Making our Way to an Endowment

Although we regularly celebrate our immediate accomplishments, behind the scenes we are working painstakingly to ensure that our innovative programs and projects are around for the long-haul.  This past year we have embarked our one of biggest operational projects–creating a business plan.  We have been fundraising extensively to source time with our long-term social enterprise business consultant, Michele Cherot, from the Community Skills Centre in Trail, BC to begin this project.

Creating a business plan is vital or long-term sustainable health because as the demand our programming grows exponentially, the operational and touring costs are also increasing. Therefore, we have a critical need to formalize our activities through a formal business plan for these 3 reasons:

• To be able to measure success and failure with metrics other than money.  The business plan that we will generate with Michele will be an essential tool for board and staff in measuring the ability of the organization to deliver and champion our mission. Because we are is social enterprise, we have a complex social-cultural double-bottom-line which means that measuring success and the effectiveness of what we do can often be difficult.  Generating revenues is not a sufficient “measuring stick” for assessing success when our bottom-line is not generating profits, but to use art & culture to promote positive social values.   Consequently, we need to be able to adequately measure combined metrics on both social-culture value with / against finances or the “business” of our company.

• A formal business plan will clearly outline how the SQx organism functions.  Unfortunately, while staff and board are aware of the complexities of the organization, our Executive Director, Carmen, is only individual with a clear understanding and skills to manage operations.  A formal business plan is an invaluable tool in training staff and in doing so communicating the fine-details, innovations, and operational architecture of what, how, and why we do what we do.

• Most importantly, a business plan will also be the major game-changer in helping us to attract bigger investment to meet the unique needs of our organization–especially for operational sustainability. The plan will help us build the funds necessary to create an endowment, so we will have the freedom to focus all program fundraising directly into program delivery and not be burdened with the attempting to skim operational costs (such as web design and development, office rent, telecommunications, bookkeeping, accounting, and executive  salaries for organization, coordination, and fundraising) from these already stretched fundraising sources.  

The first donor to support our business development plan is Columbia Basin Trust through their Basin Business Advisor Program.  Thank-you Barb Williams from the Central Basin Region for helping build the foundation of our future.