Resource of the Week: Business Plans and Profiles Index
By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor

Just about every librarian who has ever worked at a public reference desk has been asked for information about business plans. The entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well in America’s libraries, including the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, which is responsible for this week’s amazing resource.

This index lists types of small businesses and a corresponding sample business plan, profile or book about the business with sources provided after each entry. Entries that refer to actual sample plans are in bold print. If the plan or profile is online, a link is provided.

While not every single plan in this document is available online, many of them are. Someone here has gone to a lot of trouble to ferret out sample business plans on the Web — even for many downright esoteric enterprises. For example, those of you interested in starting a buffalo/bison ranch will find a link to a sample business plan (PDF; 1 MB) from the State of Montana’s Department of Commerce website. Think you might want to try importing and distributing higher-end kites? Check out this sample business plan from BusinessTown.com. Or maybe a cat furniture business (PDF; 261 KB)? The University of Colorado’s Leeds School of Business has a sample plan to help you. (Insert librarian cliche here.)

Which is not to say you won’t find links to sample business plans for more typical startups, such as:
+ Bed & Breakfast (Canada/British Columbia Business Services Society; PDF, 89 KB)
+ Caterer (Yale School of Management-Goldman Sachs Foundation Partnership on Nonprofit Ventures; PDF, 857 KB) or Starting a Successful Catering Business (Virginia Cooperative Extension)
+ Coffee Shop and Deli (Oklahoma Small Business Development Center; PDF, 1.2 MB)
+ Computer Training and Sales (Homeworking.com)
+ Consignment Store (The WEBworks)
+ Daycare (First Nations-Canada; PDF, 341 KB)
+ Electronic Billing Service (Business Resource Software)
+ Freelance Copyediting (Titivillus Tools)
+ Home-based Sewing (Mississippi State University Extension Service)
+ Landscape Business (Cornell University Cooperative Extension; PDF, 816 KB) and several others, including this one from the Royal Bank of Canada
+ Painting Contractor (California State University, Sid Craig School of Business; Word, 893 KB)
+ Travel Agency (University of Puerto Rico, College of Business Administration; Word, 628 KB)

There are plenty of other business plan links here as well; many are from megasites such as the multivolume Business Plans Handbook (Encyclopedia of Small Business) and BPlans.com, which sells business plan software in addition to offering many free sample plans online.

This index also includes a reasonably up-to-date bibliography of helpful books for would-be entrepreneurs and a webliography of useful Internet sites. These six resources are featured prominently near the top of the page:

1. Canada Business Service Centres
2. A 16-page Business Plan Template (Word; 628 KB) from Tale’awtxw Aboriginal Capital Corporation, also Canadian
3. The Tactics of Creating a Business Plan (Columbus Enterprise Development Corporation; PDF, 118 KB)
4. A business plan workbook (MasterCard Working for Small Business)
5. A gallery of business plan templates from SCORE
6. The U.S. Small Business Administration’s Small Business Planner, a meta-resource that will take you through the entire business planning process

Oh, and as long as you’re here, you may want to check out the rest of the Carnegie Library’s excellent business resource guides.