Planning for sustainability

Because new technology appears to hold so much promise, it is easy to forget that it can't defy the usual 'real world' laws of financial reality and human commitment.

Projects, centres, and community grids all need capital to replace equipment as well as get started, revenue to pay staff and/or ways to retain the enthusiasm of volunteers.

In order to address these issues, you need to:

Develop a business plan. Making the Net Work provides detailed guidance on business planning for centres which can be adapted for other initiatives. The guidance is also available as Microsoft Word or PDF. The business plan will provide a structure to bring together many of the issues that have been addressed earlier in the process:

• Who are you and what is your idea?
• What are your aims ?
• Where are you?
• Why you want to do it?
• What needs does your community have?
• Who else is doing it?
• How do you plan to do it?
• How will you keep within the law?
• What do you need?
• How much will it all cost?
• Where will the funding come from?

Develop a structure. As part of the business planning exercise you should look at how the initiative will be managed, and whether you need to create a new organisation to do that.

The interim structure section contains suggestions on how to operate as a network of projects and groups.