The Crux

Common Knowledge's challenge is to become better at revenue generation in both our consultancy business and our grant-funded operations—including spending out grants—whilst increasing the core funding slice of the pie. To do this, the whole co-op needs to become more effective, coherent and aligned.

Strategy statement

In the next six months, Common Knowledge further develops our diverse income stream model, moving from 19.2% grant-funded work (£67,269) and 80.8% consultancy (£282,295) to 60% grant-funding (£261,000) and 40% consultancy (£174,000) by the end of our 2024–2025 financial year. We will manage cashflow wisely as we cross-fade from short-term consultancy revenue to long-term grant funding.

We will improve the quality and efficiency of our consultancy work, which is strategically important and will remain a large proportion of our income stream. We will prioritise consultancy work that is symbiotic with respect to our core mission and our products.

We will establish new processes around using grant-funding so that we can maximise the potential of these funds and build momentum. We will develop Mapped features through a cohort-based approach, defining features in direct collaboration with organisers based on their needs and co-bidding for funding together with these organisers.

Guiding policies with key results (by April 30th 2025)

We lower the risk of our consultancy work by tightening our project management practices.

• 100% of hours worked on projects are hours billed.
• 100% of website delivery projects are >£10,000.
• We bring in at least £174,000 in consultancy work in 2025.

We leverage relationships we have with existing funders and co-bid with other organisations.

• By June 1 2025, we have lined up a total of £261,000 in grant funding for the 2025 financial year.
• At least 60% of our grant funding is unrestricted.
• We submit 3 grant bids of at least £150,000 in collaboration with one or more allied organisations.
• We have requested core funding for the first time from 6 funders.

We spend out promised grants on a monthly basis.

• We maintain alignment on grant spending and Mapped development through regular proposals.
• We spend at least £21,750 on grant work per month (subject to available funds).

We grow the Mapped community of practice to advocate for further development of the product.

• We increase the number of organisations onboarded to Mapped from 5 to 20.

We continuously evaluate the impact of Mapped development using quality & quantity metrics.

• We have produced 6 concrete case studies of organisations using Mapped in their campaigns.
• We develop at least one justifiable, legitimate metric to assess the value of Mapped relative to our investment in it.