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boogle
03-23-2011, 01:08 PM
I have already made a few posts about the fact I am going to be teaching middle school math next year and want to have my students learn the standards of mathematics through the process of writing a business plan. Obviously a lot of what I am going to be teaching is budgeting, profit vs. loss, gross vs. net, market share and anticipated sales, etc. We will be doing marketing through probability and floor plans through geometry.

My question is about formatting. I have written several business plans but they have all been primarily for my staff and me, a blueprint for the business. I have never really worried too much about making sure all the "right" data is in there, nor formatting it the "right" way because I have never needed to shop it to investors or anyone who would really care about the proper formatting. I know this varies from market to market and there are no rock solid rules, but I am assuming some things remain constant.

My students will be graded in part by how a group of business owners and investors judge their business plan and I want to make sure I am showing them the an acceptable way to format it.

Since some of you are probably familiar with bplans.com, I am curious if I sort of followed their way of ordering and laying things out would I be on the right track? Are those formatted in a way that would be acceptable? If not are there other resources that would be better?

As a side note, my students will be picking between a restaurant, a music store, a sporting store, and a clothing store.

Thanks

Harold Mansfield
03-23-2011, 02:53 PM
I don't see why it wouldn't be fine. Every template I have seen basically follows the same format, just styled differently.

vangogh
03-23-2011, 03:51 PM
I'd probably use their samples as well. You could even go as far as buying their software, though I would expect the output from the software to look like the sample plans. The SBA also has some articles about writing a business plan (http://www.sba.gov/category/navigation-structure/starting-managing-business/starting-business/writing-business-plan), including an outline for a business plan template.

ChrisHeggem
03-23-2011, 05:37 PM
Sounds like a great opportunity to instill the entrepreneurial spirit in your students. If business owners and investors are judging it, it may make sense to ask them what they like to see in business plans. I was just helping a friend with his and there are a lot of different outlines. Either way, this is a great experience for your students.

Spider
03-24-2011, 01:04 PM
I believe SCORE has some standard business plan templates - try score.org

PhonenixTS
03-28-2011, 04:39 PM
The world honestly needs more teachers like you. I've never fully written a business plan, but when I created an outline of a business, I used the SBA.gov website for guidance.

Business Attorney
03-28-2011, 11:40 PM
With 500+ business plans, there are certainly plenty to choose from on bplans.com. I looked at several of their plans a few years ago and found that the organization and content of the plans I looked at was pretty good.

As mentioned above, the SBA outline is also a good starting point but it is generic while the business plans at bplans.com will help show you the different approaches for specific businesses. For example, while there are many similarities between plans, a plan for a restaurant will generally be different than a plan for a retail business like a music store, sporting goods store or clothing store.

You also might try other sources on the internet. For example, I looked at some sample business plans on restaurantowner.com that seemed to be quite good from the parts I could see. (Note, though, that downloading the full plans on that site requires a paid subscription).

Good luck with your class.

boogle
03-30-2011, 08:30 PM
Thanks for the input everyone, I am actually now coding a program that will act as the business front for students to manage inventory, budgeting, payrol etc. I am coding the whole thing JavaScript for the most part (If anyone is solid in JS I could use the help :) )