A detailed and complete business plan is an essential first step toward getting any new business up and running, and this is true even for a new non-profit business.

==A Non Profit Business Plan Is Needed==

Whether you are starting a profit or not for profit business, the business plan is one of the most important documents any business produces. Just because the business is not for profit does not mean that a thorough business plan will not be needed.

==What Should Be Included In Your Non Profit Business plan==

It is still important for the not for profit business plan to include the mission plan of the business, the experience of the key team members, and a detailed description of what the non-profit does and what services it will provide to the public.

It is also important for the business plan to describe the challenges and opportunities that the non-profit business expects to face in the early years of its existence.

==A Business Plan Is Essential As The Business Grows==

Of course the importance of a business plan does not end at the startup phase of the not for profit company.

A solid business plan will also be essential as the business grows and changes. A business plan will be needed any time financing is required.

This can include such times as when the business needs to move to a new location, when it needs to purchase additional equipment and even when it needs to hire significant numbers of staff members.

It is important for the management team of the not for profit company to keep the business plan up to date as the company continues to grow.

==A Non Profit Business Plan Can Help Attract Outside Financing And Partners==

As a matter of fact, the business plan is not just an important and vital tool for attracting outside financing and partnerships.

It is also a valuable management tool that can be used to grow the skill set of any management team. By its very nature, a business plan forces team members to think long term, and to examine where the company has been and where it is going.

The business plan is a great way to examine the not for profit business and help it to grow and prosper in the future.

Each of us is ultimately responsible for our own actions. Although in today’s business world, I imagine many skeptics would take exception to that statement because there is evidence that people are not held accountable for their actions, even when they are unethical. And even more disturbing, some are even rewarded for unethical actions. Each of us makes a choice to act ethically or to act unethically.

It is essential that we know what is ethical and what is unethical. But, more challenging and difficult than knowing what is ethical, is knowing what is right and then doing what is right. Always doing the right thing is required for long-term success in your business and personal lives. So what advice and guidance are available to check if the action is right before implementing a decision to act? Well, your strategic thinking business coach has a set of questions to provide guidance to you for ethical decisions and actions.

My advice as a strategic thinking business coach is to ask the following ten (10) questions about any action and idea you are contemplating. And if you cannot answer yes to any of these questions, then you must develop an alternate strategy or seek advice and counsel from others.

+ Is the idea or action congruent with your core values and guiding principles of your business life and personal life?

+ Is the idea or action legal?

+ Will the idea or action be fair to all concerned?

+ Will the idea or action pass the Golden Rule test (Do Unto Others Test)?

+ Would the idea or action stand up to a critical public review if brought out into the open?

+ Will the benefits of the idea or action exceed the costs?

+ Does the idea or action comply with your company or organization’s rules and regulations?

+ Will you feel comfortable and without any feelings of guilt if you follow through on the idea or action?

+ Does the idea or action meet stated goals and objectives?

+ Would the most ethical person I know follow through on the idea or action?

These are very practical and useful questions to test your ideas and actions. You may develop other questions and add them to the list. If you use these questions to test your ideas and actions and remember that acting ethically is a requirement in everything you do, you will greatly increase your potential to be very ethical and successful.

If you would like to learn more about the importance of business ethics in your business and how to foster an environment of ethical behavior, please contact Glenn Ebersole today through his website at http://www.businesscoach4u.com or by email at jgecoach@aol.com

How often have you complained to your colleagues about how hard it is to find business fax numbers? The fact is, finding the right business fax numbers can be a real pain especially if what you are looking for are numbers belonging to companies in a specific industry. Yet, the solution to such a problem is relatively simple. All you need to do is to simply acquire a list of business fax numbers from a listing company over the internet. With this, you can now easily find numbers without the pain you used to face in the past.

The first step to solving the pain associated with finding business fax numbers would be to acquire a list of business fax numbers from one of the many listing companies located on the internet. Generally, these companies are involved in the business of data collection and maintain a large database containing contact information of businesses throughout the United States. It is important, however, that you critically evaluate each of these companies by reading reviews posted on forums as well as the relevant testimonials before making your purchase. For those who do not have the luxury of going throughout this process, a good listing company to start with would be one at MailingListUsa which maintains a regularly updated database of business fax numbers throughout the Untied States.

The next step you would need to take upon acquiring such a list would be to categorize the business fax numbers contained within your list. A good method of categorization would be to sort these numbers in accordance to the various industries in which these businesses participate in. This is extremely important as it would allow you to find the right contacts easily when you need them. Make sure that your categorization system is as detailed as possible as you would definitely wish to maximize your returns when it comes to launching a fax marketing campaign for your business. Having a loose system of categorization often results in inefficiency as your faxes often gets sent out to the wrong target audience. As such, it is important to maintain a well-classified business fax numbers list.

Last of all, you should also ensure that you purchase a business fax number list only when you are about to use it. Unlike other things, information pertaining to these numbers gets obsolete relatively quickly. This is due to the very nature of contact information, which tends to change from time to time. Thus, it is important to purchase such information only when you require them. While classification is necessary for convenience, up-to-date information is important in ensuring the relevance of such information to your business’s marketing efforts. After all, sending business fax to numbers which no longer exist is in fact a waste of much precious time and effort.

Clearly, getting a business fax number list is important in order to allow you to be able to easily find business fax numbers when you need them. The time and effort that you save as well as the convenience that you gain are in many ways, priceless.

How to run a Bouncy Castle Hire business

If you want to make some extra money for your family you should consider starting a Bouncing Castle Hire business. That way, you can stay working at your full time job and run your hire business by working part time and at the weekends

We recommend that you incorporate the business as a limited company. This will allow the creation of a separate legal identity for your business. This is of great significance in the event of a legal claim for damages being made by somebody who says that they were hurt using your castle. Fortunately, those situations are very rare but you should protect yourself legally just in case.

This is an ideal business part time and the rewards can be high. We would not recommend renting out them as a full time business in Ireland because turnover is affected by the weather. Obviously if operating in a country where the climate is warmer could be a full time business

You get to delight children and help parties run smoothly when you run a type of enterprise. The look of joy and expectation on children’s faces when the “Bouncing Castle Man” comes is priceless.

I remember a five-year-old child one day asking me if I had children. When I told him that I had four he said with a very serious face that they must be the luckiest kids in the world because they could play on a jumping castle whenever they wanted.

The monetary rewards and cash flow can be excellent but meeting kids like this makes it an emotionally rich experience.

We would advise that you would only hire out bouncing castles for use by children rather than adults. There is much greater demand for children’s castles and you can expect trouble if your bouncy castle hire business rents out castles for use by adults.

We would recommend that you would start your business with three castles. Buy a large castle with a slide (16ft x 14 ft) and two without a slide (14ft x 12ft). Charge EUR120 for the castle with the slide and EUR100 for the ordinary castles.

Give a 10% reduction for off peak hires (Mon to Thursday). The inflatable with the slide will appeal to older kids and parents who have larger gardens. The ordinary castles are more suitable for use by smaller kids and parents who have smaller gardens.

Children have birthdays every single day of the year and jumping castles appeal to kids from the age of 2 to 13. In the summer and autumn, their parents can hire a jump house for the back garden. In the winter and spring, parents can hire a community hall or church hall to hold the party and accommodate the castle.
In our experience the renting season is from April to October. Children prefer using moonwalks outside in their gardens rather than indoors.

Your customer will almost always be a woman in her thirties or early forties. They book the company, organise the parties and look after the entertainment for the kids.

When you are established your company will get business due to word of mouth and repeat business. Every business needs publicity but especially a new business. What options would we recommend?

An option you could do is to take out a paid ad in your local Yellow Pages/Golden Pages Directory, under the category, “Bounce Houses and Inflatables”. You will have to pay an even more significant cost if you want to have a boxed or big ad, which will make you stand out from the crowd. We found that a boxed ad does get you more business but you have to weigh up whether the extra cost is recouped in extra revenue.

A much better option for you would be that you would get the free listing in the Golden Pages where they just put in your business name and number and create your own website to publicise your hire business.

The website you create for your inflatable hire business is only restricted by your imagination. Do not be under an illusion that this will be an easy option. You will only succeed if you put in the time developing your website. Taking this option is much better value than just passively paying for a boxed ad in your local Golden Pages.

The website will give you countless opportunities to presell your jump house hire business to prospective customers in your particular geographical area. You could get visitors initially to your new jumping castle hire business website by using pay per click methods of advertising. This provides cheap warm leads and if done well can be very effective. When traffic to your website increases you could add another income stream by placing adsense ads on your site. This money will significantly reduce the hosting costs of your website.

Below is a list of things, which you will need to start a bouncy castle business:

1) Jump Castle, rain cover, electric fan, mallet and anchor stakes.
2) Van for transporting the castle. I use a Ford Transit.
3) Ground sheet to protect underside of bouncer.
4) Electrical extension cable (25 – 30 meters long).
5) RCD circuit breaker. (Safety cutout device).
6) Safety mat to put at front of the castle
7) Local street map of your town and its surrounding area Large A4 size desk diary for taking bookings (1 Page to a day).
9) Ledger book for recording takings and expenses etc.
10) Public Liability Insurance cover. We strongly recommend one million euros as the minimum.
11) Safety instruction sheet
12) Customer disclaimer form
13) A trolley
14) Mobile phone in the name of the company
15) A company bank account

We would recommend that you buy your castles for your moonwalk hire company from a reputable manufacturer. Your new bouncing castles should have at least a 1 yr guarantee. Make sure that a minor repair kit is included in the price of the castles. Do not buy a second hand inflatable for your company unless you are very experienced and know what to look out for in relation to things like stitching.

Only rent out to householders having a party in their house or a local hall. That way lessens the chances of anything going wrong and you know there will be proper adult supervision of the playing in the castle. Avoid renting out at fetes or to community groups as this significantly increases the chances of something going wrong. There is less supervision at these events and your business might regret taking the booking.

Bouncing castle hire companies in Ireland are very busy every Saturday in May. The reason for this is that this is the month that 8-year-old children make their first holy communion. This is a very important event for the child and their family.

The way it is normally celebrated is that the family, relatives and the celebrating family brings out friends to lunch. Later in the day the party is continued in the home of the child and there is a tradition of hiring a inflatable castle to keep the children amused.

Parents usually have to hire the castle by the previous December if they are to avoid disappointment. Parents having their first child for communion, often do not realise that this is the story and can sometimes leave it too late to hire. They do not make the same mistake when it comes to the hiring for their subsequent children.

Suggest to disappointed parents that they hire the jumping castle for the Sunday. Resist the urge to increase your price at this time. The customer will remember having to pay over the odds. They will not use your business again and will not recommend you to others. When taking telephone bookings for your business you should check that there is sufficient side access to the back garden. Believe me, there is nothing worse than trying to bring a moonwalk through a customers house.

Hirers will not cancel bookings. The first thing they will do after hiring you is to tell their child that they have booked. They are not then going to turn around and cancel the coming up to the big day.

Do not take the money in advance unless they are paying by cheque. Allow two weeks to have cheques cleared. Assure the hirer that there is no cancellation fee. In our experience the only way that they will cancel the hire is if it is pouring rain.

At the start of our business we were constantly checking the weather forecast and advising customers. We no longer do this following an incident where we phoned and advised a customer that the weather forecast was very bad and did she want to cancel the bouncy castle hire at no cost to her. She asked us if we were refusing to deliver the bouncy castle, completely missing the point and our good intentions. We delivered the bouncy castle. It rained incessantly for the day and they got very little use out of the bouncy castle hire. When I returned she said that she should have listened and now realised that we had been thinking of her best interests. Let it totally up to her if she wants to cancel the bouncy castle hire. You could even, like us, add a page to our bouncy castle hire website where potential customers can check the weather forecast eight days into the future.

We recommend that you always put up the bouncy castles in the back gardens of the hirer. This allows her have greater control over who uses the unit and from your perspective limits the possibility of outsiders to the party getting on the bouncy castle unit.

When you arrive at the party check with the hirer as to where exactly she wants the bouncy castle to be positioned. Make sure that the area is grassed and big enough for the bouncy castle.

We have had situations where people have had to take down clothes lines and dig up plants and shrubs to allow the bouncy castle to be put up. Hirers will do anything to make the bouncy castle they have hired fits because they will have told the child that the bouncy castle is booked. They will not want to have to turn around and tell the child that they have had to cancel the bouncy castle hire order because the space is smaller than they thought.

Do not be surprised if your customer wants the bouncy castle moved when it is up, as she may not have factored in such things as being able to see what is going from the house.

Get paid when the bouncy castle is set up to her satisfaction and get her to sign two copies of the disclaimer form. Give her back one copy and keep the other on file. Insist on cash as cheques can bounce or be stopped. If taking cheques you should get them send to your bouncy castle hire business address two weeks in advance so that they are cleared by the time of the booking.

Show the hirer how everything works and point out the different things that can go wrong unless the children are properly supervised while playing on the bouncy castle. Make sure that she has your mobile no in case something goes wrong during the bouncy castle hire.

Call back at the agreed time or a little later. The children will always want one more bounce on the bouncy castle, so there will be less resentment if you arrive later than the agreed time.

Children love giving a hand deflating, folding and putting away the bouncy castle. This should be encouraged provided that you ensure that they will come to no harm while giving you a hand. Check that everything went well and when the bouncy castle is put away give her a EUR5 voucher off any future bouncy castle hire. Give her business cards for any mother who was at the party who may want to contact your bouncy castle hire company in the future.

Good luck to you if you decide to go into the bouncy castle hire business.

This sample business letter is modeled after one of the most successful sales letter templates of all time. The beauty of this letter is that it can be adapted to virtually any business situation.

I like to send this letter as the third one in a series of letters. It is important to keep in mind that just a single letter sent once to a prospect who does not know you, will not usually result in any significant results. The key to success is to have a sequence of letters.

Although each letter is unique the call to action is the same. A less effective call to action is ask the reader to call you for a free consultation. That’s not a bad idea, it’s just that this should not be the first request you make. I would wait until after your prospect has opted into your stay-in-touch system to make that request.

The crucial element is to get prospects to opt-in to your mailing list. The most effective way to do this is to offer some sort of free report or other valuable information. Here is the letter that I recommend that you send out if the first two letters that you send don’t get your prospect to respond.

Dear (prospect) Take two (companies similar to the one your prospect is in). Both (similar in specific ways). Both (trying to accomplish a specific task). One (type of company) chugs along at an okay pace. Over time their business slowly grows, but the nagging feeling that “We could be doing better” never quite goes away.

By contrast the second (type of company) continues to steal market share from its competitors both large and small. Year after year it (achieves a particular goal). Why is one (company) so successful and the other so average?

We believe a large part of the answer revolves around the power and potential of (the type of work you do). When you dig down and really examine what accounts for the success of (these types of companies), a key differentiator is (how they effectively implement a solution) The bottom line is that the right type of (solution) can give you an enormous competitive advantage over your rivals, both big and small.

That is the reason I felt compelled to write you this last time to make you a final offer of our free special report (name of report). The report will take you less than 15 minutes to read and it will stimulate your thinking about:

(In this section you list the key benefits that the reader will get by reading the report. These might include the following:) What you should be doing to (achieve a particular objective). How to zero in on what’s probably making your (current solution) needlessly expensive.

The most important factor to focus on during any (situation that is about to happen). What the most progressive (companies in this industry) are doing to drive new business results.

At (name of your company) we assist (companies in this industry) achieve outstanding business results by leveraging the power of (what you do). Clients commend us for our willingness to dig deep and fully understand their specific business challenges before we offer any sort of recommendation or potential solution.

We know that at the end of the day, what you care about most, are solutions to the most vexing business problems you face. We believe that (what you offer) that will help you achieve your goals, but that first and foremost the business problem must be clearly understood.

Even if you’re completely satisfied with your current (approach to the particular business problem), I guarantee that you will find some useful and profitable information in this report. It’s free and you can receive your copy by visiting our website (name of website) or calling us at (phone number). I look forward to hearing from you.

I find that this letter when sent third in a series of letters motivates readers who read my previous letters but never responded to take the next step and request my free report.