We have been writing our business plan for 5 months now and it continues to evolve. At times I wonder if it will ever be totally finished. Perhaps it never will be, as we learn and gather more expertise it will continue to grow and change. We’ve definitely learnt very quickly that flexibility is key.

Our partners - http://www.hope-for-children.org/

One critical success factor in our plan has been to partner up with an established charity who have a proven track record of working with children specifically in Uganda. We are very lucky to have now formed a partnership with Hope for Children, a UK registered charity founded in 1994 who work on behalf of helpless, orphaned, poor and exploited children in over 30 countries around the world.

Following consultations with Hope for Children we have revised our original model to include a new phase of renting a property and (instead of building the whole village in one go) have introduced a phased, incremental project plan (see our Roadmap). This way, we will be reducing the risks and proving to our stakeholders that our model works. Ultimately our aim is to create a robust, sustainable structure we can expand on.

One of the contributors to The Big Moo cited business planning for a start-up to be “Twenty pages of wishful thinking”. That is where we started. Now our business plan is around forty pages of absolute intention and every line has been considered, reconsidered, questioned and refined but we still have a long way to go.

Once we have revised the figures we will publish our fundraising targets on the website but in the meantime please continue to donate and together we will build a Home for babies we can all be proud of.