What comes to mind when you think about kickstarting, mapping or developing your social enterprise idea? If it is sitting down and writing a 30-page business plan, think again. Don’t take offence but no one (besides you) is probably ever going to read it. That being said, it is vital that you are able to clearly communicate your social enterprise to others.

For early-stage social enterprises, the Social Enterprise Business Model Canvas is an excellent substitute to crafting a full business plan. It is a tool designed to help you brainstorm possible business models and map out your social enterprises’ purpose. All on one page. As Robert Southey once said, “It is with words as with sunbeams. The more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.”

Check out the Social Enterprise Business Model Canvas here.

Like any business, the initial goal at the early-stages of developing your social enterprise is to improve the likelihood of success and minimise the risk of failure. The Social Enterprise Business Model Canvas is made up 9 sections that, in combination, reveal whether or not your new social venture has the potential to get to product/market fit. In completing the canvas, you turn your idea into a set of assumptions that you can then test with the aim of eventually arriving at a carefully validated, scalable, repeatable business model.

The Social Enterprise Business Model Canvas will guide you through every facet of a social enterprise helping you to identify and quantify the key drivers and priorities. The process encourages you stay flexible, lean and agile, thereby preventing you from getting obsessed with a single idea. Creating a one page visual of your social enterprise via the Social Enterprise Business Model Canvas will help you not only explain the idea to others but also, and perhaps most importantly, support you in testing it – which can save you from wasting months or years of your time, effort and resources.

Check out the Social Enterprise Business Model Canvas here.

Do you have any tips on how to get your social enterprise concept down on paper? Have you used the Social Enterprise Business Model Canvas? Was it valuable? Let us know in the comments below.