Business Enterprise Centre

To establish a small business in Canada the first thing you need to find out is some small business grants for funding your business. It is not an easy task although to locate the best available grants in Canada. Most of the small business grants Canada government offers are restricted to some specific types of business at specific locations. And to avail those, you have to abide by certain terms and conditions and invest some amount of personal money as well.

Though there are quite a few subsidies for funding small business, to find out a small business grant you have to search really hard. You have to know where to look for to get a grant which would not have too many terms and conditions and will be easy to avail. As there is no readymade list available for the small business grants Canada government has, to follow some guidelines would always be helpful to make the search less difficult.

If you log on to the websites of Canada government, you will rarely find the term “small business grants”. This is because the government offers very limited grants for small business. Instead of searching for small business grants Canada, you can look for contributions, subsidies, rebates, tax rebates, shared costs, or non-repayable loans. This can be helpful because through these searches you can find out some non-repayable funding for your small business, which can actually serve the purpose of a small business grant.

Businesses which fulfill the criteria of availing grants from Canada government or those located in areas which are specified for government grants, can obtain the small business grants Canada easily. But for other businesses, obtaining funds may be slightly difficult. In Canada, retail businesses receive the least funding from government grants. And businesses located at a particular area get more grants than those of other areas. So, you must plan to locate your small business accordingly to get the best possible grants.

The core sites of the Canadian government are helpful in providing the lists of small business grants Canada government assists with. The Industry Canada Website will give you information about the available government grants in your region. Another such helpful core site is Canada Business Network. And you can also visit the regional Business Service Centre websites, some of which will have helpful information on small business grants.

To make your search more specific, you can look for grants which are available for the particular type of small business that you want to start. Searching on the Canada Business Website by Business Sector can be helpful. Searching through search engine may also useful if you know where to look for.

If your business will be involved in exporting, research and development, or improvement of the environment, chances of getting a small business grant for your small business will be much higher. Special emphasis are now given on developing alternative energy sources and green energy options.

Though the small business grants Canada government offers are few in number, by putting yourself at the right position, you can easily avail the grants for funding your small business.

A brochure is like a walking saleman for your daycare centre. It tells your target customer all about your daycare centre. However, some daycare owners are put off by the high cost of producing one as they are under the impression that it should be produced by professionals. And for a small business, that can be quite daunting. However, producing a brochure can be quite a breeze if you know what to do.

For the copy of the brochure, you can easily do it yourself once you know what you should put inside it. Before we start writing, we first need to understand who you are writing the brochure for; i.e. your target audience. As a daycare owner, your target audience are the parents who wish to put their child at a daycare centre. Some of these parents feel guilty or worried about leaving their children with strangers. Your job is of course to ally their fears and reassure them that their precious little ones are in good hands.

Next, you need to decide what size you’d like your brochure to be; A4, A5 (A4 folded into half), DL (A4 folded into 3 parts), how many colours (will it be 4 colour throughout or 4 colour on the cover and 1 colour on the inside) and the number of pages.

Now you are ready for some copywriting. Here are some information you should consider putting in your brochure.

1. Introduction (How you are different)

Write up a nice and short introduction about your daycare centre. Let the audience know how your daycare centre is different.

2. Mission / Core values / Philosophy

As providing daycare services is a delicate profession, the core values and goals of the daycare centre are probably something which you’d like to communicate to the parents to let them know that their child is in good hands.

3. Pictures of children at play

Add photographs of the children doing different activities in the brochure. Include one on the children at play, one of the children during lessons and one of the children engaging in some interest activities. If possible, include pictures of celebrations such as Children’s Day, Teacher’s Day or graduation. If you are a new business, you may consider getting stock pictures.

4. Programme / Curriculum

Other than caregiving, parents will also be interested to know what’s included in your curriculum. Therefore, list down the subjects that your daycare centre is offering such as art and craft, language, music and drama, etc. And if you are offering other electives such as piano lessons or computer lessons, include that in as well.

5. Quotes / Testimonials

Quote and testimonials lend credibility to your daycare centre. Solicit for quotes from the parents to be included in your brochure. You can choose to have them write their own quotes or you can write it and have them endorse it.

6. Schedule

Include a schedule of the daycare centre’s daily activities so that the parents can have a rough idea of what their child will be doing at your daycare centre.

7. Rates

Include rates and charges. Some owners may not like the idea of publicizing their daycare charges, so it’ll depend on your preference. Personally, I feel that it helps to qualify your customers.

8. Contact details

In your contact details, list not only information such as address, telephone and email but include a map as well. It will be useful for parents who wish to visit your daycare centre. And don’t forget your website address, if you have one.

Now that you’re done with the copy, you are ready to work on the design on a publishing software. You do not need a professional designer. There are many publishing software that can do the job for you. A good example is Microsoft Publisher. There are many nice templates for you to choose from.

Have fun!

On the radio this morning I heard that in the UK over 80% of public sector IT projects are awarded to only 5 of the largest consultancies. Not that a company with 150 staff is going to attempt to win a contract for national identity cards, but the size of the contract means that the proposal itself can have a budget of millions of pounds to put together.
Procurement in the public sector has become more professional and needs to be demonstrably fair. So the procurement process is complex on large projects and that same diligence is required on smaller projects that require written proposals.

Yet, even with a dedicated sales team there is often adequate resource to write a proposal. I’ve written before about the differences in sales people and proposal development. Here is my generalisation: sales people .
Appoint one of your project managers or administrators to be in charge of proposal planning. They should be involved in the weekly sales meeting and plan the resources required to complete each proposal and set deadlines to ensure work is completed on time and early enough to be quality checked and amendments made.

If you can’t spare the project manager, then you need to improve the planning of the sales team. At the sales meeting don’t just look at probabilities, proposals in development and when projects will be closed – every proposal opportunity should require a detailed plan to be produced by the sales person, please visit cash loan