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ASTI - Advanced Science and Technology Institute

Executive summary executive summary is a brief introduction to your business plan. it describes your business, the problem that it solves, your target market, and financial highlights.">.

The Advanced Science and Technology Institute (ASTI) supports research faculty and staff at **State University, University of AnyState, AnyState Health Sciences University and AnyCity State University in its management of new discoveries. This support includes the management of new discoveries having commercial applications, as well as the management of corporate research agreements leading to new discovery.

**(Editor’s Note: Names disguised for confidentiality.)

1.1 Keys to Success

• Building a strong support base with the private sector within State and the Northwest.
• Creating an effective network between researchers to facilitate cross-disciplinary contact.
• Raising the viability of ASTI as the one-stop resource for all transferable technology that is being developed on the campuses of State’s four largest universities.

1.2 Mission

The mission of the ASTI is to bring technologies from **State University, University of AnyState, AnyState Health Sciences University and AnyCity State University into public use; thereby providing economic development assistance to state and federal agencies and companies to benefit State constituents, providing service to the technology transfer staff of each institution by assisting in identifying, protecting, developing and transferring technology to the private sector and generating income. ASTI’s unique perspective is in its ability to link researchers from various institutions to create new technologies that can then be marketed to the private sector.

Historically, State has received less attention from companies that develop long-term relationships with the university research community.  With SouthernState universities to the south and the University of AnyState to the north, State has had a difficult time reaching the level of viability necessary to draw the interest of companies outside the state.

It is a problem of economy of scale. Currently, State University, University of AnyState, AnyState Health Sciences University and AnyCity State University have 128 technologies available for licensing.  One university in SouthernState, The University of Southern State (USS), has over 200 technologies available for licensing.  In addition, USS has received $20 million in corporate research funding last year.  This far exceeds the total for all corporate research funding for the four State schools ($3 million) during the same period. In State, the State Technology Center has secured $91 million in private funding for technology transfer from the University of State. It is critical that the four major universities in State pool its resources in order to be competitive in drawing corporate attention to the excellent researchers working within their institutions.

It is ASTI’s mission to create a resource for the private sector that rivals USC by providing an aggressive one-stop center for all the pivotal research that is occuring in State.

1.3 Objectives

• Establish a 42-member corporate research support council and increase corporate membership in ASTI’s Technology Development Council by 20% each year.
• Facilitate two new industry sponsored research agreements the first year and increase the number of agreements each year.
• Create new research linkages between the four campuses and develop new collaborative relationships between researchers.
• Develop a cross-disciplinary research database that will link researchers throughout the state.

Organization Summary organization overview ) is an overview of the most important points about your company—your history, management team, location, mission statement and legal structure.">

ASTI is a focused program that offers a powerful resource to researchers who are seeking corporate support for research and corporations seeking new technologies.  The program also seeks linkages between the four campus researchers in developing new partnerships that will generate additional corporate interest. 

2.1 Legal Entity

State University, University of AnyState, AnyState Health Sciences University, and AnyCity State University are all share holders in ASTI.

2.2 Start-up Summary

Start-up costs and initial financing are shown on the following table.  Each institution will contribute $40,000 to ASTI’s operating budget.

2.3 Program Location

ASTI will be located in AnyCity, AnyState.  This is a good central location for a state-wide program. AnyCity State University is located in AnyCity.  AnyState Health Sciences University and State University are located in NewTown 60 miles to the north. The University of State is located in OldTown which is 40 miles south of AnyCity.

ASTI’s services include:

New Technology Assist in identifying new invention disclosures for new discoveries and evaluation of these new discoveries to determine commercial potential. A research database will be created and maintained by ASTI in order to respond quickly to requests for information from the private sector, especially when it links researchers on multiple campuses. Companies will have a quick and accessible resource that will identify researchers that match their interest areas. ASTI will also assist in the establishment of new businesses to develop emerging technologies.

Research Collaborations ASTI will actively seek cross-disciplinary collaboration opportunities between researchers on the four member campuses.

Technology Conferences ASTI will sponsor two conferences in Portland each year focusing on the areas of Biotechnology, Material Science, Computer Science, and Medical Technology.

Newsletter and Promotional Publications ASTI will produce a monthly newsletter and quarterly promotional publications directed toward the private sector which will focus on current research on the four campuses and researcher profiles. This material will also highlight researchers seeking corporate support.

Market Analysis Summary how to do a market analysis for your business plan.">

The research enterprise at State University, University of AnyState, AnyState Health Sciences University and AnyCity State University is remarkably broad, deep and diverse, spanning activities in twenty-two academic colleges and more than 40 multidisciplinary programs, centers, programs, and institutes.

ASTI will first focus on creating the information base necessary to satisfy high-technology corporations that are currently prospecting for new technologies. These are mostly larger companies, but also include medium- to small-sized companies.

Our most important group of potential customers are the researchers in these companies. They do not want to waste their time or resources looking for a needle in a haystack. It is critical that they find ASTI an excellent tool in quickly identifying technologies and researchers that will lead to profitable products.

ASTI will provide a two-tier service that will correspond to a company’s membership in ASTI’s Technology Development Council. There will be both a full and associate membership option in the Technology Development Council.   We anticipate that larger companies will select the full membership option because it will offer additional research services.  An associate membership is tailored for the medium- to small-sized companies whose contacts will be less frequent.

4.1 Market Segmentation

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Medium to Small Companies: These companies are critical to the growth of ASTI because they represent the state’s developing high-tech industries.  Their focus in not only on a specific technology that is being developed at one of the member campuses but also on the graduate students that are working on the research. As associate members of the Technology Development Council, these companies will gain greater access to all the research opportunities that will meet their technology and staff needs.

4.2 Target Market Segment Strategy

As indicated by the previous table, we must first focus on all companies that have current relationships with researchers on the member campuses.

4.3 Service Providers Analysis

The private sector’s access to researchers at the member campuses range from excellent in selected disciplines, to completely chaotic and frustrating in most others areas.

ASTI’s goal is to assure access to all critical research through a streamlined process that leaves the company both satisfied with the results as well as the time invested in the search.

Strategy and Implementation Summary

The initial funding from the four member institutions will provide the foundation for launching ASTI.  Its survival will depend on the program’s ability to grow a membership base to its Technology Development Council.  The program will not survive if it is unable to meet its goal of increasing membership in the Council by 20% each year.

ASTI’s information products and services will add real value to the companies search for emerging technology.  As stated before, our most important group of potential customers are the researchers in these companies.  Their input into the kind of services they want will be critical to the evolution of ASTI. Our focus will be to add value in everything connected with ASTI.

5.1 Competitive Edge

ASTI’s competitive advantage is their comprehensive approach to providing unequalled access to researchers. ASTI’s focus is to support the companies in their successful pursuit of emerging technologies. The most critical component is the responsiveness of the program to company inquiries into selected research areas.

The best scenario is the company responding to research highlights provided by ASTI before initial inquires are made.  ASTI will strive to open doors for companies so that long-term relationships will develop and companies will become members of the Technology Development Council. 

The approach is decidedly sales-oriented in focus.  This is a critical advantage when in competition with universities in SouthernState and NorthernState.  Companies will find State research viable and easy to access.

Yet the key to ASTI’s success will be in how the program evolves in response to companies demands.  ASTI’s Technology Development Council was a vehicle for that evolution.  The Council will provide companies with the access to fine-tune services to improve the program’s ability to meet industry demands.

5.2 Marketing Strategy

ASTI’s marketing strategy will be to build the Technology Development Council as a base of support for technology transfer.  The plan is to use existing members of the Council as lead contact for other companies.  The best description of the strategy is the ever-widening ripples when a stone is thrown in a pond.  The first step is to capture all the companies the are currently quite aware of the excellent researchers at the four member institutions. From that base, begin to recruit new companies that current members will invite into the Council.

Though it is possible that fresh contacts to ASTI, from inquiries about technology highlighted in promotional material, can lead to companies joining the Council, it will be the membership of the Council that will drive the success of the program.

5.3 Fundraising Strategy

The fund raising strategy will be the payment of annual membership fees in the Technology Development Council.  A full membership will be $3,000 a year.  An associate membership will be $1,000.

5.3.1 Funding Forecast

During the first year, ASTI will recruit 20 full members and 21 associate members to the Technology Development Council.

5.4 Milestones

ASTI’s milestones are as follows:

• Within the first six months of operation to assemble the Technology Development Council membership.
• Publish the first ASTI monthly newsletter in December.
• Stage high tech conferences in AnyCity during the month of March and September in 2002.
• Achieve two new industry sponsored research agreements with researchers at the member institutions during the first year of operation.

Management Summary management summary will include information about who's on your team and why they're the right people for the job, as well as your future hiring plans.">

ASTI’s director is John Doe.  He is excited about the state’s vision of establishing a technology transfer consortium involving the state’s strongest corporate citizens. “These are ideas that many people have shared and promoted,” Doe said. “I’m hoping to work with units around the state to implement these and other ideas related to research agreements with industry.” Doe understands the need for State to strengthen connections with the private sector.

He joins ASTI from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in MoneyCity, State, where he worked as technology transfer manager in the Environmental Technology Division. He has a Ph.D. in low-temperature geochemistry from The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md., and a post-doctoral fellow from Yale University.

He believes the technology transfer consortium is a natural mechanism to allow large and small enterprises to make use of the expertise at the member institutions and allow faculty to participate in entrepreneurial pursuits. “I will promote ideas such as an entrepreneurial sabbatical for faculty where they could pursue business start-ups and the universities will receive some benefit in return,” Doe said. “I’m excited about the opportunities and look forward to working with the Technology Development Council and promoting the critical research efforts occuring at the institutions that ASTI represents.”

6.1 Personnel Plan

ASTI’s director position is full-time.  In addition, ASTI will also have three full-time employees; a research associate that will be responsible for research data collection, a communication associate who will be responsible for the program’s publications, and a full-time administrative assistant.

Financial Plan investor-ready personnel plan .">

The following sections will outline important financial information.

7.1 Break-even Analysis

The following table shows what our break-even point will be to cover our montuhly costs.

7.2 Projected Surplus or Deficit

The following table will indicate projected surplus and deficit.

7.3 Projected Cash Flow

The following table and chart illustrate the projected cash flow.

7.4 Standard Ratios

The following table compares our standard ratios with the Standard Industry Code #8748, Other Management Consulting Services.

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How to Create a Strategic Plan for Your Government Department or Agency

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blog , government , Strategic Planning

Budgets and deadlines are two of the most crucial elements when it comes to getting things done in a local government. To be as efficient as possible, you’ll need a robust strategic plan for your government department that outlines how you’ll spend your provincial budget and how you and your subcontractors will achieve public project deadlines. Building a long-term and multiyear strategic plan with goals and objectives can be challenging. We also understand how complicated it is to transform your ideas into tangible results for your community, and we’re here to help. 

In This Article

Why Government Departments and Agencies Need Strategic Plans

Why current government strategic processes and tools fall short, conduct internal and external analysis, consider the vision and mission , perform a holistic risk-assessment , list the focus areas , develop strategic objectives, set up an actionable game plan , utilize measurable kpis , put the plan into action , evaluate the results , transform government strategic planning and execution with achieveit, ready to accelerate your planning and execution efforts let’s actually do this..

Why should the state and municipal governments consider strategic planning? Isn’t having a yearly budget sufficient? After all, things may change when heavy rains overflow the city sewers or roadway repairs exceed the budget. What difference does additional planning make? What exactly is department strategic planning? 

A department strategic plan is a comprehensive and systematic management tool that assists governmental departments, agencies and organizations in assessing their current environment, anticipating changes and responding appropriately to issues. Strategic planning involves envisioning the future, improving effectiveness, developing commitment to the department’s mission and reaching a consensus on strategies and objectives for achieving that mission. It involves influencing the future rather than merely preparing for or responding to it. 

While combining community vision with available resources is critical, the resources should not stifle the vision. The objectives of a departmental strategic plan will involve identifying how the resources available may be linked to future ambitions. A long-term financial plan, created with the department strategy plan, is crucial to the departmental strategic planning process. A government should have an established financial planning mechanism that evaluates the long-term economic consequences of current and planned policies and programs. A financial plan depicts the expected financial repercussions of certain activities. 

Regarding strategic planning in government positions, the notion is that leaders must be good strategists if their departments and agencies are to achieve their goals, accomplish their mandates and, most importantly, satisfy their communities in the coming years. The strategic planning department must lay out effective strategies to deal with changing conditions and governmental leaders must create a cohesive and defensible framework for their judgments. Ultimately, a department strategy provides a big-picture document that directs resources and activities toward a well-defined vision. 

A state department strategic plan is a long-term commitment to various governmental objectives. Selecting the correct solutions to support the department’s strategic plan is critical to attaining them. The strategic planning department requires integrated and holistic systems and tools to increase productivity and improve the overall management of the various objectives while keeping operations running smoothly. An adequate system also keeps communication channels open between different departments. 

Many procedures and systems on the market can help manage a department’s strategic plan but mainly focuses on short-term success. Business intelligence, project management, strategy development tools and other mainstream options focus on something other than integrated plans that span departments and locations. Each focuses on a specific function of planning, developing, executing or reporting strategies, so finding a single system that keeps everything in one secure place is challenging. 

Taking an analytical look into these traditional options, we can see some pros to utilizing them. Still, some cons can lead to your government’s strategic processes falling short: 

• Business intelligence tools: Although business intelligence tools provide visual dashboards, reports and a data-driven understanding of how the government is performing, they miss the “why” behind the strategic plan — the vision and future forecasts. 
• Project management tools: These tools are excellent for providing detailed project statuses but lack the big-picture view and are typically challenging to use and connect with other projects. 
• Strategy management tools: Strategy development tools can most certainly help organize plans and foster project alignment. However, these tools are less proficient at enabling the effective execution of these plans. They have limited flexibility and make it difficult to manage multiple plans across the agency. 
• Mainstream tools: You might recognize mainstream and user-friendly tools like PowerPoint and Excel. Despite being customizable, these tools lack format and version control. 

Strategic planning in government can be challenging. You must include stakeholder input, ensure that your department’s strategy is consistent across all municipal agencies, connect capital projects to multiple plans and ensure that everyone engaged is on board with the strategy. The good news is that it’s possible and the approach may be more straightforward than you think. 

Follow these tips for creating your government agency’s strategic plan: 

Conduct an environmental scan, where the local government can investigate and assess the current and developing factors within their own area’s internal and external environments. The internal and external analysis provides detailed information on the government’s existing conditions, including prospective opportunities, strengths, threats and weaknesses to control or prevent. 

An internal analysis looks at the government’s internal environment to analyze its abilities, resources and competitive advantages. An internal analysis helps you identify strengths and weaknesses and the opportunities and threats that government departments or agencies face. This information assists government officials in making strategic decisions as they carry out the strategy development and implementation process. In a nutshell, the following topics should be included in your internal analysis: 

• SWOT Analysis: Conducting a SWOT analysis can help you comprehensively understand your area’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. 
• Strategy analysis: This analysis assists you in evaluating how well you performed against your current department strategy plan, what you can improve on and where you can focus your efforts. 
• Internal stakeholder analysis: This analysis enables you to gain insight into the issues and perspectives of your area’s internal stakeholders and their influence. 
• VRIO Analysis: A VRIO analysis can assist you in identifying any competitive advantages you may have and how to convert them into long-term competitive advantages. 

An external analysis investigates and evaluates the government’s external environment to understand possibilities and risks in its area. Forces outside a local government’s immediate control affect them, and they need to be able to plan accordingly. For example, changes in legislation and policies, demographic shifts or climate concerns can influence a government’s decisions. An external analysis should usually consider the following: 

• PESTEL analysis: Conducting a PESTEL analysis can help you discover the many scopes that may influence an area. 
• External stakeholder analysis: This analysis enables you to gain insight into the issues and perspectives of your local government’s external stakeholders and their influence. 

The government’s vision statement defines where they want to go — it’s the anchor that keeps them from being stranded at sea. A clear vision statement will aid in directing the strategic plan toward the best results for the community. Everything written into the plan will eventually help the government department or agency get closer to its vision. Additionally, your local government should base its department’s strategic plan on its mission statement. Consider asking the following questions to articulate the critical components of the strategy: 

• What are the top concerns that your government must address?
• Which forthcoming public projects are most important to your constituents? 

Every government has risks that require attention through policy and infrastructure developments. A comprehensive assessment of the different risks to your community may include the following:

• National issues: At the federal level, social and economic concerns arise and citizens on both sides may be dissatisfied with their government’s shortcomings. Considering which issues are most essential at the national level can enable your community to make localized efforts to address them. 
• Constituent dissatisfaction: Angry constituents equals a poor reelection campaign. To avoid unfavorable government-constituent relations, your local government should examine which topics are most beneficial to your community and analyze these concerns. 
• Economic hardship: Local governments must examine the impact of inflation on local companies, citizens and budgets. 
• Natural disasters: Which natural disasters are the greatest threat to your area? What steps have been taken or are being made to address these events, reduce risks and communicate with the public? 
• Cybercrime: Cybercriminals have been creating data breaches in municipal governments for years, and attacks are increasing daily. Have your local government invested in cyber-safe technologies and backed up its data? 
• International challenges: Do you need help attracting new government employees due to intergovernmental challenges? Do your internal procedures need to be more effective and costly? Do you have an up-to-date information technology strategy? One of the leading reasons for inefficient bureaucracy is a failure to recognize and handle such difficulties. 
• Public policies: Which national and state legislation are the most important for your municipality to handle in the near future in terms of public policy? What consequences will you face if you do not address these policies? 

After reviewing all the significant risks, it’s time to prioritize the most critical ones and develop a strategy to manage them. List the top focus areas that are crucial to your citizens or represent significant risks to your community’s health, safety, quality and economy. Your focus areas should also align with the local government’s and community’s future aspirations. Although it would be ideal to address all areas immediately, it could be more realistic. Try to prioritize a few critical issues. 

Strategic objectives indicate what your city genuinely wants to achieve — they’re quite high-priority and should have a date attached. Your strategic goals should align with one or more of your focus areas and provide some tangibility to how you envision attaining your focus areas. Similar to selecting a few focus areas at a time, you can develop a few realistic and achievable strategic objectives. An example of a strategic objective can be to “improve the community’s safety by implementing a new reporting system by June 30, 2023.” 

Now that you’ve decided on the primary focus areas and objectives, it’s time to consider how to execute them. A game plan defines what the government will need to do to achieve its goals. An actionable game plan assists in breaking down the bigger picture into smaller, more attainable results and activities. At this phase in your strategic planning process, you will begin to define the steps you will take to attain specific goals and the talents, expertise and resources required. 

KPIs track progress toward your strategic goals. KPIs are quantitative metrics that demonstrate your government’s progress toward essential strategic objectives. KPIs tell you whether or not you have met your strategic target. Once KPIs have been determined, describe who is responsible for what and give them a job using your local government management tool to keep everyone organized and accountable. 

Following your department’s strategy’s completion and policymakers’ approval of budgets and deadlines for major projects, it’s time to begin implementing your government initiatives. File requests for proposals (RFPs) for private-sector partnerships, fill out the necessary documentation and clarify who is doing what and when. 

Taking strategic action to address concerns entails some risk in and of itself. You’ll need to pay close attention to your KPIs and adjust if problems with fulfilling timelines and budgets develop. If such problems arise, you must assess whether parts of the process may be expedited using government technology. Automation will save you time and money while increasing the likelihood of project success in your management planning. 

A government strategic plan is the first vital step toward achieving governmental goals. The execution of these plans also plays a pivotal role in the goals’ success. A government runs high-level plans that cascade down and across multiple departments — which can make managing the execution of strategic plans more challenging. This is because different departments work with tools that support their specific work and role. As a result, information is stockpiled across these departments, making planning and organization a manual process. 

Transform your strategic planning and execution process with strategic planning software built for your organization. AchieveIt is a  FedRAMP-authorized cloud-based platform  that connects, manages and executes mission-critical plans and activities for federal government agencies. AchieveIt is a platform that easily tracks the performance of all your integrated plans while automating time-consuming update collection. Managing all these moving parts goes from multiple spreadsheets to a single, easy-to-use platform. 

By utilizing AchieveIt, federal government agencies can: 

• Establish uniformity in data collection and reporting. 
• Create visibility across plans and initiatives to know what needs attention. 
• Promote accountability for mission execution. 
• Make informed decisions with real-time data and proper context. 
• Monitor the performance of long-term initiatives with dashboards and reports. 
• Connect all its plans and strategies in one single place. 

Do you need help developing and aligning your plans? Since planning and executing is more than just software, AcieveIt’s expert team will partner with you. Our strategy experts can ensure you stay on track and offer advice on how other federal agencies approach planning and execution. Allow AchieveIt to make your agency more efficient, so you can better serve the public while focusing on achieving mission-critical objectives.  Request a demo  or give us a call at  1-800-535-1559  today. 

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How to Optimize Your Federal Business Development Workflow

IN THIS ARTICLE

How to Define Your Federal Business Development Strategy

Difficulties in federal business development, tools and intelligence to streamline your workflow.

[Use Bloomberg Government’s focused data sets, proprietary tools, and expert analysis to fill your pipeline and grow your business now.]

Managing federal business development workflows can quickly become an unwieldy process, especially when it involves large government contracts that need input and coordination across multiple parties. Building and monitoring the entire opportunity pipeline, from the initial draft request for proposal to winning the final contract, often requires extensive research on information that’s fragmented across multiple platforms, spreadsheets, emails, and messages.

For business developers, this means a lot of time spent finding and gathering both quantitative and qualitative data on individual opportunities, market trends, government spending, networks and partnerships. Optimizing this workflow is essential to building robust pipelines, closing contracts, and growing your federal business.

Winning Federal Contracts on the Top 20 Contract Vehicles

With the right strategy in place, contractors can find and win new contracts for a predictable pipeline.

Before you’re able to optimize your workflow, you must first define your business development strategy. This is the plan of action your company will use to identify new opportunities, build out their pipeline, write the proposals, and ultimately win contracts. Accomplishing this goal requires a detailed plan and an immense amount of research into market conditions, government spending trends, and competitor analysis.

To define your company’s business development strategy and optimize your workflow, consider conducting both a Black Hat and White Hat review. These assessments provide valuable insights into the current market size, your company’s current position in it, and your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses.

The Data You Need

Gain the certainty you need for your business through key information on all federal budget, solicitation, and spending activities.

Black Hat Review

A Black Hat review is all about the competition. You’ll want to write a proposal from their point of view to gain a better understanding of how they would secure the deal. Make a note of any advantages your competitors might have, either in the products or services themselves or their opportunity funnels, and keep track of their weak points.

This exercise can help you determine how your company stacks up to the competition, the right competitive price point at which to market your solution, and whether or not you can win the contract. You’ll also gain key insights on how to position your company against your competitors while building customer relationships with program managers and contracting officers.

White Hat Review

Whereas a Black Hat review focuses on your competitors, a White Hat review targets your company’s capabilities and solutions. This is when you utilize the actionable information from research and assessments to improve your win probability.

Assess and minimize your own weak spots, and explore how your market solutions compare to the competition. It might reveal that you need a partner for a contract or that a niche is oversaturated. In any case, you can use this time to tackle any internal issues, adjust pipeline goals, and target competitor pitfalls with your solutions.

[Explore the tenth annual  BGOV200 Federal Industry Leader rankings  and download the full report.]

While it might be easy to say “define your business development strategy,” taking the necessary actions to create and implement a detailed pipeline plan is no simple feat. Business developers face many challenges throughout their workflows, from time-consuming research on opportunities to qualifying partnerships and contract leads.

Some common frustrations among business development teams include:

• Identifying areas of opportunity in a niche market.
• A shortage of pipeline opportunities and inaccurate information.
• Aggregating and analyzing accurate, reliable data and contracts to win work.
• Staying up-to-date on government spending trends and market conditions.
• Finding the right agency and vendor contacts.
• Facilitating calls or meetings to gain information and expand their networks.
• Clearly communicating with contracting officers.
• Ensuring accurate release dates for RFPs.

With information buried across a multitude of channels, business developers spend most of their time tracking it down or contacting people. These difficulties often hinder strategic growth planning, resulting in companies falling short of their pipeline goals. However, there are strategies and solutions that can help you overcome these hurdles with numerous added benefits.

Bloomberg Government offers a powerful suite of features designed to optimize your entire federal contracting workflow. With BGOV, business developers can easily create viable pipelines that win task orders on contracts and close deals.

Opportunity Search is the market’s most comprehensive search tool. With fast, accurate, and reliable information and access to a vast database of 31+ million contracts, BGOV provides business developers with the resources they need to save time while pursuing government contract opportunities.

BGOV Alerts offers proactive email updates on opportunities and markets of interest. Based on recompete data, machine learning algorithms can forecast which competitors might bid on the same project. BGOV Workspaces can also help you build your pipeline, qualify potential opportunities, and collaborate with team tools.

Backed by the power of Bloomberg News and proprietary expert analytics combined with powerful market intelligence tools provide business developers with a centralized platform for reliable information on current market conditions, government spending trends, and new contract opportunities. Not only does this present valuable context for current strategies and business decisions, it also saves time researching information by organizing disparate data stored on separate systems platforms.

With enhanced pipeline visibility and access to key market insights and information, BGOV enables business developers to produce accurate forecasting and strong opportunity pipelines. This translates into more contracts won and deals closed, growing your federal contracting business and network.

Market Intelligence to Inform Business Development

Bloomberg Government is your source for news, analysis, and data that covers mission-critical developments. From purchasing trends to supply chain, with BGOV, you’re always a step ahead.

Bloomberg Government helps you streamline the process of taking an opportunity search result from potential to pipeline – and proposal ready. Unparalleled document search capabilities allow you to seek out undiscovered opportunities, gaining a competitive advantage. Track these solicitations and perform competitive analysis to better understand your current market position. Competitive and contract intelligence provides you with accurate, up-to-date information so you can save time on research and focus on business development.

With Bloomberg Government, you receive reliable, actionable data that can propel your opportunities through your pipeline and deliver results. To learn more about how BGOV can help optimize your business development workflows, request a demo .

Find the right opportunities with BGOV’s unmatched data sets.Enhance your view of the market. Opportunity Search enables you to find and exclude keywords in documents attached to solicitation notices to surface relevant opportunities in no time at all.

Request a demo

Reference Shelf

• Report: BGOV200 Federal Industry Leader rankings
• Webinar: Contracts to Watch: GWACs & MACs
• Article: Partnering with 8(a) companies as a large contracting firm
• Article: The Top 10 IT Contractors
• Article: Federal Contract Spending Trends in Five Charts
• Article: How to Build Your Pipeline With the Right Federal Contracts
• Article: How to Size Your Market to Strategically Grow Your Federal Business

How Lobbying Firms are Changing their Structures and Advocacy Strategy

Contractor impacts: fy24 defense appropriations, artificial intelligence market profile.

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• Thursday, April 18, 2024

How To Start A Government Contracting Business In 2022

• July 1, 2022

The entire commercial business industry was dealt with difficult cards for the past few years—from the COVID-19 shutdowns to the global supply chain disruptions. Countless small businesses closed their shutters for good, negatively impacting several industries. However, the government contracting industry stood its ground .

The stability in the face of uncertainty and the opportunity to earn lucrative profits are just some of the reasons why starting a government contracting business benefits you.

Table of Contents

What should your prepare to become a government contractor?

Evaluate whether government contracting aligns with your business goals.

The federal contracting industry is not an overnight miracle. Given how complicated this industry is, it requires patience, dedication, and strategy to make your business thrive in this industry.

Entering the federal contracting field unprepared will cost you. So before you decide to take the risk, make sure that this endeavor will be beneficial to your business’s overall growth. Study the pros and cons of government contracting, then measure it against your company’s goals. Once you have done that, see if this business opportunity plays to your strengths.

Seek government assistance for small businesses

The government contracting field is dominated by established government contracting firms. This may create an uneven playing field for small businesses, which is why government assistance programs, loans, and grants are available for qualified businesses.

The Small Business Administration ( SBA ), the official federal agency that promotes and protects small businesses, administers a number of contracting assistance programs, such as these:

8(a) Business Development Program

This program helps small businesses gear up to win local, state, and federal government contracts. Under the 8(a) program, small businesses can compete for set-aside contracts and participate in SBA’s Mentor-Protégé Program.

Participating small businesses will also receive one-on-one training with Business Opportunity Specialists and procurement and compliance experts. They can help budding government contractors assess their business readiness in competing for federal contracts.

Women-Owned Small Business Program

Women still face discrimination in various industries. So to ensure female business leaders will have equal access to contracting opportunities, this program gives them the opportunity for more contracting opportunities through set-asides .

Additionally, certified women-owned small businesses and economically-disadvantaged women-owned small businesses are given preferential consideration for open and full competition government contracts.

HUBZone Program

If your business is located in a Historically Underutilized Business Zone ( HUBZone ) and at least 35% of your employees reside in a HUBZone, you can apply for this federal assistance program. Small businesses under this program can compete for set-asides .

Veteran Assistance Programs

Retired veterans, particularly the service-disabled veterans who own small businesses, can apply for various assistance programs to kickstart their careers. Like other federal programs, veteran-owned small businesses are eligible to compete for exclusive government contracts for small businesses or set-asides .

Study your federal contracting market

Most businesses who enter the government contracting field want to earn ludicrous profits. But, the government contracting industry is a massive field, and shooting blindly will get you nowhere. If you want to make it big, you have to make a game plan—market research.

With that in mind, you must set your target federal agencies as early as possible. And once you have nailed down your prospective government agencies, you should dive deeper: study their demands and spending trends—and above all, get to know who you’ll be competing with.

For starters, you can get an overview of the government contracting field by checking previously awarded contracts at SAM.gov and viewing competitor profiles at Dynamic Small Business Search ( DSBS ). You can also use the forecast tool for contracting opportunities by the General Services Administration (GSA).

Get familiar with FAR

The Federal Acquisition Regulation ( FAR ) is the playbook of every government contractor and contracting officer in the industry. FAR illustrates the rules and regulations governing the government’s acquisition of goods and services using public funds.

Understanding the intricate government contracting processes requires time, dedication, and effort. You can also consult a legal representative or federal contracting assistance centers to help you understand it better.

Study the government regulations on businesses

To qualify as a government contractor, your business must be compliant with federal, state, and local business regulations. There are around 90,000 business laws and regulations in effect right now. But you can learn the major business regulations that you should pay closer attention to.

Additionally, there are contracting assistance centers that can connect you with compliance experts. They will help you understand the legal implications of failing to follow the regulations and assess your business’s regulatory compliance.

What are the requirements to start a government contracting business?

Acquire the necessary business permits and licenses

As previously stated, the government is very particular about the companies it does business with. In addition to being a regulation-compliant business, it must possess the necessary licenses to prove its capabilities in performing the required services.

Register at SAM

SAM , or System for Award Management, is a one-stop platform for federal agencies and government contractors. On this website, government agencies can publish open contracts for bidding, and federal contractors can take a shot at bidding for the said contracts.

However, only SAM-registered entities can qualify for government contracts. You can view the complete list of requirements needed to register at SAM, but in general, here are the primary documents you have to prepare before your registration:

Unique Entity ID (UEI)

The federal government has finally moved away from requiring its contractors to request their DUNS Numbers. To streamline this process, government contractors can get their UEI at SAM.gov . Here is the guide on how you can request your UEI.

North American Industry Classification Code (NAICS Code)

NAICS Codes are a special set of codes representing your company’s industry. This code is used by contracting officers to identify the nature of your business and see if you fit the contract.

You can get your NAICS Codes by visiting this self-service website . Select which among the codes best describes your business. If your business belongs to two or more categories, you can select more than one NAICS Code.

Core Business Information

The Core Business Information refers to your business details, such as your business structure, physical and mailing address, organization start date, and more .

Financial Information

The government will ask for your financial information to know your preferred payment method. Additionally, the government will also use this to set up your Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT).

CAGE / NCAGE Code

The CAGE and NCAGE codes are identifiers assigned by the government, particularly by defense agencies. CAGE Codes are assigned to U.S. entities, while NCAGE Codes are awarded to businesses outside the U.S. and its territories.

The Commercial and Government Entity (CAGE) Code is automatically assigned to a U.S. entity after registering at SAM.gov . Meanwhile, non-U.S. entities should request their NATO Commercial and Government Entity (NCAGE) Code before registering at SAM.gov .

Keep tabs on federal contracting opportunities

Once you have successfully registered your business at SAM.gov , you should now learn how to scout for contract opportunities. Fortunately, you don’t have to search high and low to explore the latest contract opportunities—you can do it at SAM.gov !

Back then, the federal government used the Federal Business Opportunities Website (FedBizOpps) to publish contract opportunities. But the government has integrated the functionalities of this website into the SAM.gov website for a more streamlined experience.

Explore subcontracting

The road to becoming a federal contractor can be challenging, especially for a green small business owner. But, businesses can try their hand first in subcontracting for prime contractors.

Subcontractors do not work directly with government agencies. Instead, they lend their specialized expertise to prime contractors to fulfill one area of a federal contract. The requirements to become a subcontractor are less demanding than a prime contractor , making contracting more accessible to small businesses.

Get your business known

Building a solid reputation and portfolio is crucial in this line of work. However, getting your business known by your target government agencies can be pretty daunting, especially if you don’t know where to begin. But we got your back!

Attend Networking Events

Being in the same room with other federal contracting giants can be overwhelming. But if you look at it from another angle, you will realize that you are surrounded by opportunities.

Networking , when done right, can give you access to a myriad of opportunities that grow your business and expand your vision as a leader. Contrary to popular belief, networking is not merely “politicking.” It means fostering meaningful relationships with your peers.

Build Social Media Presence

On top of attending networking events, you should not forget the power of the internet. Platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook are excellent places to build your online presence and network with other contracting professionals.

Learn how to write bids for government contracts

Once you have laid out your foundations, the next thing you need to do is learn how to write bids for federal contracts. Winning a contract bid is your ticket to becoming a full-fledged federal government contractor. So, here are some bid writing tips that can help you finally board the plane of government contracting:

Choose federal contracts that align with your business’s strengths and goals

Sending out contract bids en masse in hopes of landing a single win is a wasteful endeavor.

Writing a contract bid proposal will consume time, money, and effort. Therefore, to write a winning contract bid, you must select which federal opportunities are most suited for your businesses.

Analyze the RFP document

The Request for Proposal (RFP) is among the ways the federal government solicits contract proposals.

The RFP document is usually a hundred-page document that states everything you need to know about a contract opportunity—timeframe, task, budget, and other related details. At a glance, reading through a hundred-page material might be too cumbersome. But, this will ultimately help you craft your proposal.

There are several factors to consider when reviewing this document, but you must pay closer attention to sections B, C, L, and M.

Strictly adhere to the instructions stated in the RFP

It pays to be detail-oriented in this phase of writing. In Section L of the RFP document, the requesting federal agency will lay out its detailed requirements for the proposal—from the document’s font style and size to the proper email address to which the proposal should be submitted.

Neglecting to follow their instructions can eliminate your contract proposal from the pool.

Create a bid outline

The next step of the writing process is to draft an outline. This will prevent your proposal from being derailed and, ultimately, speed up your writing.

When creating an outline for your proposal, consider several factors that the federal agency will look for, such as your business identity, capability statement, portfolio, and plan on how you will execute the contract.

Price your contract competitively

When pricing your goods and services, you should be in the know of its market prices. You can neither price it too low nor too high.

Price it cheap and you may endanger the financial stability of your company, and even cast doubt on your ability to deliver quality products and services. On the other hand, if you price it ludicrously, the federal government will simply look for other cost-efficient government contractors.

Going to the extreme ends of the spectrum will not do you any good. Keep in mind that the federal government is looking for contractors who can deliver quality work that falls within justifiable costs.

Review your proposal before submitting

The last thing you want is your contract bid to be discarded due to technicalities. To avoid this from happening, bring in a trusted set of eyes to review your federal contract bid to catch any errors and point out questionable details that you have missed out on before.

Learn the terms, the contract bid writing process, and how contracting officers will evaluate your proposal in this contract bid writing guide .

The federal government offers some of the best opportunities, especially for small companies. But to become eligible for these contract opportunities, you must first make the necessary preparations to become a government contractor. Once you have laid out your foundations, you should sharpen your writing skills to win a contract bid.

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Government Strategic Planning 2023: Examples & Helpful Tips

When it comes to getting things done as a local government, two of the most critical variables are budgets and timeframes. To be as efficient as possible, you’ll need an ironclad strategic plan for your local government that showcases how you’ll spend your local budget and how you and your subcontractors will meet timeframe deliverables on public projects.

Here, we’ll explore the key reasons that you owe it to your constituents to have a local government strategic plan, along with examples and tips for crafting the best plan possible. 

What is a Government Strategic Plan?

A local government strategic plan is the process of assessing and addressing the current situations in your area as they pertain to critical physical infrastructure, regional natural disasters, government technology, cyber-security, the health of your constituents, and other variables that will have a direct impact on your neighborhood and constituents. Once your local government identifies the largest threats for your neighborhood, the key to a high-quality government strategic planning process is forming a plan for mitigating risk and completing infrastructure projects as cheaply and quickly as possible. 

Why is a Strategic Plan Critical for a Local Government?

Without a gameplan, your locality is more likely to blow through your departmental budgets and miss deadlines for infrastructure projects. Strategic plans allow your governmental officials to give serious consideration to the future before building a roadmap that will help your team to achieve goals that matter to your constituents. 

What Should Be Included in a Government Strategic Plan? 

Your local government will need to consider national issues that pertain to town and city governments across the United States as well as regional issues that more directly impact your community than localities elsewhere. 

Here’s a look at the common features of a local government strategic plan:

1. voices across government departments & roles.

While government leadership should play a major role throughout the strategic planning process, a true risk mitigation effort needs to consider various perspectives and potential future outcomes. Working with a diverse rank of government officials across departments and leadership levels will allow you to craft a well-rounded strategy.

2. Consider Your Mission

Your local government needs to build your plan around a general mission statement. At a high-level, what are the issues your government is most determined to address? What upcoming public projects matter most to your constituents? 

Giving these questions serious thought will allow you to articulate the key components of your strategy in a simple mission statement. 

3. Holistic Risk-Assessment

Every government has risks to consider and address with policy and infrastructure projects. A holistic view of the various threats to your locality will include:

• National issues: social and economic challenges are occurring at the national level, and constituents on both sides of the aisle are frustrated with their government’s inadequacies. Consideration to which issues matter most at a national level will allow your locality to take localized efforts to address them. 
• Constituent frustrations: angered constituents equates to a failed re-election effort. Your local government needs to consider which issues matter most to your constituents, and assess these issues to prevent bad government-constituent relations. Read this guide to learn more about Why the Public is Losing Trust in Local Governments
• Economic hardship: especially as we enter a period of recession, your local government will need to consider the impact of inflation on local businesses, constituents, and budgets.
• Natural disasters: which particular natural disasters pose the largest risk to your area? What actions have / are being taken to address these disasters, mitigate risks, and communicate with the public?
• Cyber attacks: hackers have been causing local government data breaches for years, and attacks are becoming more frequent. Have you made the effort to embrace cyber secure technology and back up your government data?
• Intergovernmental challenges: are you having issues recruiting new government workers? Are your internal processes inefficient and expensive? Is your information technology strategy up to date? Failure to recognize and address these types of issues is one of the biggest causes of inefficient bureaucracy. 
• Public policy: which national and state laws are the highest priority for your locality to address in the near future? What penalties will you face for failing to address these policies?

4. A Refined List of Issues

Once you’ve considered all of the broad risks, it’s time to prioritize the most important ones and build your strategic plan to address them. The top issues should be concerning to your constituents, pose serious risks to the health, quality, safety, economy etc. of your community, and will be quintessential to the future endeavors of the local government and township as a whole. 

5. An Actionable Gameplan 

Now that you’ve collectively agreed on the major issues, it’s time to consider the course of action to address them. Your local government strategic planning needs to articulate where departmental budgets will be allocated in coming months and time frames for getting work completed along with actionable strategies for hitting these deadlines.

To save time and money, many local governments are embracing a digital transformation with government management software. This software automates government tasks and stores financial data in real time, meaning you’ll be able to regularly assess your budgets and save time on government projects. 

6. Use Measurable KPIs

To assess your performance, you’ll need to determine which key performance indicators (KPIs) matter most in your strategic plan and set measurable goals for each.

Consider the following goal types when setting your KPIs:

• How much is this public infrastructure project expected to cost?
• How long is this government project going to take?
• Are constituents happy with the efforts being taken by our locality?

Gauging timelines, public perception, project budgets, and other key aspects of a strategic plan will make it easy to see if you're nailing your goals or missing the mark. Learn more in our guide to Setting Measurable Local Government Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) 

Once KPIs are identified, outline who’s doing what and assign them a task via your local government management platform to keep everyone organized and accountable.

7. Put Your Plan Into Action

Upon the completion of your plan and approval of the policymakers for budgets and timeframes pertaining to the key projects, it’s time to take action on implementing your government projects. Release RFPs for private-sector partnerships, begin filing the key paperwork, and ensure intergovernmental communications make it explicitly clear who’s doing what and when. 

Here’s a real-life strategic planning example of How Jackson, NJ Successfully Took Action on Their Government-Wide Digital Transformation Goal .

8. Get Back to the Drawing Board

Taking strategic action to address risks obviously involves some risk in itself. You’ll need to pay key attention to your KPIs, and pivot if issues arise with meeting timeline and budgetary goals. 

If these types of issues do occur, you’ll need to consider which aspects of the process could be streamlined with government technology . Automation will save time and money to increase the success rate of projects outlined in your management planning. 

Pro Tips for Mastering Local Government Strategic Planning 

While the above section highlighted the key aspects of the government strategic planning process, this section will teach you the best practices for taking it to the next level. 

Here are some key tips for mastering strategic planning:

• Don’t be late to making a digital transformation: states like NJ and FL are setting the tone by passing electronic permitting and inspection laws for a reason: because it saves governments time and money and boosts the local economy. To mitigate risk across the board before you even get to strategic planning, going digital will make future endeavors more efficient and timely (and mitigate cybersecurity threats!.)
• Correspond with constituents constantly : your constituents elected local leadership because they believed you’d make serious strides towards improving their local quality of life. To make that happen, you’ll need to truly understand which issues are most concerning to them. Having a firm grasp on constituents’ takes on major issues and where public funds should be allocated will make it easier to make a strategic plan that positively benefits the people in your neighborhood. 
• Give government officials time to think about the strategic plan: Government leadership should let government workers know in advance that they’ll be asked for input on the government strategic plan. That will give them time to truly ask big questions when it comes to the biggest issues in your locality to prioritize. 
• Check in on your financial dashboards: knowing where your taxpayer dollars and federal grants (from recent legislation like the American Rescue Plan and Infrastructure Investments & Job Acts) are being allocated is quintessential to seeing a government strategic plan through. With GovPilot, data across departments is pulled into financial dashboards in real time, allowing you to see where money is being spent and how cost per project is lining up against your budget. 
• Use automated RFP notifications for local business partners: efficient and cost effective private-sector partners will be critical to seeing your highest priority physical & digital infrastructure projects through. With automated RFP software, you can send email blasts / texts out to local private sector businesses and collect proposals in a simple online platform. Learn more in our guide to the Best Software for Government Procurement . 

Understanding the Government Strategic Planning Process

Failure to prepare is preparing to fail. Your constituents deserve a well-thought out gameplan for how their tax dollars are being spent and how their elected officials are bringing about meaningful change. Take the time to strategic plan across the entirety of your municipal or county government by considering the largest risks and how you’ll address them. Answer big questions regarding costs and timelines, and set actionable KPIs to turn your plan into action. And use government technology to automate workflows, track budget allocation, and get paperwork filed quickly.

Learn more about how GovPilot government software can transform your local government processes with a free demo. 

Real Life Government Strategic Plan Examples & Success Stories

GovPilot takes pride in being the operating system for local governments. Here are some case study examples of challenges that localities were facing, and how shifting online helped them to hit their strategic planning goals across departments:

• Big Bear Lake, CA’s Economic Goal: Increase Vacation / Short-Term Rentals With Online Applications 
• How Galloway, NJ Improved Their Public Records & Document Request Processes
• How Bexar County, TX Streamlined the Permitting Review Process
• How Atlantic City, NJ Maintained Zoning Processes During the Pandemic Lockdowns
• Atlantic City Had a Goal to Modernize IT. Here’s How They Did It in Weeks
• Local Government Accountability: Operating a Truly Ethical Local Government
• How Do Online Permitting Systems Work?
• Government Data Breach Prevention: Preventing Data Loss & Leaks
• What is GovTech? Everything to Know About Government Technology
• Modern Government Trends, Events, & Technology
• Tornado Mitigation & Disaster Plan
• Wildfire Mitigation & Disaster Plan
• Local Government Disaster Preparedness Guide
• Continuity of Government: Government Procedures During a Crisis
• Best Software for Government Procurement
• How to Build a 15-Minute City
• Building Inspections 101: How Municipalities Can Improve Public Safety
• Government Cybersecurity: How to Prevent Ransomware Attacks
• Municipal Planning: Reclaiming Your City Streets
• Government Blockchain: How Local Government Can Use Crypto
• How Local Governments Can Encourage Civic Engagement

Tags: Constituent Engagement , Government Efficiency , Constituent Experience , Digital Transformation , Blog

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Topics: Constituent Engagement , Government Efficiency , Constituent Experience , Digital Transformation , Blog

A Guide To Time Saving Strategies For Local Governments 

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Business Plan Template for Government Agencies

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Creating a solid business plan is essential for any organization, including government agencies. It's not just about setting goals and objectives, but also about efficiently utilizing resources and showcasing transparency. That's why ClickUp's Business Plan Template for Government Agencies is here to help!

With this template, government agencies can:

• Clearly define their strategic goals and objectives for maximum impact
• Develop actionable plans to allocate resources effectively and drive performance
• Demonstrate accountability to stakeholders and the public through transparent reporting

Whether you're a local council or a federal agency, ClickUp's Business Plan Template for Government Agencies empowers you to create a comprehensive and compelling roadmap for success—all in one centralized location. Start planning for a better future today!

Business Plan Template for Government Agencies Benefits

A business plan template for government agencies offers numerous benefits, including:

• Streamlining the strategic planning process and ensuring alignment with organizational goals and objectives
• Facilitating effective resource allocation and budget management to maximize efficiency and productivity
• Providing a clear roadmap for action, enabling agencies to prioritize initiatives and track progress
• Enhancing transparency and accountability by clearly communicating the agency's mission, vision, and performance metrics to stakeholders
• Enabling agencies to adapt and respond to changing priorities and external factors, ensuring long-term success and sustainability.

Main Elements of Government Agencies Business Plan Template

ClickUp's Business Plan Template for Government Agencies is designed to help government agencies effectively outline and manage their strategic goals, objectives, and action plans. Here are the main elements of this template:

• Custom Statuses: Easily track progress with four custom statuses - Complete, In Progress, Needs Revision, and To Do - to ensure that all tasks and sections of the business plan are properly managed and updated.
• Custom Fields: Use three custom fields - Reference, Approved, and Section - to add vital information and metadata to each task, allowing for easy organization and filtering of business plan sections.
• Custom Views: Utilize five different views, including Topics, Status, Timeline, Business Plan, and Getting Started Guide, to gain different perspectives on your business plan, track progress, and ensure alignment with strategic objectives.
• Collaboration and Accountability: Enhance collaboration and accountability by utilizing features such as task comments, mentions, file attachments, and assigning responsibilities to team members.
• Reporting and Analytics: Leverage ClickUp's reporting and analytics features to gain insights into progress, performance, and resource allocation, enabling effective decision-making and demonstrating accountability to stakeholders and the public.

How To Use Business Plan Template for Government Agencies

If you're a government agency looking to create a comprehensive business plan, follow these steps to make the process easier using the Business Plan Template in ClickUp:

1. Define your mission and objectives

Start by clearly defining the mission and objectives of your government agency. What is the purpose of your agency and what do you hope to achieve? This step is crucial as it sets the foundation for the rest of your business plan.

Use the Goals feature in ClickUp to create and track your agency's mission and objectives.

2. Assess your current situation

Take a deep dive into your agency's current situation. Analyze your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT analysis). This will help you identify areas of improvement and potential challenges that need to be addressed in your business plan.

Use the Table view in ClickUp to create a SWOT analysis and track your agency's current situation.

3. Develop your strategies and action plans

Based on your mission, objectives, and SWOT analysis, develop strategies and action plans to achieve your goals. Outline the specific steps you will take to address the challenges identified and leverage your agency's strengths.

Use tasks in ClickUp to create action plans and assign responsibilities to team members.

4. Monitor and review

Once your business plan is in place, it's important to regularly monitor and review your progress. Keep track of key performance indicators (KPIs) and milestones to measure the success of your strategies and action plans. Make adjustments as needed to stay on track and ensure the continued success of your government agency.

Use Dashboards in ClickUp to visualize and monitor your KPIs and milestones.

By following these steps and utilizing the features in ClickUp's Business Plan Template, your government agency can create a well-structured and effective business plan to guide your operations and achieve your objectives.

Get Started with ClickUp’s Business Plan Template for Government Agencies

Government agencies can use the Business Plan Template for Government Agencies in ClickUp to streamline their strategic planning process and ensure alignment with organizational goals and objectives.

To get started, hit "Add Template" to sign up for ClickUp and add the template to your Workspace. Make sure you designate which Space or location in your Workspace you'd like this template applied.

Next, invite relevant members or guests to your Workspace to start collaborating.

Now you can take advantage of the full potential of this template to create a comprehensive business plan:

• Use the Topics View to outline and organize key sections and topics of your business plan
• The Status View will help you track the progress of each section, with statuses such as Complete, In Progress, Needs Revision, and To Do
• Utilize the Timeline View to set deadlines and visualize the timeline of your business plan
• The Business Plan View provides a holistic overview of your entire plan, allowing you to easily navigate between sections
• The Getting Started Guide View offers step-by-step instructions and guidance to help you kickstart your business plan creation process

Additionally, customize your business plan template with the following custom fields:

• Reference: Add references or sources to support your business plan
• Approved: Indicate whether each section has been approved or not
• Section: Categorize each section of your business plan for easy organization and filtering

With this template, government agencies can efficiently create, manage, and update their business plans, ensuring transparency, accountability, and successful execution of strategic initiatives.

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What Is a Business Grant?

How business grants work, business grant types, advantages and disadvantages of business grants, requirements for business grants, how to apply, what is the difference between a grant and a business loan, what is the benefit of receiving a grant to fund your business, what is the most popular business grant, the bottom line.

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Business Grant: Definition, Types, and Where to Find Them

Financing opportunities for businesses

Matt Webber is an experienced personal finance writer, researcher, and editor. He has published widely on personal finance, marketing, and the impact of technology on contemporary arts and culture.

A business grant is a sum of money given to a business by a donor. In the United States, the largest donors are the federal government, state governments, foundations, charities, and corporations. Business grants are usually given to businesses to achieve specific goals or to businesses that are owned or run by members of an underrepresented community.

Business grants are different from business loans in one key way: You don’t have to pay them back.

Key Takeaways

• Business grants offer many advantages over other types of business financing . Unlike a business loan, for example, a grant does not have to be paid back.
• Business grants are provided by various levels of government—federal, state, and local—and a wide variety of private charities, foundations, and corporations.
• Business grants are typically designed to support specific activities or specific types of business.
• It can be difficult to qualify for and secure a business grant, as the application process can be highly competitive.

Business grant programs are run by donors—including federal and state governments—to support businesses. Businesses can apply for grants from governments, corporations, foundations, or trusts, and if they are successful, they will receive a sum of money. 

The crucial difference between a business grant and many other types of business financing, including business loans, is that grants don’t have to be repaid. If a business receives a grant, it might have to report back to the donor on how it used the grant, or how it has supported the business, but the money itself can be kept.

Most business grants are designed to achieve a specific purpose. This can be to promote a particular type of business or a specific type of business activity, or to support people from communities that are underrepresented in the world of business. For example, a wide range of grants are available for research and development companies—businesses that work in highly technical fields—or businesses owned and run by women or minorities.

This means that the “average” company can find it difficult to qualify for a business grant. Even if your business does qualify, business grants are often highly competitive, so it can be quite difficult to actually get funding.

If your business doesn’t qualify for a business grant, plenty of other financing opportunities are available, including business loans with no credit check .

In general, the following steps are involved in securing a business grant :

• A business owner or employee identifies a grant that their business is eligible for, and submits an application for it.
• The donor organization will assess the application and decide whether the applicant qualifies for the grant.
• If an application is successful, grant money is then paid to the business by the donor.
• The business is often required to use this grant money for a specific purpose, but is not required to repay the donor.
• Typically, the donor organization will ask the business to report on how it has used the grant.

There are many different types of business grant. Some are administered by federal or state governments, some are focused on supporting certain types of business owner, and some are focused on businesses that operate in a particular field or geographical location. 

Government Business Grants

Government business grants are offered by three levels of government: federal, state, and local.

• Most federal business grant programs are administered by agencies of the federal government (such as the Department of Agriculture ) and are designed to achieve the agency’s specific objectives. These are generally the largest grants that companies can qualify for, but they are also the most competitive. 
• State and local business grants are usually smaller than federal grants , but are typically easier to secure because they are less competitive. Sometimes, state governments administer federal business grants and tailor their grants process to fit local priorities or objectives. 

Grants for Minorities, Veterans, and Women

There are also lots of business grants available for certain types of business owner. These include:

• Grants for veterans . The federal government has occasionally offered grants for business owners who are veterans. However, these programs aren’t available on an ongoing basis because they don’t run continuously. That said, veterans are able to access preferential business loan rates from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to finance a business.
• Grants for women . If your business is female-owned or -run, you may have access to a wide range of governmental and private grants. The federal government offers grants to support this kind of business, as do a large number of private foundations, charities, and corporations.
• Grants for minorities . Similarly, a federal agency, the Minority Business Development Agency, supports businesses run or owned by Blacks and minorities to access grants and investment opportunities. Lots of local and city-level foundations also provide financial support.

If your business qualifies for a business grant, it almost always makes sense to apply for one. However, business grants have advantages and disadvantages compared to other forms of business financing. Here’s a look at both.

• The primary advantage of a business grant (over, say, a business loan) is that you don’t have to pay it back. Applying for a business grant also won’t affect your ability to apply for other forms of funding or financing, so it’s possible to receive both a grant and take out a business loan at the same time.
• Business grants can be helpful for businesses run by women or minorities. Both groups face structural barriers when it comes to accessing other forms of business financing, including loans, so grants are often crucial to their ongoing success.
• Business grants are also useful for capital-intensive businesses that don’t expect to make profits in the short term. For example, businesses that are focused on developing new technologies might need to rely on business grants for the period it takes to bring a profitable product to market.

Disadvantages

• Business grants can be fairly inflexible compared to business loans. Most donors require businesses to spend their grant in a specific way, and to confirm that they have done so. If your business priorities or market conditions change, this can mean that you are unable to use your grant.
• The amount of money that a business grant provides is usually smaller than a typical business loan. This is especially true for business grants given out by local governments or private foundations.

There are many different types of business grant, each focused on a different objective and each with its own specific requirements. This makes listing the “average” requirements for a business grant difficult and points to the need to read grant applications carefully.

However, most applications for a business grant will require:

• A well-developed business plan . This should outline the current status of your business, prove that it is stable and well-run, and outline your objectives for the future.
• An indicative budget . Most grant applications will require you to outline your current business budget , and to indicate how the business grant for which you are applying will fit in. 
• A justification for the grant . During the application process, most donors will ask you to explain why you need the grant that you are applying for, and how it will support or develop your business.

There are, broadly, five steps involved in applying for a business grant.

1. Find a Grant

This is likely to be the most time-consuming part of the process. To find a grant that is both suitable for your business and that you are able to apply for, you might have to search quite widely:

• For federal government business grants, there is a central database: grants.gov . This website will allow you to search for a federal grant against a number of criteria.
• For state and local government grants, there is no comparable system. To find these grants, you’ll have to search the websites of your state and local governments. Some states, however, offer consultation services for businesses, and these can point you in the right direction.
• Similarly, there is no central database for business grants offered by corporations, charities, or foundations. These grants are generally announced and advertised via the websites of the corporations, charities, or foundations that offer them, so you’ll have to do some research to find them. Since many of these grants are focused on a specific industry, a good place to start is to search online for grants offered in your sector. For example, you can search for “grants for manufacturing companies” or “grants for technology companies.”

2. Check Your Eligibility

Once you find a suitable grant, you should carefully check whether your business is eligible. Most grants have very specific eligibility requirements, and you don’t want to waste time applying for a grant for which your business won’t qualify.

Many grants, for example, are only available for businesses that have been operating for a specific number of years or that have an annual turnover below a certain dollar amount. Read the eligibility guidelines for any grant before starting your application, and, if possible, contact the donor organization to double-check that you are eligible.

3. Register

You will need to register an account on grants.gov to be able to apply for federal grants. For other types of grant, you might be able to skip this step.

You can apply for federal business grants directly through the grants.gov website. For other types of grant, the application process varies a lot. Typically, you will be able to apply for a business grant online, although some donors still require a paper form. In either case, however, the grant application documents will indicate how you should fill out the forms, and what additional documentation you need to supply.

5. Track Your Application

If you are applying for a federal grant, the grants.gov website will allow you to track the progress of your application and check on the decision once the time comes. For other types of grant, it’s often necessary to call or email the donor organization to get an update on your application.

You don’t have to pay back a business grant, but you do have to pay back a business loan. However, business grants are often less flexible than business loans, generally because you have to use them for a specific purpose.

A business grant can support a business to carry out a specific activity or provide support to a business that might find it hard to access a business loan.

The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) offers a variety of grant programs to support small businesses. The most popular federal grant program is the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, which provides funding for research and development projects.

The main advantages of a business grant over other types of business financing is that it doesn’t have to be paid back. Business grants are provided by various levels of government—federal, state, and local—and are typically designed for specific activities or types of business.

It can be difficult to qualify for and secure a business grant, as the application process can be highly competitive. However, for many businesses, a business grant represents a great opportunity for growth and development.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “ What’s the Difference Between a Grant and a Loan? ”

U.S. Small Business Administration. “ Grants for Community Organizations .”

U.S. Small Business Administration. “ Grants .”

Grants.gov. “ Grant Eligibility .”

Grants.gov. “ Grant Lifecycle Timeline .”

Grants.gov. “ Grant-Making Agencies .”

Minority Business Development Agency. “ MBDA Grants .”

U.S. Small Business Administration, via SBIR.gov. “ Leveraging America’s Seed Fund ,” Pages 3–6.

Grants.gov. “ Post Award Phase .”

Grants.gov. “ Pre-Award Phase .”

Grants.gov. “ Search Grants .”

Grants.gov. “ Applicant Registration .”

SBIR.gov. “ About .”

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Developing Effective Government Relations Strategies to Advance Your Issues

by Veronica Magan, FiscalNote

Government relations plays a vital role in the success of any organization. Learn how to build an effective strategy with real-life examples!

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Policy can have a significant negative or positive impact on organizations worldwide. Being able to successfully conduct business depends on the laws and regulations in place. This is why a well-thought-out, 360-degree government relations strategy is vital to enable your organization to conduct business, protect its interests, and prove the value of your government affairs team.

What is Government Relations?

Government relations is how organizations communicate with governments to educate lawmakers on how proposed legislation or regulations could affect the organization’s business or the lawmaker’s constituents.

According to McKinsey’s Global Survey on external affairs , more than 40 percent of respondents say government actions and regulations will hurt their organizations’ future operating income. And only 11 percent say their organizations “frequently succeed at shaping government and regulatory decisions.” In today’s increasingly complex business and political environments, effective government relations strategies are more consequential than ever.

Strategies for Effective Government Relations

From defining and organizing your issues and identifying the key lawmakers you need to influence, to mobilizing your advocates and reporting on your success, an effective government affairs strategy has a big impact on corporate or association business goals. Here are a few tips for developing a successful strategy:

1. Establish Legislative Priorities

To build a successful government relations strategy, you have to start by deciding what your policy or legislative priorities will be. Setting  solid legislative goals  is one of the building blocks for your government affairs team.

“What is it that you want to accomplish in the space? And how does that sync up with your organization's mission?” says Will Krebs, vice president of policy and government relations at Project Lead The Way, a non-profit organization in the PreK-12 education space.

While the execution of the strategy will mostly rest on your government affairs team, setting these legislative goals goes beyond. “We don't make legislative strategy in a bubble,” says Chris Spence, managing director of federal government relations at TIAA, a Fortune 100 financial services organization. You have to marry your business needs with your clients’ or members’, as well as your key legislators’ priorities to set your strategy up for success.

For example, if one of your organization’s key goals is to increase sales, you should collaborate with your sales team “to understand their barriers and their opportunities so that those are reflected on your policy framework,” Krebs says.

Find, track, and report on your policy issues in minutes

Staying on top of your greatest policy issues has never been more important. But with issues increasingly complicated, you need the latest and greatest strategies for saving time and maximizing resources.

2. Track Legislation Around Key Issues 

In the first 15 weeks of 2021 alone there were already more than 120,000 bills introduced at the state and federal levels in the United States. It’s never been more important for you to stay on top of your priority policy issues.

To do this, many government affairs professionals rely on legislative tracking and policy monitoring technology to stay on top of any legislation relevant to your issues at the local, state, federal, and global levels, and never miss any updates relevant to their legislative priorities. 

3. Educate Government Officials About Your Company and Issues

Building relationships is one of the biggest parts of the government affairs and advocacy world. Being able to educate key lawmakers who can help you pass or defeat legislation in Congress and statehouses is vital to move your government relations strategy forward.

“I think the best case is to be able to influence policymakers in such a way that they build legislation to incorporate your objective,” says Krebs, instead of waiting for legislation to come around and then try to add your demands to it. 

To do that, you need to identify those key lawmakers who could be champions for your issues. The best way is to start with committees of jurisdiction related to your issues and then building relationships based on open communication and authenticity.

“Good lawmakers are very mindful and receptive to conversations with people who have a genuine, well-thought solution to their issues,” Krebs says. “Really seeking to understand, listen, and identify those points of alignment, and then building on them is pretty crucial.”

The Ultimate Advocacy Planning, Strategy, and Skills Guide

Get the insight, as well as the tools and tactics you’ll need from those who’ve gone before, to knock your next campaign out of the park.

4. Don’t Neglect Grassroots Engagement 

“There is a lot of noise in Washington, and it takes a lot to break through the barrier. Your grassroots network can help you do that through the sheer volume of emails and calls, but also by sharing their own personal stories,” says Lindsey Miller, manager of grassroots advocacy at the National Restaurant Association. “Lawmakers really do listen when their constituents make it clear what’s important to them. “

Engaging your grassroots supporters is another way of educating key government officials. It helps surface an issue in front of lawmakers to get them to take a particular stance for or against it. Whether you’re talking to state and local leaders that have just entered the political space for the first time or seasoned members of Congress, the right grassroots strategy can help make your policy agenda top of mind for lawmakers and allow you to build strong relationships.

5. Measure and Evaluate Your Government Affairs Strategy

Measuring and evaluating is one of the best ways to understand what is working and what is not so you can adjust your strategy and optimize for success. Also, building an informed, fully up-to-date, briefing or report on your progress that is likely to get shared around your organization, is one of the most visible parts of your job to higher-ups and peers. An effective report helps show your department’s value and the ROI behind your team’s work.

But government relations strategies can take a long time to complete as the life of a particular legislative issue can span several years. This makes it difficult to attribute success to certain efforts maybe at the beginning of a years-long effort, and a lot can change in that timeframe, which means your strategy must change accordingly.

While measuring and evaluating your government relations strategy can be difficult, the best approach is focusing on the journey rather than just the destination. Besides helping you demonstrate progress, this approach reduces the risk of deeming your whole effort as a failure if goals are not achieved within the report’s time frame due to sometimes unpredictable political forces.

Government affairs professionals leverage reporting tools that allow them to keep track of every action, every bill, and every relationship in one place. This makes it easy to quickly pull together a report showing the entire ecosystem around a specific issue and showing the effectiveness of your efforts over time.

Examples of Effective Government Relations Strategies

3m builds global government affairs center of excellence.

Manufacturing leader 3M operates in more than 70 countries around the globe. This means the government affairs team must keep track of myriad legislative and regulatory priorities, make sure they help clear the way for market access, and maintain healthy relationships with government officials all in one place.

To do this, 3M has set up a Global Government Affairs Center of Excellence led by Dr. John Pournoor and Brittany Masalosalo. They focus on a data-driven approach to align teams across the organization and to do this, they migrated prior structured approaches they had developed for government affairs portfolio management into one solution.

Learn more about how 3M built its Global Government Affairs Center of Excellence.

How PCMA Shows the Value and ROI of Government Affairs

As the leading association representing pharmacy benefit managers in the United States, the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association (PCMA) seeks to influence policy developments that could impact its member companies and the industry at large. Pharmacy benefit managers administer prescription drug plans for over 266 million Americans

The PCMA team uses technology to monitor the thousands of bills developing across the U.S., to keep teams aligned on priority issues, and to highlight and report their efforts. “I can say ‘1,600 bills were introduced, this percentage of them are high or medium priority, and we did this percentage of advocacy work on those,’” says Melodie Shrader, vice president of state affairs at PCMA.

Discover how PCMA powers its successful government affairs strategy.

AUVSI’s Small But Mighty Government Affairs Team

The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) boasts 7,000 members from 60 countries spanning across the private and public sectors. The small government relations team led by Jacqueline Beckwith uses technology to grow their public policy footprint and create a unified communication and public policy strategy all in one place. 

AUVSI has been able to create a robust grassroots advocacy and bill monitoring strategy that has shifted how their communications and public policy work can be done. Before, they were using disparate technology tools for different functions: track bills, launch grassroots advocacy campaigns, and manage internal knowledge and external communications. Now, they’ve streamlined the government affairs strategy by automating and bringing these separate functions all under one solution.

Read more about how AUVSI’s built a successful global government affair strategy with a small team and a small budget.

Develop Successful Government Relations Strategies with FiscalNote

To build and execute a successful government relations strategy, you need to stay on top of the relevant legislation, deep dive into the news and analysis, and know who your key stakeholders are.  FiscalNote’s  360-degree approach to issues management gives you all the tools you need to successfully plan and execute your government affairs strategy.

Pursue the opportunities and mitigate the risk arising from legislation and regulation around the world in the most trusted policy monitoring platform.

Ready to see for yourself?

See how our 360-degree approach to managing advocacy and policy issues can help you promote action, manage risk, as well as assess your impact and drive results.

Related Resources

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by Content Team, FiscalNote

How to Educate & Influence New Stakeholders

Finding your competitive edge in government contracting.

by Lydia Stowe, FiscalNote

Related Topics

• Global or Geopolitical Risk
• Government Affairs
• Legislative Tracking & Policy Monitoring
• Policy Analysis & Insights
• Regulations
• Stakeholder Management
• Thought Leadership

How To Be Successful in Federal Business Development

Why does this matter? Because immature BD processes will keep you from consistently winning Government contracts. These characteristics are what we’re going to explore today.

Misalignment of Business Development Skills and Responsibilities

We frequently see misalignment of business development (BD) skills and responsibilities in small, mid-size, and large contracting companies. If you own a federal contracting company with limited resources, you may expect your people to deliver results beyond their skill level and experience. For sustainable success, a business development professional must understand the deliverables at each step of the BD, capture, and proposal management processes.

A business developer must understand what capture and proposal managers need in order to develop a great proposal. Cross-training capture and proposal managers also increase communication, deliverables, and win rates. They must understand each other’s jobs to effectively support one another.

Much of the problem comes from leaders who don’t know what excellent BD professionals and processes look like. A person’s level of experience will determine what they see when they look at a process or product, like a capture plan or proposal.

Example: What The Unexperienced See Vs. The Experienced

Let’s take a look at an example of what the initiated see versus the inexperienced.

First, look at the Marine pictured below. If you’ve never served in the US military, you might assume that this is a battle-ready Marine.

However, an infantry Noncommissioned Officer sees something completely different. This Marine has:

• A ripped helmet cover
• Night vision goggles on during the daytime
• Improper cheek-stock weld
• Weapon is still on safe
• Belt-fed, blank rounds for a weapon that uses a magazine
• And the list goes on

When you’re trained and experienced, these sorts of things leap out at you. If you don’t have the training and skill you need, then you can miss serious mistakes and blunders. When you’re trying to sell a Government customer on your company’s services, you can’t afford to submit your proposal with mistakes none of your staff can see.

Bloom’s Taxonomy of Skills and BD, Capture and Proposal Management

Bloom’s Taxonomy is “a framework for categorizing educational goals.” People progress through the various levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Skills via training and experience. In order to perform higher-level skills, you must bring to bear a cumulation of the lower-order skills and knowledge.

Where Are You On Bloom’s Taxonomy for Business Development?

At OST, we find that most business developers, capture and proposal managers, writers, editors, etc. are stuck at one stage. That’s the Application stage. They can take the knowledge they’ve gathered over time and solve problems. However, they only work from the knowledge they already have, which keeps them from developing.

These contracting professionals may have only received on-the-job training, which accounts for the gaps in their knowledge. If they’ve only been employed at one organization then they may have never seen a truly great proposal or capture.

To be effective in BD, a professional needs to continuously move through the stages. At the Analysis stage, you take your previous skills and knowledge to break information into parts, identify patterns, question, and examine aspects of a new situation.

Then comes Synthesizing, in which you build a structure from diverse elements. You bring all the aspects of a proposal together coherently to convince your Government customer to buy from you. As a capture or proposal manager, you need to have those skills.

Finally, at the last stage, Evaluation, you present and defend your ideas against set criteria. With this level of skill, you’ll develop a genuinely great proposal or a new solution for your Government customer.

When you and your BD, capture, and proposal team are higher in Bloom’s Taxonomy of Skill, you’ll experience:

• Higher win rates
• Higher professional recognition
• Increased self-esteem
• Lower stress

Example: How Useful Are Your Color Team Reviewers?

To illustrate our point, we’ll look at color team reviews. Using color team reviews (Blue, Pink, Red, Gold, White) is a proposal management best practice . We use these color reviews to deliver a mature and outstanding proposal.

Unfortunately, most reviewers are only at the Knowledge and Comprehension stages of Bloom’s Taxonomy, rendering their reviews ineffective. Consequently, they offer up comments that don’t improve the proposal. Comments like:

“We need a comma here.” (Don’t waste time on grammar)

“This doesn’t make sense.” (Vague)

“I don’t understand this.” (Also vague)

“Rewrite this.” (Rewrite it how?)

Writers can’t take action on these sorts of comments. To be an effective reviewer, you must be at the Evaluation stage. Above all, you need to understand what the Government customer wants, what your company is offering (or how it’s being offered in the proposal), and what your company should be offering to win this opportunity.

Reviewers should only provide actionable comments to improve the proposal so the proposal and capture team can incorporate them into the next draft. You need to train your reviewers to set expectations and to hone their reviewing skills. Related Article: Nine Tips for Conducting Effective Pink and Red Team Reviews for Your Proposals

Who Runs Your Business Development Organization?

As a business owner, how much do you honestly know about Government business development? Business development is really three professions. A business development director manages a portfolio of opportunities and a fully qualified pipeline.

Capture management is more tactical, and capture managers position their company to win multiple opportunities at any given time. Maybe even as many as five opportunities if the capture manager is stellar. Then let’s consider proposal management. Have you ever seen what a really good proposal looks like?

Business Development Considerations for the Business Owner

If you don’t know much about federal business development, then how do you know your personnel is effective? Do you track metrics that would speak to their ability (on inability)? The easiest metric to look at is your win rate (proposals submitted versus proposals won). The average for the Government contracting industry is 33%. Whether your win rate stays above or below 33%, you must always seek to improve.

How beneficial are your hiring processes? Do the people you hire have talent, or do they just sell their resumes (very common in business development)?

Do you expect junior employees to perform senior-level tasks? When small federal contractors first startup, they hire who they can. That usually includes family members. It’s unrealistic to expect friends and family to perform at the level of a professional business developer if that’s not their profession.

So you must continuously develop your own skills. Do you have any BD, capture, or proposal training on your calendar? Have you attended any APMP events recently?

To see all of our articles on federal contractor business development, click here.

Where Can I get Business Development Training?

Here at OST, we genuinely believe quality training is essential for a small Government contractor. So take a look at our Government contracting Bid & Proposal Academy and Blueprint for Federal Business Development . These are the sorts of resources you need to create sustainable business practices for your company.

Finally, think about the biggest mistake you know you’re making with your business development right now. Then click here to send us a message , and we’ll brainstorm solutions with you.

Contact us to learn more.

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U.S. Department of the Treasury

How to use the strategic plan, what is this plan, and how do i use it.

The Government Performance and Results Act Modernization Act of 2010 (GPRAMA) requires federal agencies to publish new strategic plans one year after each presidential inauguration. Treasury’s Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years (FY) 2022–2026 describes long-term goals the agency aims to achieve during this administration. We organized it into three main parts: Agency and Mission, Strategic Goals and Objectives, and Accountability Processes. This is how different audiences can use the Strategic Plan:

Within the strategic plan, “goals” articulate broad societal impacts that Treasury aims to achieve, while “strategic objectives” support goals and reflect more focused policy or operational areas where we plan to make significant improvements. Accountable officials are designated for each goal and strategic objective and are responsible for overseeing and monitoring progress towards achieving strategic objectives and goals, coordinating with internal and external stakeholders to execute goals and strategic objectives, and delivering status updates and progress reports regularly. Each Strategic Objective within this document has a consistent layout and components vital to making this a useful guide for decision-making.

Learning Agenda and Evidence-building Capacity Assessment 

Consistent with the expectations outlined in the Foundations for Evidence-based Policymaking Act of 2018 (Evidence Act), Treasury continues its commitment to incorporate data and evidence into Departmental decision-making.  For this Strategic Plan, the Department identified a set of research questions that were most pertinent to the new group of strategic objectives.  Called a “Learning Agenda,” this set of research questions outlines the activities that Treasury aims to undertake during the next four years to build evidence in these priority areas.  Treasury also developed an assessment (Capacity Assessment) to better understand the Department's ability to build and use evidence. For the full Learning Agenda questions and Capacity Assessment results, see page 49 and the Appendix.

Elements of a Strategic Objective 

This page will help readers navigate the Strategic Plan by identifying the elements of a strategic objective. 

• Objective Short Name and Statement provides the scope of the objective and identifies the specific, measurable, and achievable change the Department aims to make. 
• Who’s Involved identifies the lead and supporting Treasury organizations that are responsible for implementing the strategic objective. It also identifies the external partners Treasury intends to collaborate with and the customers Treasury will serve in implementing the objective. 
• Why Does This Matter? makes the case for why Treasury should focus attention on this issue. It describes the scope of the problem, its impact on the American public, Treasury’s proposed solutions and role in solving the problem, and the risk if Treasury does not act. 
• Desired Outcomes describes how the Department defines success for the objective. It lists what measures or indicators the Department will internally monitor or externally report to understand whether Treasury is making progress in achieving the strategic objective.
• Cross-cutting themes are priorities for the administration that impact multiple goals and objectives.
• Strategies identify the specific approaches Treasury bureaus and offices will take to achieve and track progress towards the strategic objective. 
• Learning Agenda Questions are research questions that Treasury aims to answer to better understand the subject area and improve the effectiveness and impact of its key programs, policies, and strategies. These questions are further discussed in Treasury’s full Learning Agenda, an Appendix to this plan. 
• Critical Management Initiatives are specific priority human capital, data, and information technology (IT) initiatives that the Department needs to implement to effectively execute the identified strategic objectives. These initiatives help drive management priorities, inform enterprise IT, data, and Human Capital plans, and enhance Treasury’s capacity for evidence-building activities supporting the Department’s priorities.   

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Creating a business plan

Key takeaways

• A business plan is a roadmap that helps you structure, run, and grow your business, providing the clarity you need when getting started. 
• Business plans typically define your mission and vision, services, value proposition, target market, competition, marketing and sales strategy, financial plan, and business structure. 
• Some small businesses may require a more formal business plan, particularly if seeking funding or investors, while a freelancer may prefer something less comprehensive.

What is a business plan?

A business plan is usually relevant for 3 to 5 years. You may want to update it as your business evolves.

What are components of a business plan?

• Your mission and vision 
• Our services 
• Your value proposition 
• Your target market 
• Your competition 
• Your marketing and sales strategy 
• Your financial plan 
• Your business structure

How to write a business plan

A mission statement outlines what your business does and what purpose it serves today. A good mission is clear and concise, with intentional language that’s action oriented. Your vision statement is more aspirational, articulating an ideal future state in 5 to 10 years. A mission and vision statement can help to focus your business objectives and can serve as a North Star to guide business decisions. Traditional business plans usually include these in the executive summary.

Freelancers may benefit from developing personal mission statements as well. These focus on why working for yourself is important: 

• Have more freedom and flexibility 
• Take more control over your time and income 
• Fulfill a creative passion 

2. Define your business’s products and services

What does your business do? What are the products and services you plan to sell? Your business plan should clearly define what your products and services are, and how they are part of your business’s overall mission and vision.

Do you plan to offer more or different products or services in the future? If so, include that in your plan as well. It may be a good idea to start small with a limited set of products or services to build expertise and credibility, then layer on additional services that expand your value offer.

3. Create a value proposition for your business

When defining your business’s value proposition, consider these two questions: 

Your value is more than the product or service you offer. It’s the customer need you address. Be specific about the problem your business will solve, and make sure it’s a high priority one for your target market. Focus on the end impact to the client—for example, a landscaping company doesn’t just mow the lawn, it “creates a backyard oasis” and “gives you your Saturday back.” 

What will drive customers to pick you rather than someone else? Maybe it’s speed. Or perhaps it’s extensive experience in a particular topic or industry. Or it could be proven impact.

Once you determine your value and what makes you special, you can then use that when marketing your services and speaking to clients.

• Demographics – their age range, gender, job title, industry, education level, nationality, and language 
• Geographics – where they work and live (if relevant) 
• Psychological aspects – their beliefs and attitudes; interests and passions; hopes and aspirations; problems, challenges, and concerns; and motivations related to their job title and industry 
• Behaviors – the types of content they consume (like written, audio, video), and if they prefer to engage with it on a desktop or mobile device

Creating buyer personas 

Consider breaking your target market into smaller groups based on common needs or behavioral characteristics. For example, you may be a copywriter who works for small tech startups, environmental non-profits, and large government organizations—each of these client groups will want something slightly different from your product.

One technique is to build a buyer persona—a semi-fictional person within your target market—that reflects common characteristics based on real data. Once developed, you can refer to your persona as you build out your product, sales, and marketing strategies to ensure you’re considering your customer needs and preferences.

5. Understand your business’s competition

Be sure to identify and understand your competition when creating a business plan: How many other freelancers or businesses are offering similar products or services in your market? What other businesses are solving similar problems? What makes you different? Determine who your competitors are and the edge you have against them.

6. Define your marketing and sales strategy

You’ll need a clearly defined strategy for marketing your products and reaching your customers. You probably already have experience and projects you’re proud of, so how do you want to showcase your capabilities and build credibility? Consider communication, sales, and distribution channels: Do you plan to start with a website detailing your services or an email campaign to your contacts? How will you set (and achieve) sales targets? How will a sale happen? You’ll likely use a combination of tactics to attract and retain your clients—here’s where you define them.

7. Establish a financial plan for your business

Your financial plan will help ensure that your business will be sustainable in the long term. While many businesses don’t make money right away, you’ll want to lay out a path to profitability through an analysis of cash flow, revenue, and expenses. This plan will usually include projected profit and loss and projected cash flow for the first few years, as well as a break-even analysis.

Learn more about financial planning for your business, including 5 tips to manage your business finances and creating a business budget to manage cash flow .

8. Decide how to structure your business

Your business structure affects how much you pay in taxes, your ability to raise money, the paperwork you need to file, and your personal liability. To get a tax ID number, you’ll need to make this decision. Some common business structures include: 

• Sole proprietorship – Often the default entity for freelancers and the easiest structure for a one-person business, giving you complete control of your business. Does not separate business assets from personal ones, meaning you’re personally liable for any debts and obtaining funding may be more difficult.
• Partnership – Can be formed with one or more people, includes different types that may have different tax and liability implications. 
• Limited liability company (LLC) – May be appropriate if you’d prefer to protect your personal assets in the event of bankruptcy or lawsuits. Also, may be required by certain investors or lenders. 
• Corporation – Different types include B, C, and S corps, as well as non-profits. Provides its owners with limited liability but tends to be much more complex.

According to a 2023 report from the SBA, most businesses without employees are sole proprietorships (86.5%) followed by partnerships (7.4%) and S corporations (4.6%). Meanwhile, most small businesses with employees are S corporations (52.4%), followed by other types of corporations (22.3%) and sole proprietorships (13.3%).*

You may want to consult with a lawyer (either in-person or online) to help form your business structure. Find a lawyer near you  

Business plan templates

Get organized, hit your goals.

Create a flexible plan you can adjust to your life.

More to explore

Finding customers for your new business, tips on how to start your new business.

• Saving and budgeting
• Investing for beginners
• Finding stock and sector ideas
• Changing jobs
• Self-employed or small business
• Managing taxes
• Investing for income
• Fixed income, bonds, CDs

Fidelity does not provide legal or tax advice. The information herein is general and educational in nature and should not be considered legal or tax advice. Tax laws and regulations are complex and subject to change, which can materially impact investment results. Fidelity cannot guarantee that the information herein is accurate, complete, or timely. Fidelity makes no warranties with regard to such information or results obtained by its use, and disclaims any liability arising out of your use of, or any tax position taken in reliance on, such information. Consult an attorney or tax professional regarding your specific situation.

This information is general in nature and provided for educational purposes only.

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• Business and self-employed
• Business finance and support

Write a business plan

Download free business plan templates and find help and advice on how to write your business plan.

Business plan templates

Download a free business plan template on The Prince’s Trust website.

You can also download a free cash flow forecast template or a business plan template on the Start Up Loans website to help you manage your finances.

Business plan examples

Read example business plans on the Bplans website.

How to write a business plan

Get detailed information about how to write a business plan on the Start Up Donut website.

Why you need a business plan

A business plan is a written document that describes your business. It covers objectives, strategies, sales, marketing and financial forecasts.

A business plan helps you to:

• clarify your business idea
• spot potential problems
• set out your goals
• measure your progress

You’ll need a business plan if you want to secure investment or a loan from a bank. Read about the finance options available for businesses on the Business Finance Guide website.

It can also help to convince customers, suppliers and potential employees to support you.

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Writing a business plan

A business plan documents your objectives and the strategies and structures you have in place for achieving them.

Your business plan should explain how you will manage all the important aspects of your business, from products and services to operational plans and finances.

Video: Writing a business plan

Watch our video on why you should write a business plan for your new or current business.

Topics include:

• why it's important to create and review a business plan
• the information to include in your business plan
• using a business plan to achieve your business goals
• downloading and completing our business plan template.

Use a business plan to:

• help you start a new business
• help you improve the performance of an existing business
• attract funding for an investment
• communicate business progress to stakeholders
• communicate business goals and objectives to internal staff members
• attract potential buyers for the business.

A business plan is a 'living' document, so it should evolve and change—think of it as an operating guide for your business throughout the start-up, operations and succession phases.

Download and write a full business plan

Download our free full business plan template and use the guidelines below to write a plan for your business.

There are also other templates available that may better meet your needs—visit business.gov.au .

You should customise your chosen template to suit your business and industry.

We explain below how you can start with a 1-page business plan to ease you into the process of completing the full business plan.

Business plan elements

The elements of your business plan will vary depending on:

• what phase your business is in (starting, running, selling)
• the industry your business is in
• how you choose to use the plan (e.g. for internal development purposes).

Every business plan will be different, but they will generally include similar elements. The sections of our business plan template are listed below—use these as a guide when completing it or as a reference when creating your own.

At the start of your business plan, include the following business details:

• business name
• date registered
• Australian Business Number (ABN)
• Australian Company Number (ACN) – if applicable
• tax file number (TFN)
• business address
• contact details
• website details
• social media details.

Read about choosing a business structure and getting the right licences and registrations .

This section provides an overview of the business concept. It should be attention-grabbing and succinct—the content will be covered in more detail in future sections.

While this is the first section of the plan, it can often help to write it last after the other sections have been finalised.

This helps to ensure that the executive summary covers all the key information within the plan.

It should define:

• what your business vision is
• what your legal structure is
• what products and services you offer
• who your customers are
• what sets you apart from your competitors
• how you will create a market for your products and services
• how you will operate
• what your financial projections are
• how your business or industry will evolve
• who owns or manages your business
• what your short-term and long-term goals are.

Refer to the corresponding sections in our free business plan template:

• 2.1 Products and services
• 2.2 Market analysis
• 2.3 Industry description and outlook
• 2.4 SWOT analysis

In this section, you should highlight your business products and services and describe what makes them unique, such as their:

• limitations
• cost and sale price.

You can also include details of any plans your business has to introduce new products and services.

Your market analysis should describe your target market (e.g. local, international) and target customers.

Add in the research you have done about your industry and the market trends.

In this section, you will also complete a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats).

Find out more about researching your market:

• planning and conducting market and customer research
• market research kit .
• 3.1 Current situation
• 3.2 Marketing objectives
• 3.3 Target segments
• 3.4 Competitor analysis
• 3.5 Brand positioning
• 3.6 Marketing programs
• 3.7 Marketing tactics
• 3.8 Key actions
• 3.9 Business controls

A business plan should include a high-level summary of your market research and analysis.

Starting with your current situation, complete your marketing objectives and analysis around your target market and your competitiveness.

Complete your customer and competitor profiles and develop a 1-page brand strategy .

These will help you prepare your marketing plan in section 3 of the template.

Your plan will include marketing tactics and an action plan. You will identify how you will set KPIs and report on your marketing effectiveness.

Learn about:

• branding your business
• writing a marketing strategy and plan .
• 4.1 Sales strategies
• 4.2 Sales analysis and forecast
• 4.3 Customer management

Explain your sales forecasts and targets in this section, and how you will manage customer records and payments. You should understand what sales strategies will work for you and the best channels to market your products or services .

You will also need to know what your current sales, volume and market share are and what you expect them to be for the next 2 years.

Learn about cash flow, invoices and payments and how to collect and store customer information for help with managing customers.

Regardless of your business or industry, you will need to prepare for operating some of your business online.

Note your digital and customer and data-protection strategies in your business plan. You could also include:

• the digital tools and resources that will be used in your business
• the people responsible for overseeing the digital strategy within the business
• details of any security considerations.

Complete a digital health check and learn how to create a digital strategy for your business .

• 6.1 Business structure
• 6.2 Contracts, licences and agreements
• 6.3 Intellectual property
• 6.4 Insurance
• 6.6 Employees
• 6.7 Financial
• 6.8 Legal and ethical trading
• 6.9 Risk management
• 6.10 Business continuity

In this section, record the legal and risk management considerations for your business.

Describe your business structure and the contracts you have now or could have in the future.

If you have a lease or are considering leasing premises, add the terms and conditions of the lease and any actions you need to take to your plan.

To complete the other legal section, learn about:

• legal requirements for businesses
• selecting the right business location
• business insurance
• intellectual property: the basics
• legal and ethical selling
• your responsibilities as an employer .

Search the Australian Business Licence and Information Service (ABLIS) if you need information about licences that relate to your business.

To identify the risks to your business, your business plan should also:

• outline and demonstrate that you have considered the risks to your business (a business risk analysis) and the possible consequences
• summarise the plans you have in place for overcoming these risks.

A risk matrix tool or risk management plan can be developed to help you analyse your business risks—read more about identifying and managing business risk .

You will also need to consider business continuity planning to prepare for unexpected situations.

• 7.1 Location
• 7.2 Production
• 7.3 Current performance
• 7.4 Plant and equipment
• 7.6 List of major suppliers
• 7.7 Stock and inventory

This section will cover all you know about how you do things in your business—for example, your standard operating procedures and how to ensure the quality of your products and services.

To better understand your business operations, read about:

• business processes, procedures and standards
• choosing the right business location
• stock control: the basics .
• 8.1 Management and key personnel
• 8.3 Training
• 8.4 Recruitment
• 8.5 Succession planning

This section helps you note your current workforce structure and plan for the workforce you will have in the future as you grow, and for potentially passing the business to a successor.

Your business plan will detail your business's organisational structure (proposed or actual)—this is often shown as a diagram representing the business hierarchy, different roles within the business and how they relate to one another.

You should also consider succession planning, even if you haven't thought about how you would sell or pass on the business.

• workforce planning for small business
• training and developing staff
• passing a business to a successor .
• 9.1 Start-up costs
• 9.2 Profit and loss forecast
• 9.3 Cash flow forecast
• 9.4 Balance sheet
• 9.5 Financial ratios

Your business plan should include your business finance details—there is a separate business finance template you can also complete.

Summarise your key financial details, including:

• costs for establishing or operating the business
• sales needed to break even
• projected cash flow
• funding arrangements
• payment plans.

You can assess the financial performance of your business using financial ratios .

• 10.1 Review and update business goals
• 10.2 Make a schedule to review your actions

The final section of the business plan should include a set of actions to take before you review your business plan next, and check your progress. This should be over a 6–12 month period, based on the business goals outlined in your plan.

Set a regular review date for the actions and the business plan. Assess which actions have been completed, which remain outstanding and which require updating to help your business plan remain relevant.

Read about skills for running a business to consider ways to improve your time management and leadership.

Optional business plan elements

While not essential, the following can supplement your business plan.

Business vision statement and business values

A comprehensive business vision statement defines what your business does and why it is important.

This could be added in more detail in your business plan and referred to in your executive summary. Find out how to create a business vision .

Business values are the principles, beliefs, and standards of behaviour that guide your business. Including this in your plan will better reflect your goals for the business.

Customer journey strategy

This section could include details of your business's key customer service strategies.

Consider mapping out the intended customer journey—the intended path customers will follow when interacting with your business.

Start with a short business plan

A 1-page business plan can be a good place to start your business planning.

It can cover only high-level information about your business value proposition (i.e. why a customer would want to buy your products and services) and business model.

A one-page plan can include details about:

• your business vision and values
• projected income and expenses
• identified business risks
• the customer segments you intend to target
• the value proposition of your business
• channels that could be used to reach your target customers (e.g. direct or online marketing)
• your customer service plan
• how you will receive payment for products and services
• the activities needed to achieve your outcomes
• the resources you will need
• details of any partners you will use to provide goods and services
• the cost structure for your products and services (based on all items as listed in the plan).

You can search online for tools that can help you create this plan—for example, a value proposition canvas or business model canvas .

Once you are satisfied with this short business plan, you can use it as the basis for your full business plan.

Communicating your business plan

Communicating your business plan to your staff and stakeholders is essential for implementing it and achieving your business goals, even when starting out with a small team.

Some practical tips for communicating the plan include:

• being mindful of your audience—different communication styles will suit different audiences (e.g. you may be able to communicate more informally with your staff than with your stakeholders, board members or investors)
• choosing an appropriate format, time and place—you could hold a staff meeting, schedule a business plan review session and invite all staff and stakeholders to attend, or create an online presentation
• using clear, concise and simple language
• making time to get feedback from your staff and stakeholders.

Read about skills for running a business for tips on developing your communication skills.

Learn about managing people through change .

Review and update your business plan

You will need to regularly review your business plan to ensure that it is relevant, achievable and up to date with any changes in your business.

Consider reviewing your business plan:

• at regular intervals (e.g. quarterly or annually)
• after a business SWOT analysis has been completed
• when raising capital (e.g. approaching the bank for a loan or pitching to an investor)
• before implementing growth strategies or new products
• when new staff members are added to the team
• when implementing a new organisational structure
• before changes in the industry or to legislation
• when preparing to sell the business .

To help you review your own plan, ask yourself the following questions:

• What will the review schedule be?
• Is the plan up to date?
• Have the business goals changed?
• Is the plan still matched to the business goals?
• Are market trends changing?
• Have there been major political, environmental, social or technological changes that affect your business?
• Have there been significant changes in your finances or need for capital?
• Is the plan still 'fit for purpose'?

Business planning resources and tools

The following planning resources and tools below can help you compile and update your business plan to ensure your business is on track to meet its goals.

• Small business planning webinar recording
• Writing a marketing strategy and plan
• Identifying and managing business risk
• Business processes, procedures and standards
• Plan your business finances
• Market and customer research
• Choosing and working with business advisers
• Networking in business
• Ask a mentor – business planning

Learn more about business planning with free, online courses .

Resources for finding licences, permits and codes of conduct

Use the Business Launchpad to discover all your licensing needs, compiled in your own customised guide.

You can also search for licences, permits and codes of practice using the Australian Business Licence and Information Service (ABLIS).

Learn about codes of conduct and codes of practices from:

• the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission
• WorkCover Queensland .
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What is a business plan? Definition, Purpose, and Types

In the world of business, a well-thought-out plan is often the key to success. This plan, known as a business plan, is a comprehensive document that outlines a company’s goals, strategies , and financial projections. Whether you’re starting a new business or looking to expand an existing one, a business plan is an essential tool.

As a business plan writer and consultant , I’ve crafted over 15,000 plans for a diverse range of businesses. In this article, I’ll be sharing my wealth of experience about what a business plan is, its purpose, and the step-by-step process of creating one. By the end, you’ll have a thorough understanding of how to develop a robust business plan that can drive your business to success.

What is a business plan?

Purposes of a business plan, what are the essential components of a business plan, executive summary, business description or overview, product and price, competitive analysis, target market, marketing plan, financial plan, funding requirements, types of business plan, lean startup business plans, traditional business plans, how often should a business plan be reviewed and revised, what are the key elements of a lean startup business plan.

• What are some of the reasons why business plans don't succeed?

A business plan is a roadmap for your business. It outlines your goals, strategies, and how you plan to achieve them. It’s a living document that you can update as your business grows and changes.

Looking for someone to write a business plan?

Find professional business plan writers for your business success.

These are the following purpose of business plan:

• Attract investors and lenders: If you’re seeking funding for your business , a business plan is a must-have. Investors and lenders want to see that you have a clear plan for how you’ll use their money to grow your business and generate revenue.
• Get organized and stay on track: Writing a business plan forces you to think through all aspects of your business, from your target market to your marketing strategy. This can help you identify any potential challenges and opportunities early on, so you can develop a plan to address them.
• Make better decisions: A business plan can help you make better decisions about your business by providing you with a framework to evaluate different options. For example, if you’re considering launching a new product, your business plan can help you assess the potential market demand, costs, and profitability.

The executive summary is the most important part of your business plan, even though it’s the last one you’ll write. It’s the first section that potential investors or lenders will read, and it may be the only one they read. The executive summary sets the stage for the rest of the document by introducing your company’s mission or vision statement, value proposition, and long-term goals.

The business description section of your business plan should introduce your business to the reader in a compelling and concise way. It should include your business name, years in operation, key offerings, positioning statement, and core values (if applicable). You may also want to include a short history of your company.

In this section, the company should describe its products or services , including pricing, product lifespan, and unique benefits to the consumer. Other relevant information could include production and manufacturing processes, patents, and proprietary technology.

Every industry has competitors, even if your business is the first of its kind or has the majority of the market share. In the competitive analysis section of your business plan, you’ll objectively assess the industry landscape to understand your business’s competitive position. A SWOT analysis is a structured way to organize this section.

Your target market section explains the core customers of your business and why they are your ideal customers. It should include demographic, psychographic, behavioral, and geographic information about your target market.

Marketing plan describes how the company will attract and retain customers, including any planned advertising and marketing campaigns . It also describes how the company will distribute its products or services to consumers.

After outlining your goals, validating your business opportunity, and assessing the industry landscape, the team section of your business plan identifies who will be responsible for achieving your goals. Even if you don’t have your full team in place yet, investors will be impressed by your clear understanding of the roles that need to be filled.

In the financial plan section,established businesses should provide financial statements , balance sheets , and other financial data. New businesses should provide financial targets and estimates for the first few years, and may also request funding.

Since one goal of a business plan is to secure funding from investors , you should include the amount of funding you need, why you need it, and how long you need it for.

• Tip: Use bullet points and numbered lists to make your plan easy to read and scannable.

Access specialized business plan writing service now!

Business plans can come in many different formats, but they are often divided into two main types: traditional and lean startup. The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) says that the traditional business plan is the more common of the two.

Lean startup business plans are short (as short as one page) and focus on the most important elements. They are easy to create, but companies may need to provide more information if requested by investors or lenders.

Traditional business plans are longer and more detailed than lean startup business plans, which makes them more time-consuming to create but more persuasive to potential investors. Lean startup business plans are shorter and less detailed, but companies should be prepared to provide more information if requested.

Need Guidance with Your Business Plan?

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A business plan should be reviewed and revised at least annually, or more often if the business is experiencing significant changes. This is because the business landscape is constantly changing, and your business plan needs to reflect those changes in order to remain relevant and effective.

Here are some specific situations in which you should review and revise your business plan:

• You have launched a new product or service line.
• You have entered a new market.
• You have experienced significant changes in your customer base or competitive landscape.
• You have made changes to your management team or organizational structure.
• You have raised new funding.

A lean startup business plan is a short and simple way for a company to explain its business, especially if it is new and does not have a lot of information yet. It can include sections on the company’s value proposition, major activities and advantages, resources, partnerships, customer segments, and revenue sources.

What are some of the reasons why business plans don't succeed?

• Unrealistic assumptions: Business plans are often based on assumptions about the market, the competition, and the company’s own capabilities. If these assumptions are unrealistic, the plan is doomed to fail.
• Lack of focus: A good business plan should be focused on a specific goal and how the company will achieve it. If the plan is too broad or tries to do too much, it is unlikely to be successful.
• Poor execution: Even the best business plan is useless if it is not executed properly. This means having the right team in place, the necessary resources, and the ability to adapt to changing circumstances.
• Unforeseen challenges:  Every business faces challenges that could not be predicted or planned for. These challenges can be anything from a natural disaster to a new competitor to a change in government regulations.

What are the benefits of having a business plan?

• It helps you to clarify your business goals and strategies.
• It can help you to attract investors and lenders.
• It can serve as a roadmap for your business as it grows and changes.
• It can help you to make better business decisions.

How to write a business plan?

There are many different ways to write a business plan, but most follow the same basic structure. Here is a step-by-step guide:

• Executive summary.
• Company description.
• Management and organization description.
• Financial projections.

How to write a business plan step by step?

Start with an executive summary, then describe your business, analyze the market, outline your products or services, detail your marketing and sales strategies, introduce your team, and provide financial projections.

Why do I need a business plan for my startup?

A business plan helps define your startup’s direction, attract investors, secure funding, and make informed decisions crucial for success.

What are the key components of a business plan?

Key components include an executive summary, business description, market analysis, products or services, marketing and sales strategy, management and team, financial projections, and funding requirements.

Can a business plan help secure funding for my business?

Yes, a well-crafted business plan demonstrates your business’s viability, the use of investment, and potential returns, making it a valuable tool for attracting investors and lenders.

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• Environmental, Social, and Governance alert: US Second National Action Plan on Responsible Business Conduct: What businesses need to know

US Second National Action Plan on Responsible Business Conduct: What businesses need to know

Indicating a trend towards greater accountability for existing human rights standards, the US government has published its second National Action Plan (NAP) on Responsible Business Conduct (RBC).

The NAP outlines the government’s expectations for businesses to conduct human rights due diligence assessments. Although it serves as a policy guide to the US government’s position on responsible business conduct, setting out key priorities without creating immediate obligations for companies. However, despite the lack of immediate obligation, US companies aiming to navigate evolving business and human rights regulations should view the NAP in two ways: as a precursor to enhanced regulations and as a guide to the government’s enforcement priorities.

The US government issued its first NAP on RBC in December 2016, five years after the endorsement of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) and the addition of human rights to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises on Responsible Business Conduct (OECD Guidelines).

Marking the tenth anniversary of the UNGPs, on March 25, 2024, the Biden-Harris Administration released the United States’ second NAP, reflecting a whole-of-government commitment to strengthen RBC and improve respect for human rights and labor rights, expand the use of green energy, counter corruption, protect human rights defenders, advance gender equity and equality, and promote rights-respecting use of technology. While the NAP addresses a diverse range of RBC issues for US businesses, it focuses primarily on effective human rights due diligence.

Expectations for business and human rights due diligence

The second NAP sets out the Administration’s expectations for US businesses to conduct human rights due diligence not only in their immediate company operations, but across their value chains, grounded in international standards such UNGPs and the OECD Guidelines as well as in the International Labor Organization’s (ILOs) Tripartite Declaration of Principles Concerning Multinational Enterprises and Social Policy (the MNE Declaration).

Such due diligence should specifically include:

• Metrics to assess and address risks: The amount and depth of due diligence should be commensurate with the severity and likelihood of an adverse impact, and should prioritize more significant risks ( eg , due to the type of product or service involved and/or the operating context).
• Ongoing assessment, monitoring, and evaluation: Iterative, responsive, and adaptable processes that include monitoring, evaluation, and feedback loops should verify whether adverse impacts are being effectively addressed and new potential impacts identified.
• Consistent stakeholder engagement: Ongoing communication with those whose rights could be affected by the business's activities and organizations that represent them should guide the due diligence process to shape the business’s understanding of the risks and strengthen access to remedies, including through effective grievance mechanisms.
• Public communication: On at least an annual basis, the business should communicate its commitment to a rigorous internal and external risk assessment, as well as adequate measures taken to address any identified risks.
• Grievance mechanism: A grievance mechanism to capture feedback on human rights impacts and risks from affected stakeholders should be secure, accessible, and responsive, and should include communication channels for internal and external reporting of possible misuse of a product or service. Businesses may also participate in third-party grievance mechanisms such as state or nonjudicial dispute resolution, procedures developed with an independent union or trade union federation, and/or localized grievance mechanisms. The mechanisms should be legitimate, accessible, predictable, equitable, rights compatible, and developed in consultation with those for whom it is intended.
• Alignment with human rights instruments: The human rights due diligence review process should be consistent with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the OECD Guidelines, the ILO MNE Declaration, and the UNGPs.
• Heightened human rights due diligence in conflict-affected contexts: In line with the UN Development Program Guide on Heightened Human Rights Due Diligence for Business in Conflict-Affected Contexts, [1] businesses should assess the impacts of their actions not only on people but also on the conflict itself.

The second NAP underscores that businesses should go further to implement sector-specific standards developed in collaboration with stakeholders. Such standards should provide credible metrics to meaningfully measure progress on business impact on people across value chains.

US government commitments: four priority areas for effective human rights due diligence

The US government also identified four priority areas for its commitments to promote and incentivize RBC and to accelerate business implementation of effective human rights due diligence practices. The four priority focus areas are:

1) Establishing a federal advisory committee on responsible business conduct

• The Department of State will use this committee to strengthen coordination with the private sector, affected communities, labor unions, civil society (including human rights defenders), academia, and other relevant stakeholders on RBC policies, programming, and initiatives and the advisory committee will continue progress on RBC issues and help track NAP implementation.

2) Strengthening respect for human rights in federal procurement policies and processes

• The US Government Hotlines Working Group, chaired by the Departments of Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, and Justice, will identify options for improving methods through which workers and civil society may inform the government of human trafficking violations by federal contractors and sub-contractors.
• The Department of State will pilot a human trafficking risk mapping process for high-risk and high-volume contracts to assist the acquisition workforce and federal contractors conduct due diligence during project design, solicitation, and monitoring.
• The Department of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection (CBP) will draft guidance to direct proactive consideration on a case-by-case basis of suspending and debarring companies from doing business with the federal government whenever CBP issues a penalty under the customs laws for repeated violations or other laws CBP enforces to combat forced labor so that US taxpayer dollars are not going to businesses using forced labor in their supply chains.
• The Department of Defense will conduct a review to evaluate whether to encourage or require membership in the International Code of Conduct Association for Private Security Providers’ Association (ICoCA) – a multistakeholder initiative that provides oversight and certification of private security providers in line with international human rights and humanitarian law standards – for its private security vendors.

3) Strengthening access to remedy

• The Department of State will strengthen the US National Contact Point (NCP) for the OECD Guidelines through increased stakeholder engagement. Reforms to the NCP include the creation of a new advisory body for the NCP; proposing changes to the NCP’s confidentiality policy and updating its rules of procedure; developing one of the first NCP policies on reprisals; improving accessibility of the NCP website; and evaluating options to strengthen the NCP.
• The Department of Labor will develop innovative access-to-remedy systems by funding a US$2 million technical assistance project, to be implemented by the ILO, that promotes worker-driven social compliance and protects labor rights in global value chains.
• The US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) will strengthen protections against reprisals for individuals and groups that use DFC grievance mechanisms by updating its policy commitment, developing internal guidance for responding to allegations of retaliation, and enabling anonymous complaints in DFC grievance mechanisms.
• The Department of the Treasury will advocate for effective remedy systems at multilateral development banks, including the International Finance Corporation and Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, for project-affected communities.
• The Export-Import Bank of the United States will engage with the Export Credit Agency on strengthening remedy procedures and in public outreach to solicit input on how to improve remedy access and the efficacy of project-based grievance mechanisms.

4) Providing resources to businesses

• The Department of State released US government guidance for online platforms, [2] – such as search engines, social media platforms, and other digital services – on protecting human rights defenders.
• The Department of Labor will establish the Responsible Business Conduct and Labor Rights InfoHub, an online repository to communicate an all-of-government point of view, approach, and suite of resources to advance labor rights outcomes in business operations and value chains.
• The US government will release guidance for businesses on best practices regarding Tribal consultation and engagement with indigenous and affected communities.
• The Department of State will lead the development of guidance to encourage investors to conduct human rights due diligence when considering investments in technologies that could enable or exacerbate human rights abuses.
• The US government will develop additional business advisories for companies, investors, and other stakeholders that do business in or engage in transactions involving specific countries and/or sectors.

Enhancing coordination between the US government and businesses to conduct human rights due diligence

Given the cross-cutting nature of RBC issues today, coordination and communication between US government agencies, the private sector, civil society, labor unions, and academia will be critical to advancing RBC and enabling businesses to conduct human rights due diligence. Several US agencies have committed to expand engagement and coordination on RBC and strengthen implementation of US prohibitions on human trafficking and child labor in federal supply chains and expand areas through which the US government may be able to promote and incentivize RBC by government contractors and subcontractors.

Next steps for US companies

Although the NAP does not create any immediate obligations on US companies, increasingly global regulations such as the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive  and the modern slavery acts of Canada, California, Australia, and the UK, create an extraterritorial impact on US companies by, for example, requiring human rights due diligence assessments, including on their value chains, and mandating modern slavery disclosures. Therefore, it is advisable for companies to proactively:

• Conduct human rights due diligence assessments in line with sector-specific and international standards by identifying and assessing actual and potential value chain risk, implementing measures to prevent and mitigate risk, monitoring their effectiveness, and reporting on remediation
• Review their corporate human rights-related policies and supplier code of conduct, provide training to employees and Board members, and impose a grievance redress mechanism for potential victims of a human rights violation throughout the value chain, and
• Evaluate the impact of the company’s business operations on human rights, especially if the business conducts or plans to conduct business with the federal government. For a more detailed understanding of the NAP RBC expectation for federal contractors and the FAR Council, please see our alert,  New US government guidance promotes human rights due diligence by contractors in federal supply chains .

Learn more about the implications of the Second NAP RBC by contacting any of the authors or your DLA Piper relationship lawyer, and visit our Environmental, Social, and Governance ; Global Investigations ; and National Security and Global Trade  portals for the latest information on ESG developments. [1] https://www.undp.org/publications/heightened-human-rights-due-diligence-business-conflict-affected-contexts-guide [2] United States Guidance for Online Platforms on Protecting Human Rights Defenders Online

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Small Business Development

• Cooperatives Incentives Scheme

Black Business Supplier Development Programme

• Khula Enterprise Finance Ltd
• South African Micro-Finance Apex Fund

Technology for Sustainable Livelihoods

• Registering Your Business
• National Youth Service
• South African Women in Construction
• Technology for Women in Business

Gender and Women Empowerment Unit

Small enterprise development agency (seda).

Seda   supports the growth of small business. People can go to Seda for help to start a business or, if they already have a business, to make it stronger and more profitable. There is a Seda branch in each district municipality. These branches offer:

• information, advice and referrals
• tender information and advice
• import and export training
• trade information
• business assessments and business mentoring
• technical support
• market access
• business linkages

In addition to helping individuals in business, Seda has a special focus on co-operative enterprises , where a group of entrepreneurs share the profits and responsibility of a business.

Contact Seda :  012 441 1000 Business Information Centre :  0860 103 703 Website : www.seda.org.za

How to write a business plan

The first thing you need to do is state clearly and specifically what your business idea is. Very simply, you need to say what you intend doing, how you plan on doing it, when you plan to do it and why you believe you will succeed. In the process of doing that, you need to do some research into whether your idea and your plan will really work.  Your business plan should cover four main areas:

• Your strategic focus (your “niche”, or “core business”):  What exactly is it that your business will do? What makes it special? What won’t your business do?
• The marketing plan: How are you going to promote your product?  How are you going to price your product?  How do you plan on getting your product to your market?
• The operations plan: What staff will you have and what will they do?  Who will supply you with what you need?  How will you manage your business?
• The financial plan: What profits and losses will you make?  How much sales do you need to make to break even?  How much cash do you need to cover costs each month?  What is the source of your funds?  How will you use your funds?  If you need a loan, then what can you offer as security for that loan?

Important advice:

• Work out how big your market is (the total number of people who will buy your product).
• Is the market growing or not?  (Is there increasing demand for your product or is there an over-supply?)
• List all the factors about your business that will bring you success (e.g.  is it in a good place, is it cheap, is it very high quality?).

Look carefully at your situation and make a list of the following:

• your strengths and weaknesses in comparison with your competitors
• all the obvious market opportunities and threats
• the advantages you have over your competitors
• advantages that your competitors have over you
• ways of using your advantages to your benefit
• how you will deal with the disadvantages you face
• what must be done, when it must be done and how it be done.

Co-operatives Incentive Scheme (CIS)

Successful applicants are given cash grants so that their cooperative can obtain good quality services that will help them to grow their business. The Cooperative Incentive Scheme helps cooperatives from all industries: textiles, services, energy, agriculture, print, film, and video production, consumer and housing. For a cooperative to qualify for a grant, it needs to:

• be mainly black-owned
• be actively helping to create employment and overcome poverty
• be registered according to the Cooperatives Act, 14 of 2005
• have a simple Business Plan, which must be attached to applications forms
• provide quotations for the services for which it requires funding.

How to register a co-operative

To register your cooperative, you will need to fill in Form CR1 – Application for registration of primary/secondary/tertiary cooperative. You will then be notified of the other forms you will need to fill in, in the course of registering your cooperative.

Contact the Department of Trade and Industry: 012 394-1425/394-1608 Website: www.thedti.gov.za

This programme offers grants in a cost-sharing scheme to black-owned business for the purpose of business skills training. It offers support to black-owned enterprises by helping to improve their core competencies and management abilities, and enabling them to become more competitive. The scheme helps people with promotional marketing materials, software development and other activities such as quality improvement, processes and product improvement.

Companies that are majority black-owned (15% or more) and which have a significant representation of black managers on their management team quality for the grant. Companies should not earn more than R12 million per annum and must have been trading for at least a year. They need to be registered with CIPRO and with SARS. The maximum grant for which a single company can qualify is R100 000.

Application procedure : Obtain application guidelines and an application form.  Complete the application form. Obtain and attach a tax clearance certificate, and submit the application.

Contact the Department of Trade and Industry Customer Care Centre :  0861 843 384 Website : www.thedti.gov.za

Finance for Small Businesses

Khula enterprise finance ltd.

Khula helps SMMEs to get loans from banks. It does not lend money itself. Khula also provides mentorship to entrepreneurs, helping them to manage their businesses successfully. The mentorship programme includes the transfer of skills on a face-to-face basis, the development of viable business plans, and pre- and post-loan services.

Contact Khula :  012 394-5560/5900 or 0800 11 88 15 Website :  www.khula.org.za

South African Micro Finance Apex Fund (Samaf)

Samaf gives financial services to small-scale entrepreneurs living in rural and outer urban areas. Samaf does not lend money directly to the public. It uses existing institutions within communities to handle the funds and lend to qualifying entrepreneurs. Samaf has three products:  the Micro-Credit Fund (gives loans to entrepreneurs), the Capacity Building Fund (gives funds to be used for equipping the institutions with skills, system and equipment) and the Savings Mobilisation Fund (encourages savings).

Contact Samaf :  012 394-1805 Websites : www.samaf.org.za ; www.thedti.gov.za

This is a programme of the Department of Science and Technology (DST). It aims to create jobs for communities by helping to establish SMMEs. In particular, it makes use of technologies which can add value to SMMEs and makes them accessible to communities. At the same time, the programme helps to make these SMMEs successful by offering skills development and training.

The DST offers technological assistance in the following areas:

• Aquaculture : Communities are trained to farm indigenous fish as a business. They receive technology in terms of infrastructure (production cages) and training to manage a fish farm, including diseases and harvesting.
• Essential oils: These are valuable oils that are extracted from the leaves and flowers of plants. Communities benefit from skills development and training, and their businesses are linked to the local essential oils market.
• Indigenous medicinal plants :  Communities are taught to grow indigenous herbs commercially. These plants have special medicinal properties which have been scientifically proven. Communities receive training in farming methods and in how to start a commercial enterprise and their businesses are linked to local markets.

The DST does not support individuals, only communities and community groups. These communities are then helped to form a viable community business, in the form of a Section 21 Company or cooperative. In order to use these technologies and produce valuable crops in essential oils and indigenous medicinal plants, communities need to have access to suitable agricultural land.  Similarly, communities that want to benefit from fish farming must have access to irrigation dams.

Contact the DST Technology for Sustainable Livelihoods :   012 843-6421/18

Registering your business

When you start a business, it needs to be registered. To do so, fill in the relevant forms and submit them to the Companies and Intellectual Property Registration Office (CIPRO).

Contact CIPRO :  0861 843 384

Support For Youth

The Umsobomvu Youth Fund helps youth set up, expand and develop their businesses by teaching them essential business skills. Umsobomvu has the following programmes:

• The Franchise Fund helps youth to start and maintain their businesses. Through loans and a voucher system, it helps young people to access business support.
• Entrepreneurship Education Training: This training is aimed at helping young people understand the concepts and principles of entrepreneurship and business.
• Cooperative Training: This is basic training for young people on setting up and running a youth cooperative business.
• Graduate Development Training: This is a training programme for unemployed graduates to enhance their life and professional skills.
• Business Consulting Services Voucher: These are services designed to help youth set up, expand or develop their businesses.

Umsobomvu youth Advisory Centres (YACs) are walk-in centres around the country where youth can receive information, training and referrals services – in fact, everything they need to find employment or start their own businesses. YACs provide outreach services to communities that are unable to get to the centres, by taking career information, skills development and entrepreneurial advice to local schools in Mobile YACs.

Contact Umsobomvu :  08600 YOUTH (96884) Contact Umsobomvu Business Partnership :  011 470-3111 Websites :  www.youthportal.org.za

National Youth Service (NYS)

The National Youth Services is about involving young people in the development of our country. It is an opportunity for young people to actively serve their communities. The National Youth Service Programme aims to create a culture of service. It develops the skills, knowledge and abilities of young people. It also improves youth employability by giving opportunities for work experience and skills development, and by providing further learning opportunities.

For more information on the NYS, turn to the Expanded Public Works Programme.

Support For Women

South african women in construction (sawic).

Sawic is a national association of women enterprises or professionals and technical staff in all areas of construction, from the skilled trades to business ownership, with international affiliation to the National association of Women in Construction (Nawic). Sawic administers, facilitates, advocates and lobbies all the Departments of Public Works for the empowerment of its members.

Contact Sawic :  012 337-2400/2174

Technology for Women in Business (TWIB)

This programme aims to make science and technology more accessible to women in business, especially those in SMMEs.

Contact TWIB :  012 394-1644 Website :  www.twib.co.za

The Gender and Women Empowerment Unit of the Department of Trade and Industry (the dti) manages the South African Women Entrepreneurs Network (SAWEN). SAWEN helps women overcome the obstacles that they still experience in business.

It compiles a database of women-owned enterprises, in order to help women help one another. It organises networking forums, facilitates capacity-building programmes, and lobbies and advocates for policies that support women entrepreneurs.

Contact the Department of Trade and Industry:  012 394-1606

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2024 federal budget's key takeaways: Housing and carbon rebates, students and sin taxes

Budget sees nearly $53b in new spending over the next 5 years.

What's in the new federal budget?

Social sharing.

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland today tabled a 400-page-plus budget her government is pitching as a balm for anxious millennials and Generation Z.

The budget proposes $52.9 billion in new spending over five years, including $8.5 billion in new spending for housing. To offset some of that new spending, Ottawa is pitching policy changes to bring in new revenue.

Here are some of the notable funding initiatives and legislative commitments in budget 2024.

Ottawa unloading unused offices to meet housing targets

One of the biggest pillars of the budget is its housing commitments. Before releasing the budget, the government laid out what it's calling Canada's Housing Plan — a pledge to "unlock" nearly 3.9 million homes by 2031.

The government says two million of those would be net new homes and it believes it can contribute to more than half of them. 

It plans to do that by:

• Converting underused federal offices into homes. The budget promises $1.1 billion over ten years to transform 50 per cent of the federal office portfolio into housing.
• Building homes on Canada Post properties. The government says the 1,700-plus Canada Post offices across the country can be used to build new homes while maintaining postal services. The federal government says it's assessing six Canada Post properties in Quebec, Alberta and British Columbia for development potential "as a start."
• Rethinking National Defence properties. The government is promising to look at redeveloping properties and buildings on National Defence lands for military and civilian use.
• Building apartments. Ottawa is pledging a $15 billion top-up to the Apartment Construction Loan Program, which says it will build 30,000 new homes across Canada.

Taxing vacant land?

As part of its push on housing, the federal government also says it's looking at vacant land that could be used to build homes.

It's not yet committing to new measures but the budget says the government will consider introducing a new tax on residentially zoned vacant land. 

• Freeland's new federal budget hikes taxes on the rich to cover billions in new spending
• Are you renting with no plans to buy? Here's what the federal budget has for you

The government said it plans to launch consultations on the measure later this year.

Help for students 

There's also something in the budget for students hunting for housing.

The government says it will update the formula used by the Canada Student Financial Assistance Program to calculate housing costs when determining financial need, to better reflect the cost of housing in the current climate.

The government estimates this could deliver more aid for rent to approximately 79,000 students each year, at an estimated cost of $154.6 million over five years.

• Updated Federal budget's funding boost for defence spread out over multiple years
• Liberals pledge $9B in new money for Indigenous communities in 2024 budget

The government is also promising to extend increased student grants and interest-free loans, at an estimated total cost of $1.1 billion this year.

Increase in taxes on capital gains

To help cover some of its multi-billion dollar commitments, the government is proposing a tax hike on capital gains — the profit individuals make when assets like stocks and second properties are sold.

The government is proposing an increase in the taxable portion of capital gains, up from the current 50 per cent to two thirds for annual capital gains over $250,000. 

New investment to lead 'housing revolution in Canada,' Freeland says

Freeland said the change would impact the wealthiest 0.1 per cent.

There's still some protection for small businesses. There's been a lifetime capital gains exemption which allows Canadians to exempt up to $1,016,836 in capital gains tax-free on the sale of small business shares and farming and fishing property. This June the tax-free limit will be increased to $1.25 million and will continue to be indexed to inflation thereafter, according to the budget.

The federal government estimates this could bring in more than $19 billion over five years, although some analysts are not convinced.

Disability benefit amounts to $200 per month 

Parliament last year passed the Canada Disability Benefit Act, which promised to send a direct benefit to low-income, working-age people with disabilities. 

Budget 2024 proposes funding of $6.1 billion over six years, beginning this fiscal year, and $1.4 billion per year ongoing, for a new Canada Disability Benefit.

Advocates had been hoping for something along the lines of $1,000 per month per person . They'll be disappointed.

According to the budget document, the maximum benefit will amount to $2,400 per year for low income individuals with disabilities between the ages of 18 and 64 — about $200 a month.

• Federal government plans to lease public lands for construction through new housing strategy
• Alberta premier says she's prepared to take Ottawa to court over housing deals

The government said it plans for the Canada Disability Benefit Act to come into force in June 2024 and for payments to start in July 2025.

Carbon rebate for small businesses coming 

The federal government has heard an earful from small business advocates who accuse it of reneging on a promise to return a portion of carbon pricing revenues to small businesses to mitigate the tax's economic costs.

• What's behind the carbon tax, and does it work?
• Federal government scales back carbon tax rebates for small businesses

The budget proposes to return fuel charge proceeds from 2019-20 through 2023-24 to an estimated 600,000 businesses with 499 or fewer employees through a new refundable tax credit.

The government said this would deliver $2.5 billion directly to Canada's small- and medium-sized businesses.

Darts and vape pods will cost more 

Pitching it as a measure to cut the number of people smoking and vaping, the Liberals are promising to raise revenues on tobacco and smoking products.

• Just Asking  wants to know:   What questions do you have about quitting smoking or vaping? Do you think sin taxes will encourage smoking cessation?  Fill out the details on  this form  and send us your questions ahead of our show on April 20.

Starting Wednesday, the total tobacco excise duty will be $5.49 per carton. The government estimates this could increase federal revenue by $1.36 billion over five years starting in 2024-25.

The budget also proposes to increase the vaping excise duty rates by 12 per cent effective July 1. That means an increase of 12 to 24 cents per pod, depending on where you live. 

• 'Stay the hell away from our kids': Health minister vows to restrict nicotine pouches — but how?

Ottawa hopes this increase in sin taxes will bring in $310 million over five years, starting in 2024-25.

More money for CBC 

Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge has mused about redefining the role of the public broadcaster before the next federal election . But before that happens, CBC/Radio-Canada is getting a top-up this year. 

The budget promises $42 million more in 2024-25 for CBC/Radio-Canada for "news and entertainment programming." CBC/Radio-Canada received about $1.3 billion in total federal funding last year.

The government says it's doing this to ensure that Canadians across the country, including rural, remote, Indigenous and minority language communities, have access to independent journalism and entertainment.

Last year, the CBC announced a financial shortfall, cut 141 employees and eliminated 205 vacant positions. In a statement issued Tuesday, CBC spokesperson Leon Mar said the new funding means the corporation can balance its budget "without significant additional reductions this year."

Boost for Canada's spy agency 

As the government takes heat over how it has handled the threat of foreign election interference, it's promising more money to bolster its spy service.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service is in line to receive $655.7 million over eight years, starting this fiscal year, to enhance its intelligence capabilities and its presence in Toronto.

• CSIS chief defends his spies' work after PM casts doubt on reliability of agency's reports
• Trudeau says it's his job to question CSIS intelligence, call out 'contradictions'

The budget also promises to guarantee up to $5 billion in loans for Indigenous communities to participate in natural resource development and energy projects in their territories.

These loans would be provided by financial institutions or other lenders and guaranteed by the federal government, meaning Indigenous borrowers who opt in could benefit from lower interest rates, the budget says. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Catharine Tunney is a reporter with CBC's Parliament Hill bureau, where she covers national security and the RCMP. She worked previously for CBC in Nova Scotia. You can reach her at [email protected]

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Everyone deserves to succeed. But today, for too many Canadians, especially Millennials and Gen Z, your hard work isn’t paying off like it did for previous generations. Your paycheque doesn’t go as far as costs go up, and saving enough seems harder and harder. It doesn’t have to be this way. Every generation should get a fair chance to get ahead.

One of the biggest pressures on people right now is housing. Young Canadians are renting more than ever and being priced out of their communities. Families are finding it difficult to get a good place to settle down. The cost to build homes is too high, and the time it takes to finish projects is too long. We need to build more homes in Canada, and we need to build them by the millions.

The Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, Chrystia Freeland, and the Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities, Sean Fraser, today unveiled the federal government’s ambitious housing plan, Solving the housing crisis: Canada’s Housing Plan , supported by new investments from the upcoming Budget 2024. At the heart of this plan lies a commitment to make housing affordable. No hard-working Canadian should have to spend more than 30 per cent of their income on housing costs. No Canadian should have to live without knowing they have a safe and affordable place to live.

The plan lays out a bold strategy to unlock 3.87 million new homes by 2031. This includes a minimum of 2 million net new homes, on top of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s forecast of 1.87 million being built anyway by 2031. Federal actions in this plan, in Budget 2024, and taken in fall 2023 will support at least 1.2 million new homes, and we call on all orders of government to build at least 800,000 more homes by 2031.

Here’s what we’re doing:

Building more homes by bringing down the costs of homebuilding, helping cities make it easier to build homes at a faster pace, changing the way Canadian homebuilders manufacture homes, and growing the workforce to ensure we get the job done. This includes:

• A Public Lands for Homes Plan to lead a national effort to build affordable housing on federal, provincial, territorial, and municipal lands across the country. We will partner with homebuilders and housing providers to build homes on every possible site across the public portfolio and ensure long-term affordability.
• $15 billion in additional loans for the Apartment Construction Loan Program to build a minimum of 30,000 new rental apartments, in big cities, small towns, and rural communities alike, will be proposed in Budget 2024. With this additional financing, the program is on track to build over 131,000 new apartments by 2031-32.
• Launching Canada Builds, a Team Canada approach to building affordable homes for the middle class on under-utilized lands across the country. Canada Builds combines federal low-cost loans with provincial and territorial investments to scale up construction on rental homes for the middle class, from coast to coast to coast.
• Supporting Indigenous Peoples in urban, rural, and northern areas . We will also provide additional distinctions-based investments for Indigenous housing to be delivered by Indigenous governments, organizations, housing, and service providers.

Making it easier to own or rent a home by ensuring that every renter or homeowner has a home that suits their needs, and the stability to retain it. We’re putting measures to protect tenants against unfairly rising rent payments, leverage rental payment history to improve credit scores, increase the Home Buyers’ Plan withdrawal limit, extend mortgage amortizations for first-time home buyers buying newly built homes, and more:

• Launching a Tenant Protection Fund to provide funding to legal services and tenants’ rights advocacy organizations to better protect tenants against unfairly rising rent payments, renovictions, or bad landlords.
• Leveraging rental payment history to improve credit scores, helping you qualify for a mortgage and better rates.
• Increasing the Home Buyers’ Plan withdrawal limit by $25,000 and extending the grace period to repay by an additional three years.
• Extending mortgage amortizations for first-time buyers buying newly built homes . Mortgage insurance rules will be amended to allow 30-year mortgage amortizations exclusively for first-time home buyers purchasing new builds.

Helping Canadians who can’t afford a home by creating more affordable and rental housing – including for students, seniors, persons with disabilities, and equity-deserving communities – and eliminating chronic homelessness in Canada. This includes:

• Providing $1 billion for the Affordable Housing Fund to build affordable homes and launching a permanent Rapid Housing Stream to build on the success of the previous three rounds of the Rapid Housing Initiative.
• Launching a $1.5 billion Canada Rental Protection Fund to protect and expand affordable housing.

The Prime Minister also announced new measures included in Canada’s Housing Plan to attract, train, and hire the skilled-trade workers Canada needs to build more homes.

• $90 million for the Apprenticeship Service , creating apprenticeship opportunities to train and recruit the next generation of skilled trades workers.
• $10 million for the Skilled Trades Awareness and Readiness program to encourage high school students to enter the skilled trades – creating more jobs and opportunities for the next generation of workers to build Canada up.
• $50 million in the Foreign Credential Recognition Program , with a focus on residential construction to help skilled trades workers get more homes built. Like our previous $115 million investment, this funding will remove barriers to credential recognition, so workers spend less time dealing with red-tape and more time getting shovels in the ground.

Transforming our housing system and solving the housing crisis will take a Team Canada effort. No one level of government, home builder, not-for-profit, or community can do it alone. We need every partner pulling in the same direction to build the homes Canadians need.

This is about realizing Canada’s promise of affordable housing for every generation – and it’s just one of the things that we are going to be doing in Budget 2024. Alongside these measures, we’re getting healthy food on kids’ plates, delivering stronger public health care, making life more affordable, and creating good jobs to make sure every generation can get ahead.

“We are changing the way we build homes in Canada. In our housing plan and Budget 2024, we are delivering ambitious action and investments to build more homes, make it easier to rent or own, and help the most vulnerable with stable housing. This is about restoring fairness for every generation, and housing is at the heart of that.” The Rt. Hon. Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada

“We are announcing today real, tangible measures that are going to help more younger Canadians get those first keys of their own. We are using every tool at our disposal to deliver housing without delay – because we want to make the dream of homeownership a reality for younger Canadians.” The Hon. Chrystia Freeland, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance

“Canada can and will solve the housing crisis, and we’re going to do it by getting every home builder, not-for-profit, mayor, city councillor, and premier pulling in the same direction to build the homes Canadians need.” The Hon. Sean Fraser, Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities

Quick Facts

• The Prime Minister today also announced the creation of a new Deputy Minister of Public Lands and Housing position within the Privy Council Office. The Deputy Minister will oversee and report on federal efforts to build more homes for Canadians through the use of public lands, providing a single point of accountability within the public service. An appointment to this position will be announced later today.
• Since 2015, the federal government has helped almost two million Canadians find a place to call home.
• Restore generational fairness for renters, particularly Millennials and Gen Z, by taking new action to protect renters’ rights and unlock pathways for them to become homeowners. Learn more .
• Launch a new $6 billion Canada Housing Infrastructure Fund to accelerate the construction or upgrade of essential infrastructure across the country and get more homes built for Canadians. Learn more .
• Top-up the Apartment Construction Loan Program with $15 billion, make new reforms so it is easier to access, and launch Canada Builds to call on all provinces and territories to join a Team Canada effort to build more homes, faster. Learn more .
• Support renters by launching a new $1.5 billion Canada Rental Protection Fund to preserve more rental homes and make sure they stay affordable. Learn more .
• Change the way we build homes in Canada by announcing over $600 million to make it easier and cheaper to build more homes, faster, including through a new Homebuilding Technology and Innovation Fund and a new Housing Design Catalogue. Learn more .
• The Apartment Construction Loan Program , a $40 billion initiative that will be topped up with an additional $15 billion in Budget 2024 to boost the construction of new rental homes by providing low-cost financing to homebuilders. Since 2017, the Apartment Construction Loan Program has committed over $18 billion in loans to support the creation of more than 48,000 new rental homes. With our recently announced measures , the Apartment Construction Loan Program is now on track to help build over 131,000 new rental homes across Canada by 2031-32.
• The  Affordable Housing Fund , a $14+ billion initiative that supports the creation of new market and below-market rental housing and the repair and renewal of existing housing. It is designed to attract partnerships and investments to develop projects that meet a broad spectrum of housing needs, from shelters to affordable homeownership. As of December 31, 2023, the Fund has committed $8+ billion to repair or renew over 150,000 homes and support the construction of more than 32,000 new homes.
• The Housing Accelerator Fund , a $4 billion initiative that will be topped up with an additional $400 million in Budget 2024 to encourage municipalities to incentivize building by making transformative changes, such as removing prohibitive zoning barriers. To date, the federal government has signed 179 Housing Accelerator Fund agreements which, combined, will fast-track an estimated total of over 750,000 housing units across the country over the next decade.
• The Rapid Housing Initiative , a $4 billion fund that is fast-tracking the construction of 15,500 new affordable homes for people experiencing homelessness or in severe housing need by 2026. The Rapid Housing Initiative also supports the acquisition of existing buildings for the purpose of rehabilitation or conversion to permanent affordable housing units, focusing on the housing needs of the most vulnerable, including people experiencing or at risk of homelessness, women fleeing domestic violence, seniors, Indigenous Peoples, and persons with disabilities.
• Progress on these and other programs and initiatives under Canada’s National Housing Strategy are updated quarterly at  www.placetocallhome.ca . The Housing Funding Initiatives Map  shows housing projects that have been developed.
• On November 9, 2023, we signed a historic Housing Accelerator Fund agreement with the Province of Quebec.
• Building on the success of the 2023 agreement, the federal government will continue to work closely with Quebec to build more homes for Quebecers, including by delivering additional funding through the Housing Accelerator Fund and the new Canada Housing Infrastructure Fund.
• The Government of Canada’s Budget 2024 will be tabled in the House of Commons by the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance on Tuesday, April 16, 2024.
• Save more young families money and help more moms return to their careers by building more affordable child care spaces and training more early childhood educators across Canada. Learn more .
• Create a National School Food Program to provide meals to about 400,000 kids every year and help ensure every child has the best start in life, no matter their circumstances. Learn more .
• Secure Canada’s AI advantage through a $2.4 billion package of measures that will accelerate job growth in Canada’s AI sector, boost productivity by helping researchers and businesses develop and adopt AI, and ensure this is done responsibly. Learn more .
• Provide the Canadian Armed Forces with the tools and capacity they need to defend Canada and protect North America, advance Canada’s interests and values around the world, and support its members with an overall investment of $8.1 billion over five years and $73 billion over 20 years. Learn more .

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• Solving the housing crisis: Canada’s Housing Plan
• Backgrounder: Solving the housing crisis: Canada’s Housing Plan

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IRS delivers strong 2024 tax filing season; expands services for millions of people on phones, in-person and online with expanded funding

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IR-2024-109, April 15, 2024

WASHINGTON — With the April tax filing deadline here, the Internal Revenue Service highlighted a variety of improvements that dramatically expanded service for millions of taxpayers during the 2024 filing season.

Through Inflation Reduction Act funding, the IRS continued to expand taxpayer service levels not seen in more than a decade with double-digit gains occurring in critical areas. Compared to a year ago, the IRS answered over 1 million more taxpayer phone calls this tax season, helped over 170,000 more people in-person and saw 75 million more IRS.gov visits fueled by a new and expanded Where’s My Refund? tool.

“Taxpayers continued to see major improvements from the IRS during the 2024 tax season,” said IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel. “A well-funded IRS is like night and day for taxpayers. With the help of more funding and added resources, service for taxpayers this filing season eclipsed levels seen during the past decade. This tax season meant real-world improvements for people looking for help, whether calling, visiting in-person or using IRS.gov.”

“We still have much more work to do, both to finish the 2024 tax season as well as put in place continued improvements made possible by Inflation Reduction Act funding,” Werfel said. “But this filing season marks another important chapter where we’ve improved service for taxpayers, continuing an accelerating trend in the story of transforming the IRS.”

Through April 6, the IRS processed more than 100 million individual tax returns. Tens of millions more will come in advance of the April deadline, the busiest time of the year for tax returns. The IRS also projects about 19 million taxpayers will file extensions, which will be due Oct. 15.

Since the start of the January tax season, the IRS has delivered more than $200 billion in refunds through early April. The average refund was $3,011, a 4.6% increase from last April’s average of $2,878.

Here are major filing season numbers in 10 key areas. These numbers, generally from late March and early April, reflect the historic 2024 tax season taking place at the IRS:

• Improved phone service . Continuing a trend seen last year following the addition of 5,000 new telephone assistors, the IRS level of service on its main phone lines reached more than 88%. That’s above the 84% level seen last year and more than a five-fold increase from the phone service levels seen during the pandemic era period, when the level of service was at just 15% in 2022.
• More calls answered. The IRS answered more taxpayer calls on its live assistor lines this year, a 16.8% increase from 2023. IRS assistors handled 7,608,000 calls, up from 6,513,000 the year before. IRS automated lines handled another approximately 7 million calls, 280,000 more than the previous year.
• Faster response times. Taxpayers waited, on average, just over three minutes for help on the IRS main phone lines. This is down from four minutes in 2023 and 28 minutes in filing season 2022.
• More callback options. The IRS offered callback options on 97% of the phone lines this filing season. The agency offered call back for over 4 million taxpayers this tax season, more than double the 1.8 million calls in 2023. This option, offered when phone lines were busy, saved taxpayers nearly 1.4 million hours of wait time on the phones.
• More in-person help. The IRS helped 170,000 more taxpayers in-person this filing season than in 2023. IRS employees at Taxpayer Assistance Centers (TACs) served 648,000 taxpayers this year, up from 474,000 in 2023, a 37% increase.
• Expanded in-person hours . The IRS added extended hours at 242 TAC locations across the nation, generating more than 11,000 extra service hours for taxpayers during the 2024 filing season. In addition to extended service hours, IRS also offered taxpayer assistance on Saturdays in more than 70 locations. These evening and Saturday hours made it more convenient for thousands of hard-working taxpayers to get help.
• Additional free help at volunteer sites. The IRS saw tax return preparation work at volunteer sites increase to more than 2.3 million returns this tax season, up 200,000 from last year following work at Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) and Tax Counseling for the Elderly (TCE) sites.
• More taxpayers file for free. In addition to volunteer sites, the IRS saw more taxpayers file for free this year; in all, there were over 450,000 more returns filed between volunteer sites, Direct File and Free File. The new Direct File pilot, offered on a limited basis in 12 states, generated more than 60,000 tax returns after opening widely in mid-March. At the same time, the IRS partnership with the Free File partners offering free private-sector software via IRS.gov saw growth with more than 2 million tax returns filed, an increase of 11.2% or more than 200,000 more Free File returns than 2023 .
• Higher usage of IRS.gov. Driven by increased use of the expanded information on the Where’s My Refund? for the 2024 filing season, IRS.gov saw large increases in traffic. The website had nearly 500 million visits, an 18% increase. And Where’s My Refund? accounted for more than 275 million of those visits, up 62 million from 2023 representing a 29% increase.
• More chatbot use. The IRS saw more use of its virtual assistant tool on key IRS.gov pages. There were 832,000 uses this filing season, up nearly 150% from 330,000 uses in 2023.

“These numbers illustrate the strength of this year’s filing season, but the IRS needs to continue working hard to make more improvements and continue transforming to serve taxpayers – not just through the April tax deadline but throughout the year and into the future,” Werfel said.

With the April deadline approaching, the IRS reminds taxpayers there are many ways to get last-minute help. They can visit the special free help page on IRS.gov.

For taxpayers who need an extension of time to file their taxes, there are several options to get an automatic extension through Oct. 15. Although an extension grants extra time to file, it does not extend the obligation to pay taxes due on April 15, 2024. To avoid penalties and late fees, taxpayers who owe should pay either their full tax bill or at least what they can afford to pay by the April 15 deadline.

The IRS estimates 19 million taxpayers will file for an automatic extension.

Taxpayers in Maine and Massachusetts have until April 17 to file and pay taxes due this year. This is because these states observe the Patriots’ Day holiday on April 15 this year and April 16 is the Emancipation Day holiday in the District of Columbia.

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UK lawmakers back landmark bill to gradually phase out smoking for good

A woman smokes on a street, in London, Tuesday, April 16, 2024. A bold plan to ban anyone born after 2008 from ever legally buying cigarettes in Britain faces its first test in Parliament. The bold plan has divided the governing Conservatives, with some hailing its public health benefits and others condemning it as state overreach. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

A man smokes on a street, in London, Tuesday, April 16, 2024. A bold plan to ban anyone born after 2008 from ever legally buying cigarettes in Britain faces its first test in Parliament. The bold plan has divided the governing Conservatives, with some hailing its public health benefits and others condemning it as state overreach. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

FILE - Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak meets students taking part in a personal development lesson as he visits Haughton Academy to outline plans for the banning of single use vapes, in Darlington, England, on Jan. 29, 2024. British lawmakers will on Tuesday April 16, 2024 debate and vote on the government’s plans to introduce a landmark smoking ban that aims to stop young people from ever smoking. (Ian Forsyth/Pool Photo via AP, File)

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LONDON (AP) — The British government’s plan for a landmark smoking ban that aims to stop young people from ever smoking cleared its first hurdle in Parliament on Tuesday despite vocal opposition from within Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party.

The bill, a key policy announced by Sunak last year, would make it illegal to sell tobacco products to anyone born after January 1, 2009. If passed, the bill will give Britain some of the toughest anti-smoking measures in the world. Authorities say it will create modern Britain’s “first smoke-free generation.”

Under the Tobacco and Vapes Bill, children turning 15 this year or younger will never be legally sold tobacco. Once implemented — officials are aiming for 2027 — the legal age of sale that people in England can buy cigarettes will be raised by one year, every year until it is eventually illegal for the whole population.

The bill also includes measures to crack down on youth vaping , such as banning the sale of cheap disposable vapes and restricting their flavors to prevent children from becoming addicted to nicotine.

It is currently illegal for anyone to sell cigarettes or tobacco products and vapes to people under 18 years old throughout the U.K.

During the bill’s second reading late Tuesday, 383 lawmakers voted in favor while 67 opposed it after an afternoon of debate. Although the bill was widely praised by health experts and had the support of the opposition Labour Party, Sunak faced rebellion from more libertarian-minded members of his party, who criticized the proposals as “unconservative.”

Opponents, such as the smokers’ rights lobbying group FOREST, said the move risks creating a black market and will “treat future generations of adults like kids.” Prominent voices within the Conservative Party, including two of Sunak’s predecessors Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, said the plans went against conservative values by limiting people’s personal freedoms.

The bill was a “virtue-signaling piece of legislation about protecting adults from themselves in the future,” Truss told Parliament during Tuesday’s debate.

Other high-profile Tories, including business secretary Kemi Badenoch, a Cabinet minister, also opposed the bill or abstained.

Conservative lawmakers were granted a free vote, meaning they could vote with their personal conscience rather than follow the official party line.

AP AUDIO: UK lawmakers back landmark bill to gradually phase out smoking for good.

AP correspondent Charles de Ledesma reports on the dawning of a smoke free generation.

The plans were believed to have been inspired by similar policies proposed by New Zealand under former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, but the country’s new coalition government repealed the bill earlier this year.

The government said that smoking won’t be criminalized, and the phased changes mean that anyone who can legally buy cigarettes now won’t be prevented from doing so in the future.

The number of people who smoke in the U.K. has declined by two-thirds since the 1970s, but some 6.4 million people in the country — or about 13% of the population — still smoke, according to official figures.

Authorities say smoking causes some 80,000 deaths a year in the U.K, and remains the number one preventable cause of death, disability and poor health.