Submission Requirements

By now, participants should have the first parts of their business plan together.
The business plan is the crucial element of your submission but, to keep things fair, there are some elements you must include to pass the pre-screen.
You can find all of this info on pages 16-18 of the Participants Handbook.
I'll tell you exactly what will be perused during the submission requirement pre-screen:

1. INFO PAGE
-Business name and contact people name(s)
-Address
-Phone & Email
-List of employees (if applicable)
-Submission date

2. FORMS
-Participant Registration & Agreement
-Non-Disclosure Agreement
-Submission Checklist

3. TABLE OF CONTENTS - keep it easy for the screeners to navigate through your plan.

4. BUSINESS PLAN - the screeners use a scoresheet based on the elements of a business plan. For optimum scoring, use the following categories in the respective order when putting your submission together for the CEC:
-Executive Summary (1-2 pgs)
-Product/Service (1-2 pgs)
-Market Analysis (1-2 pgs)
-Marketing and Sales (1-2 pgs)
-Management Team (1-2 pgs)
-Manufacturing/Operations Plan (1-2 pgs)
-Implementation Schedule (1-2 pgs)
-Opportunities and Risks (1 pg)
-Financials (4-5 pgs)
-The Offering (1 pg)

5, FORMATTING - because CEC is a competition there are certain constraints on how your plan is presented. We want to keep it fair and, to do so, we need every submission to conform to the same application style set here:
-Font: Arial, 11pt
-letter-sized, white paper; 1" margins
-no more than 20 pages from Executive Summary to The Offering
-page numbers and business/concept name in the header or footer on every page
-NO COVERS OR BINDINGS (we are striving to keep this as 'green' as we can, so while those presentation materials are definitely more professional looking, scrapping them helps us with storage and reduces waste, as we remove these items and discard them)
-CONTACT INFO!

About Appendices
You may find the 20-page limit...limiting. You are not the first to say that you don't have enough room to get everything you need in only 20 pages.
Appendices are a tough thing for me to talk about. On one hand, submissions should stick to the under-20 rule, but on the other hand I know how important data and information is.
What I tell participants every year is to submit your business plan according to the rules, then attach the appendices (make sure you include info in table of contents).
There is no guarantee that screeners will read the appendices and keep it under 10 pages.

Also, submissions won't be returned. However, all competitors will receive their screeners scoresheets (provided they passed the pre-screen) for the feedback.

We require 15 plans to proceed with the competition. Usually, we receive between 15-20...not bad odds, eh?

Hard copy or electronic copy?? Well, the handbook says "and/or", emphasis on AND!
The business plans are going to screeners electronically and it's best for convenience, timely and totally green. However, we've all heard horror stories about emails getting lost (and probably been through one ourselves), so take the extra step and drop a hard copy off at your local partner Community Futures office just to be safe.

Deadline is Friday, April 29, 2011 at 2:00p.m. MT.

I have set aside large blocks of time throughout April to go over competition submissions with participants prior to deadline, so please feel free to contact me (after the training sessions are complete). I strongly, strongly recommend you contact our office before the deadline.

SIGNED, ORIGINAL copies of the three forms are required!