Big Lottery Helps
Every business, especially a community business needs a business plan. Indeed for our community buyout to succeed, both Lottery Funding and Scottish Government approval of a land purchase demands a robust business plan.
Commercial businesses are in the fortunate position of having paid staff to plan and operate their businesses. We have only ourselves. Happily, Willow Wood has just received a grant of £10,000 from the Big Lottery’s ‘Investing in Ideas’ fund to allow us to obtain outside assistance such as surveys and engineering reports in completing our business plan.
Our business plan will require to include information about who we are, who will benefit from our activities and why our buyout is needed in the first place. The plan will also contain the outcomes we expect from the project; some have already been identified as purchase of the park, security of tenure and peace of mind through managing our own affairs and running the park, improved facilities for the residents in respect of health, wellbeing, social interaction and lifelong learning.
Additionally the plan will require to include a financial plan showing where funds will come from and be used; an operational plan showing how we would run the park and deliver the outcomes and show how all our activities will be sustainable for the future. 
Andrew Bauer of Highland and Islands Enterprise (Agents for the Big Lottery) spent an afternoon with us on Monday 14th September 2008 guiding us through the enormous requirements for the lottery bid which really is a massive undertaking. The Directors need all the input and support they can get from you all if this is to succeed.
