Over the past few months, I have been helping three small volunteer-led community groups in Bristol working on issues as diverse as enhancing public spaces, homelessness and inner city youth services. All three groups have little or no funding, which is not the immediate problem. They are all asking me to assist them with the development of a plan that will help guide their work into the future within the resources they currently hold, which I am happy to do. The back drop is they are all being increasingly asked to do more as local government does less. I am setting the rights and wrongs of this aside for the moment.

Here is the snag. Most if not all the examples of plans are seriously over the top and seem to have been designed by megalomaniacs, or consultants who have tried to be far far too smart (and expensive). I guess what I am talking about here is something that is practical, proportionate and designed around the needs of the groups. I have started to develop some ideas with the groups but was wondering if anybody out there knew of some good practice examples? I would like to produce something that is self-administrative, open source and free for any small ‘grass roots’ volunteer group with little or no funding wanting to develop a practical plan.