Conservation Entrepreneurship/Business Plans

Business Plans are key documents for any enterprise. In this course, the main project will be to work in groups to produce a Business Plan for a conservation-oriented enterprise.

Business Plan Outline

 * Value Proposition
 * what is the product? need? opportunity?
 * who is the customer?
 * benefit to conservation
 * Market and Competition
 * Product
 * Pricing
 * Manufacture
 * Distribution
 * Marketing
 * Organization and Management
 * Partnerships and stakeholders
 * Financials

The rubric for evaluating the course project business plans

 * Does this project have the potential for significant conservation impact?
 * Does it have potential for scaling up or replication in order to leverage its conservation impact?
 * Will this project be financially self-sustaining after the initial investment being requested?
 * Is the project feasible? Have potential risks been adequately identified and addressed?
 * Is the marketing strategy adequate?
 * Is the management structure adequate?
 * Conclusion: Have the proponents justified the financial investment that is being requested? Would you support this project by recommending it to others, partnering with your organization, etc?

In the 2005 and 2006 versions of this course, our group projects competed in and won the best business plan in the UF business school's social enterprise business plan competition. See article

As a course introduction, we will look at some business plans. Several examples will be made available in class, or you may find examples of business plans in the UF Library (Library West reference collection) or online, e.g.:.

examples of business plans, executive summaries, etc. :
- http://sbinfocanada.about.com/od/businessplans/a/execsumexample.htm

- http://articles.bplans.com/writing-a-business-plan/writing-an-executive-summary

executive summary- defined: - http://oregonstate.edu/dept/eli/buswrite/Executive_Summary.html

Assignment one
Assignment ONE is for each student to review 2-3 business plans and write a 2 paragraph article about 1 of them. Let's create a new page for this, called Examples. Your article should give a full citation of the business plan, 1 paragraph description and 1 paragraph of your reaction/observation to the business plan (what caught your attention). Be brief and to the point -- remember you are writing 1/8th of the article.

Assignment three
Assignment THREE is to post an idea for a social enterprise that you are interested in. This is just a very preliminary brainstorm. It could be a new enterprise, or a new direction for an existing organization. Let's create a new page for this, called Ideas. Again it should be brief, but do explain why this idea is of interest to you. Be creative, this is just a brainstorm.