Memberships

The end of the year is approaching, our minds will eventually wind down to hopefully embrace the Festive period, enjoy a few days of R&R and keep the in-tray at bay.

This is also a time of year that for many of us provides a time for reflection as well as celebration.  We look back at events in the past year, at our challenges and achievements; we look forward to the New Year, and resolve to do some things differently.    Some resolve to lose weight or to give up smoking, others resolve to grow their business or improve their performance at work.

For those of you working in organisations such as businesses or membership organisations this may involve new markets, or employing new staff.  In our difficult economic climate it may mean finding better and cheaper ways of doing things that will create new opportunities.

In my Autumn blog I announced the creation of some new resources for membership organisations.  We are now building on this by conducting a survey of membership organisations to discover what kind of information we can offer that will be valued in the coming months.  What are your priorities for the coming year?  What difficulties and opportunities do you envisage?  Where will you focus your resources?  Whatever the answers to these questions, Pro Active Resolutions is here to help.

If you receive an invitation to complete our survey, please do help us and we will let you know the results in January.  We want to ensure that we can support you with the right resources

If your New Year’s resolution involves improving a membership organisation, or improving your own skills in membership management, please keep us in mind as a source of support.  We want 2013 to be a successful year for you!

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Posted on December 4th, 2012

Creative Arts Entrepreneurs

Turning a talent into a sustainable business is a challenge, talent needs to be supported by an awareness, appreciation and understanding of ‘basic’ business skills.   This is especially true for creative and arts based businesses, whilst the people who set them up might have incredible creative talent, in the early stages they may know very little about how to make a sustainable business out of their artistic vision.

I had the privilege of being actively involved with the innovative Curve Young Arts Entrepreneurs project (funded by Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, Paul Hamlyn Foundation, and the D’Oyly Carte Charitable Trust), a project that took a group of 10 talented young people, provided training and mentoring to help turn creative ideas into enterprise.  

These talented young entrepreneurs fully embraced the idea of having to acquire those supporting business skills and how the disciplines of business planning, management control, record keeping, credit control, pricing and decision making can be applied to their own creative businesses.

In itself these skills will not guarantee a sustainable business, however a lack of these skills increases the likelihood of failure – it is worth noting that one of the main reasons (approximately 70%) given for business failure is poor management skills, i.e. business planning, financial, management and marketing.

The ten young arts entrepreneurs ranged from musicians, dancers and drama groups, what they had in common was a passion and enthusiasm to have sustainable businesses, and they showcased these ideas to a receptive audience on 16th August 2012.

We were delighted to have this opportunity to see the end product of these artistic endeavours, as a supporter of the Curve Young Entrepreneurs scheme we were delighted to be part of their celebration for the first group of creative businesses to emerge from it.

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Posted in Business, Learning, Not for Profit, Self Employed | Comments Off
Posted on August 30th, 2012

A Fresh Start

I consider that I have been fortunate in my ‘working’ life to have gained, developed and been exposed to a wide and varied business background, skills and knowledge – gained from working within the commercial, not for profit and educational sectors and via academic study.  For those that might be interested there is a more detailed personal profile published on the website.

Our new website reflects the main areas that Pro Active Resolutions works in, namely self-employment, the creative and voluntary sector, businesses, education and training.  We provide practical accounting, management, training and consultancy support to businesses, the not for profit and individuals. 

The purpose of my blog is to contribute to, share information, and facilitate dialogue on a wide variety of topics.   Hopefully this will strike a chord and will provide a positive contribution to an ever changing landscape.

We have a growing library of free resources and information, such as our acclaimed freelancer guide, business planning tools and fact sheets.   Over time we will be increasing the range and variety of these resources and be announcing some new developments.

Happy reading and please feel free to comment and contribute.

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Posted in Business, Learning, News, Not for Profit, Self Employed | Comments Off
Posted on January 23rd, 2012