A lot of towns across the country have huge new build areas going up. Why not start a local community magazine, paid for by advertisers trying to reach these new customers. Be the first to them and even if there is another magazine looking to expand you’ll do okay. Biggest pain will be getting them delivered. Not a problem if you’ve got teenage kids.
Having recently been involved with a corporate team building event in the community, it did get me thinking about the idea and how you could make money from it (as often happens).
After a while of having sat on the floor painting a skirting board for some hours (not the most imaginative project), it came to me. I proposed to myself and later Keiron when I mentioned it to him, that you could make money facilitating these events.
The basic premise is, companies both large and small are always looking for great ways to make their staff work better together. From the corporate weekend away in the Lake District, to the plumbers who end up down the pub on a Friday lunch time. Either way, the objective is the same.
So working to the assumption that everyone is organises this sees the benefit but ends up with dull events (painting a community centre…!) they would jump at the idea to buy in an organisation that would project manage these events for them.
If you were to run such an organisation you would need to match-make businesses looking to spend some time doing work in the community, with community projects suitable for this activity. Then to add value for the businesses, you could handle all the dreaded Health and Safety requirements, buy supplies, arrange transport, issue press releases and all such good things.
By taking the hassles of organising these events out of their hands, they are more likely to do them. You could then charge a fee per person, with a minimum charge. To cover your bases, have the projects available on a web site that they need to pay a subscription charge to be a member of.
So to do this you would need:
Going forward you could also look to expand the business, potentially through a franchised scheme across the country.
To make life easy you’d need a web site with the projects on that would do some of the leg work of match-making. It could then allow larger businesses to allow it’s staff to sign up to different projects. Again adding more value.
Adding value, you could offer services such as:
There would be lots of ways of up-selling from the basic match-making service.
I think this would have some legs, although you would need some up-front leg work to get your database of projects filled then then kept up to date.
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