I must preface this the third article of a series produced specifically for publication on DanceArt.com with a disclaimer of sorts. Although I am very much aware that the Internet knows no geographic boundaries, any legal points addressed within these articles are based upon the laws and practices of the United States. I cannot speak to the specific laws and practices of your country if your home is outside the U.S., but the precepts described herein speak to proven business practices and should be applicable in most communities regardless of continent.

Just as you must plan for your organization’s development and its future, I had to plan the layout of the information I provide. The disclaimer should have begun the first article, the fact that it did not, illustrates the need for preparation. Like I said in the first article, most every undertaking should comprise 90% preparation and 10% execution. My intentions were solid and honorable, but that does not mean a hill of beans, a bit of southern-speak, to a reader in another country who has been running around looking for a non-existent 501 (c) (3) application. Planning, planning, planning and an indefatigable focus on your product is the first primary directive. (pardon me, Mr. Bradbury)

So, wherever it is you call home, if you have begun to address the start up needs of your organization with a financial institution or potential funders (public or private) the odds are they requested a copy of your business plan. In fact, many states (in the US) require some sort of plan at the initial stages of incorporation, usually in the guise of a Mission Statement, Articles of Incorporation and organizational By-Laws. It is an academic point of projected progress. To move yourself, or in this case - your company, from one point to another, you have to the ways and means to get there.

A Business Plan is essential and it needs to contain at least:

• why you want to form the Organization
• your mission statement
• how you will accomplish your mission
• an explanation what you will provide the community - your product
• why what you will provide requires the attention of supporters and community at large
• how you will grow the product and develop its positive impact within the community
• where your group or company will conduct business
• how you will ensure you will provide a needed commodity to the community you serve
• 3 yr plan of the projected growth (budget, scope of services provided and audience development) of the organization
• An illustration of community support
• Bylaws of the organization and the company’s Articles of Incorporation
• anticipated payback for sponsors/supporters, specifically the benefits the company brings to the community

The hard part comes after you have produced a strategic plan. Many organizations that I’ve worked with or worked for in the past dozen years authored grand documents that in practice were not worth the paper they were written on. Your job is to give the words life -- to make them real by abiding by them in your daily operations.

Honesty is the best policy; remember hearing that axiom as a child? In the Arts Business, it is a reality. It never ceases to amaze me how many organizations will expend huge efforts to create perfect documentation of who they are and what they plan to do with no intention of paying attention to their own documents. First of all, this is an incredible waste of time and time is an artist's or an administrator’s greatest resource. Secondly, these organizations really believe that they can reinvent themselves for every new source of funding they uncover. Somehow they just don’t get it.

I like to believe that financial institutions, foundations, and corporate givers have seen and heard it all. I used to wonder if they had screens for nonsense (cleaning up the language here, this is a family web site, after all) and I was sure they did. Yet, I have known many arts groups to continue to circulate more and more useless paper and then bemoan the fact that some other organization received the funding they should have received. I suppose I was naïve in not realizing the extent of the absurd.

The benefit of these experiences to me was obvious, I have and I continue to counsel artists and organizations that their obligation to themselves, their artists and their communities is to honestly asses their talents, the impact those talents will have on their neighborhoods and report them accordingly.

Artists need to seek funders who support similar organizations. This requires an investment in research time and effort but there are tools available and the rewards are significant. On the other hand, attempts to flimflam funders almost always end in near disaster. Corporate and foundation givers assess benefits by panel or board review -- this is important to understand because several board members serve on many boards and as they are leaders in their industry they have contacts in most all other institutions. If your organization’s veracity is at all questioned, how long do you suppose it takes for your reputation to be impugned throughout the community? The result: no future funding.

Suffice it to say, (pay attention, we’re about to visit that equation once more) investing 90% of your time up front investigating what you can do, why you should do it, and who will support your endeavors will make your future a reality. The level of that success is left up to you, that’s where the other 10% comes in, hard work! But we do so love it, don’t we now?

NEXT: To Advise or Not to Advise