FI's Company Facing Toolset

Companies engaging with FI may have access to tools to assess "gaps" between their present state and having a quality fundraising deal; to create a workplan to address those gaps; to assemble a potent investor package and due diligence materials; to target and curate potential investors; and to to plan and manage their business.

Gap Analysis

• ​Fundraising Readiness Assessment, to see how close you are to really being able to confidently approach funders with an investable deal; This online tool allows you to do a self-assessment of how far along you are in your understanding of the process, players, and funder requirements.
• Px8 Impact Assessment, to gauge and focus your business' positive and negative externalities and "impact" on the world; Px8 is an online tool to help you think about, and describe, a variety of potential "impact" vectors, all of which happen to start with the letter "P":  Planet, People, Place, Product, Procurement, Production, Plan, & Pace.
• Executive Summary Template, to easily put your story in a format investors are used to - and want to - see; We've put together a worksheet of the typical questions funders have, which also happens to be the typical components of a business plan Executive Summary.
• Capital Needs and Sources Questionnaire, to determine your eligibility and fit for various types of capital from various types of providers.

Good Business

We use these secure online collaboration tools with our Advisory clients to help them get to having a well-run business:

• WorkPlan: to catalog our plan together to accomplish client-specific needs as well as the basics - and some advanced topics - in running a successful food or farm business
• Orgs: companies and organizations contact manager
• Contacts: people contact manager
• Sales: sales opportunity targeting and tracking
• Deliverables: internal reports and work product to enable a "Plan-Do-Check-Act" management system
• KPI's: Key Performance Indicator tracker
• Jobs: job application collection and administration

Good Plan

These tools are useful for planning and goal setting:

• Objectives: high level company goals for the coming year
• Tactics: specific projects to accomplish those Objectives
• Milestones: past and future key dates
• Success Factors: compares industry and company-specific key success factors to the actual and planned experience of the team
• Risk: identification and mitigation of industry and company-specific risks
• Financial Summary Template: excel spreadsheet defining proven format of interest to potential investors

Good Deal

FI's DD DataRoom (DD for "due diligence") is a secure online document management, workflow, and collaboration application for Entrepreneurs, Technical Assistance Providers, Deal Leads, & Investors to upload, review, discuss, & track investment materials.

The DD DataRoom includes context sensitive help, resources, examples, and 175+ potential DD items, categorized for various deal types, scenarios.

• Provides a one-stop central fundraising workspace for you, your extended team (including experts and service providers), us, and potential investors;
• Defines the documents, information, contacts, and due diligence activities specific to your situation that are necessary to credibly offer your investment opportunity to potential investors;
• Is an online repository for business planning, due diligence, and investment documents, including version control;
• Is a workflow engine, assigning ownership and tracking progress on tasks, document creation, review, and approval;
• Allows prioritization and calendaring of tasks and documents;
• Provides context-sensitive help and resources (links, examples) to assist in the creation of those documents;
• Allows potential investors to easily find the most recent version of a document, to comment or raise issues, and to make individual decisions on whether that due diligence item is sufficient. This transparency not only enables potential investors to make more informed investment decisions but allows you to experience how those investors may act with you and each other post-close.
• Is a forum for questions, concerns, and issues to be collaboratively and supportively addressed.

Good Raise

​Tools to assist with a high quality fundraising effort:

• Elevator Pitch Mad Libs. ​Remember Mad Libs?  Just for fun, we wrote a "Elevator Story" mad lib for any entrepreneur raising any amount of money
• InvestTrak: tracks potential investors, commit levels, obstacles, preferences