BUSINESS PLAN SAMPLE TEMPLATE

BUSINESS PLAN SAMPLE TEMPLATE

On 25th July 2017 the inaugural meeting of the Libraries Peer Network Pilot took place. A number of libraries agreed to share information for the benefit of new and existing community libraries in the UK. For its part Primrose Hill Community Library agreed to share its business plan, and that plan, revised last year, is attached. We hope it may be useful in provoking ideas for others, although we are very conscious every library has its own special set of circumstances.

Potential Use Of The Plan

Our business plan was designed to be multi-functional so that one version could provide the information required for the local council, for our donors, for potential grant givers and for volunteers and users. When our library was slated for closure by the local council, the two arguments made were; (a) that it was `surplus to requirements', given that a number of larger libraries were reasonably close, and (b) general comments about scarcity of council funds.

The first battle, which we seem to be winning, is to prove we are not surplus to requirements. We felt it was important to have a scientific basis for it and that our work should be seen in the context of Camden Council's library plans. For this reason we sought to collect data sets comparable to the data collected by the local council network, and also look particularly at the vulnerable groups for which we play a special role i.e. the very young and very old for whom being close is essential. Pages 11 and 12 of the attached report show how we have used this data.

For donors and grant givers, we needed to explain why we required funding while also convincing them that their money would be used wisely. As with all businesses, it is extremely important to prove competence and we believed the best way to do so was to consistently measure ourselves against the original business plan presented to Camden Council. So this plan, updated in 2016, has the same objectives as the first two plans we had produced.

Information We Found Useful To Include

In applying for grant applications - where our hit rate is over 50% - we found a number of items frequently coming up. This experience enabled us to create a shopping list of what would be in our business plan. The most common examples are: "How did you become a community library?" See Page 4 of our plan. "What are your principles and objectives?" See Page 5. "What governance arrangements are in place?" See Page 5. "What is the relationship with local schools?" See Page 9.

The Spirit Of the Library

All of the above sounds like an incredibly dry corporate plan. We do believe having a professional look and feel has helped with grant applications and in convincing donors. However, in the end, community libraries only exist because of the human elements i.e. the dedication of the volunteers and the support of the users. The way we tried to encapsulate these crucial elements were via: (a) the Chair's introduction on Page 3; (b) the sections on the day-to-day running of the library on Pages 6-8; (c) the section on Page 10 on how we tried to make the space more friendly; and (d) the pictures throughout the document. We hope these four elements will make those reading the report feel this is a place which is truly loved and valued by all the locals.

In everything we have written in our business plan we have tried to show our library in the context of the general positive benefit of libraries, as the last thing we would want is to do anything that would legitimise the closing of public libraries.

We hope sharing this plan will be helpful to some other community libraries, although many of course have excellent business plans in place already. We do not regard our plan as a one-off campaign document but rather something management refers to on a regular basis to track our own performance.

The Team at Primrose Hill Community Library, August 2017

Please feel free to copy the ideas but please do ask if the document is to be distributed elsewhere.

LIBRARY BUSINESS PLAN

Revised August 2016

Sharpleshall Street, London NW1 8YN. Telephone: 020 7419 6599 Twitter: @phc_library

PrimroseHillCommunityLibrary

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Four years on from when we first collected the keys, PHCL is still alive and kicking.

We Have Performed Well As A Library:

? 2,663 new members ? ca. 75,000 visits per annum, +30% versus when council-run ? a significant over-representation amongst the over 60s and the under 11s ? an estimated 7,000 volunteer hours per annum - at the National Living Wage this is worth ca.

?50,000 per annum ? a cost per visit of ?1, versus ?2.33 when council-run, and at nil cost to the Council! ? the Library is now listed as a community asset

We Have Delivered As A Business:

? the original five year plan has proved remarkably accurate ? we generate ca. ?40,000 per annum in revenue from library activities (excluding grants and

donations) - for comparison, Camden Council now targets ?30,000 revenue from its nine libraries combined

? this ?40,000 revenue absorbs over half of our ?70,000 - ?75,000 annual running costs ? the remainder - what we call `net running costs' - is ?32,500 per annum, and this amount has

to be funded every year by grants and donations; we have achieved that each year so far, thanks to people's generosity and a John Lyons' Charity grant

So, a fantastic effort all round. However, we cannot afford to be complacent as we have some challenges ahead:

? One of our core launch-donors made a five year commitment, which brings in ca ?23,000 per annum, including Gift Aid, and this year we will receive the final tranche of the pledge. Other standing orders, from roughly 50 local donors, contribute ?11,000 per annum. We need to triple that amount to ?32,500 per annum by 2020 to maintain breakeven. In 2017 we will have a big campaign to encourage locals to take out standing orders.

? The lease has a provision for PHCL to pay ?25,000 in rent to the Council from 2018 onwards, although both council official Fiona Dean and Councillor Tulip Siddiq, then Cabinet Member for Culture and Communities, made it clear they expected rent relief to continue (see page 16 for details). For instance, when fending off criticism of Camden's library closures, Siddiq wrote in the Camden New Journal: "rather than continue to denigrate our approach and the good work of librarians and volunteers it would be good to see them all receive the praise that they truly deserve. By working in partnership Camden can continue to boast a library service that is fit for the 21st century, and we will continue to support the volunteer-run community libraries in our buildings with rent relief so they do not have to pay to occupy Camden buildings."

We believe that our donors would find it totally unacceptable if the charitable funds they had donated to buy books, furniture, heating and light, and in order to pay staff costs, were to end up in Camden Council central coffers. Any suggestion that the Library is `surplus to requirements' has been kicked into the long grass as we believe it is demonstrably one of the most successful libraries in the borough. The business plan has been delivered with an accuracy that even surprised us. The only immediate threat to our continuity is the Camden rent risk, which makes it harder and harder to raise donations as 2018 approaches.

We are in contact with the Council to make sure this is resolved in 2016, with water-tight long term assurances, so we can start to execute on the financial plans described above, with a donor campaign to get underway in early 2017. Once this is done, we can again look to a bright future.

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CHAIRMAN'S INTRODUCTION

The Library is saved and blossoming. It is open four days a week, has regular visitors and occasional ones, people that pop in for a quick choice and people that stay for a browse through books, the papers or the internet. There are regular events and quirky one-offs. We have a lovely garden that keeps on getting lovelier. And all this thanks to the monetary gifts of our many wonderful donors and the gifts of time from our many marvellous volunteers. And these gifts keep coming in. So we seem to have achieved our goal: we are open and people are using it. ... and the feedback has been encouraging. But four years after opening there is more: we are getting children in to our homework club, we are getting some young adults in to use the wifi and study. We are getting school visits for stories and browsing and we are getting elderly people in to read the papers and get help with their computer tasks. We are hosting more events, even some that may appeal to the younger generation. So we are developing and improving all the time. But there is more to do: we would like more homework club users, more young adults to come and study and 'hang out' (we are still dreaming about that) and even more elderly people to come in, if only for a chat. So our work is not yet done, we will have to find ways to get these people into the Library, to let them know what a good place it is to be. But if in the end we can just get that one child, that one who would, without our Library, not have had the chance to open a book and become a regular reader and lover of books, then we can say: it is definitely worth it.

Chairman Marijke Good, photographed as part of the Faces of the Hill local art exhibition, which raised ?6,000 for the Library.

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BUSINESS REPORT

1. Background: Saving the Library

In 2011 Camden Council announced the planned closure of Chalk Farm Library as part of a broader library cost cutting programme. The Library had just celebrated its 50th birthday. Local residents campaigned vigorously against a closure but the Council indicated that it would only remain open if the community were to fund the annual running costs of ?138,000, which was a non-starter. Subsequently, Camden Council announced that it was seeking expressions of interest "to identify sustainable future uses for the building that will offer the most benefit to Camden Residents, acknowledging their needs and priorities, both social and economic, over the coming years." The Friends of Chalk Farm Library and Primrose Hill Community Association ('PHCA') were keen to launch a rescue but needed to gauge the level of local support. They ran a wide consultation, through public meetings, a survey and much other discussion. This consultation established that there was a widely held conviction that public libraries are a vital educational and social resource, and ours should be preserved. In addition this was a rare community space in the village, one only too easily lost forever as the property developers circled. At the public meeting of 19th September 2011 it was clear there was overwhelming support for attempting to mount a case for managing the library as a charitable community venture and an Expression Of Interest was submitted before the 28th November 2011 deadline. In winter 2011 the group was awarded preferred bidder status. In many ways that was only the start - the other side of the Campaign was to crystalise that community enthusiasm into hard cash and commitments.

After months of letters to residents, events and stalls in Regents Park Road, sufficient offers of time and money had been secured to go forward and a lease was signed in April 2012. By that stage 565 people, mainly local residents, had offered financial help or to donate their time or both i.e. 483 financial pledges and 188 volunteers.

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