Business Plans for Historic Sites

Every once in a while, I see a posting on a listserv or field a request on business plans for historic sites and historic house museums. At the National Trust, we encourage all organizations (whether preservation groups or historic sites) to develop business plans, especially when resources are tight (if you’re rich, you can do whatever you want and don’t need to plan). But business plans are still incredibly rare, even at National Trust Historic Sites, so let me offer the following resources to get you started:

From Preservation Books:

• “Planning to Succeed: Preparing a Business Plan for Your Nonprofit Organization” by Vicki Gillette and Susan Christian for $8.
• “Strategic Planning for Nonprofit Organizations” by Marc Smiley for $6.
• “A Self-Assessment Guide for Community Preservation Organizations” for $15.

From Money magazine (June 2008):

• SBA.gov (visit the Small Business Advisor section to learn about writing a plan)
• BPlans.com (browse through the site’s collection of more than 200 sample business plans)

From my bookshelf:

• Good to Great by Jim Collins (and the sequel booklet on the social sector)
• Strategic Planning for Nonprofit Organizations by Michael Allison and Jude Kaye

So why don’t we share our Sites’ business plans? Because it’s as much about the process as it is about the product. Every Site is different and it is crucial that you go through the hard process of discussing mission, assets, goals, strategies, costs, and audiences to develop the appropriate plan for your site. It’s the same reason we don’t share emergency preparedness plans—too many sites have simply adopted someone else big fat notebook but didn’t actually go through the process of writing their own. As a result, no one understood the procedures when a true emergency happened.