Building Stability, Believing Big - Strategy 2025-28

It’s not just about what we do, but how we do it. Our Director of Finance Andy explains why…

Since joining CoLab, I’ve experienced both the stresses and the exhilaration that come with every year being a year of change.

Like so many charities, CoLab has faced the pressures of financial uncertainty and constraint. Yet we continue to press on—building a more integrated and diversified approach across teams, both internally and with our partners.

From a finance perspective, our priority must be to strengthen reserves. For too many years, CoLab has subsidised its charitable goals, often at the expense of long-term stability. Achieving greater security means focusing on longer-term projects with full cost recovery, ensuring sustainability as well as impact.

The reality is that we still move from year to year not knowing which projects will be extended, which new ones will begin, and which will end. But we are heading in the right direction. We now have better financial tools to cost projects properly, and our growing, diverse strands of work not only stand on their own but also support and complement one another.

My aim is to provide CoLab with the tools, philosophy, and determination that will enable our Leadership and Trustees to fulfil their reimagination of what CoLab can be—and to believe big in what we can achieve over the next three years.

For me, CoLab’s message is simple yet profound: “We see you.” I want to be part of the team that carries that message forward, so that people don’t just hear it, but truly experience.

We know change happens together — what does this spark for you?