Feasibility Studies

People and groups often have good ideas for projects and developments, that they want funding for.  Most funders will want a business plan.  Before you start to write the business plan though, you'll need to collect a whole range of information to feed into the plan.  Collecting this information will help you to decide whether your project  is going to work.  Is there a need for it?  Is someone else already doing it?  What might go wrong? How much will it cost and can you find that much money?  Sometimes the feasibility study shows that the idea won't work and sometimes it leads to changes to the proposal to make it work.  And sometimes it feeds into a successful business plan that guides the project to success.

A feasibility study is the research required to check that an idea is going to work in practice.  This might include any or all of the following:

• demographic information
• research into existing services and facilities
• talking to potential users
• identifying potential risks
• premises and funding sources
• looking at the likely costs

Ann tries to write the report in a way that feeds into the headings of a business plan.