grow. If these people are not on your board, you can still include them here as ‘key advisers’.

Show how your people are organised and any planned changes to posts

If you’re writing a business plan, it’s likely that you’re planning to change your management or staffing structure at some point.

Include a diagram to show how people are organised and any new posts that you plan to create. You could use colour coding to show which posts already exist and which are proposed. This is called an organogram; it’s a very useful way of helping the reader understand why you need to invest in recruitment.