Organisational intelligence
How the organisation operates, who it supports, its delivery model, Theory of Change, values, voice and partnerships.
Grant Resource Studio™
Early Years Cocoon case study
The originating full Funding Knowledge Base implementation: process, bounded historical evidence and practical limitations.
How a grassroots CIC in Barking and Dagenham organised the knowledge behind its funding work.
This is the originating full Funding Knowledge Base implementation. It is not an independent controlled comparison, a forecast of funding success or evidence about outcomes for free-resource users.
Reported process change after the full build
Application preparation from 10–20 hours to 3–6
Once core content was structured and approved, Early Years Cocoon reported less time spent preparing each application and a 50–70% reduction in funder-reporting preparation time.
Historically bounded context: around £1.3M across 79 grants over close to eight years. About 52% of all-time grant income was secured during the roughly eighteen-month period after the knowledge base became operational at the start of 2025. These are the published case study’s historical figures, not a rolling “last eighteen months” claim.
Grant awards depend on many factors. These figures do not establish that the knowledge base caused the funding secured.
The organisation and its challenge
Early Years Cocoon CIC supports local families through early years, parenting and family wellbeing work in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham. A small team carries delivery, relationships and fundraising.
The organisation already held years of stories, evidence and application material. They sat in different documents, monitoring spreadsheets, reports, emails and people’s knowledge of the work. Preparing another application involved finding and reassembling that material, often under deadline pressure.
David Lema leads the organisation’s fundraising and developed the approach there before offering it through Grant Resource Studio. EYC is the origin of the method, rather than an independent test of it.
What the organisation put in place
The knowledge base developed over more than a year. Its reusable organisational material was organised into three building blocks.
Case for Support
Evidence of need, activities, beneficiaries, outcomes, measurement, track record and added value, held as reusable material.
Past responses and funder intelligence
Useful wording, examples and recurring requirements kept where later applications could find and adapt them.
Descriptions of activities were connected more clearly to the outcomes they were intended to support. Guidance for tone, source use and combining the material helped the assistant draft from the organisation’s evidence and agreed language.
The work required upfront review and approval. New information only strengthens the record when someone checks it and incorporates the agreed change.
The organisation’s account
“From a fundraising perspective, the improvement has been very clear. We have now passed the £1.3 million mark in funding secured, including a major grant at the start of this year. The quality of our applications has improved a great deal over time. In the early days they would come back needing substantial revision. Now the first draft is often very close to final, because the information, structure and language are much stronger from the start.”
This authorised quotation is retained from the published case study. Its references to funding and “this year” belong to the 2026 account.
Beyond the process figures
Approved material gives colleagues a common reference and reduces dependence on a few people remembering where something was recorded. Reuse can support consistent messages when the underlying knowledge is kept current.
Family Learning in the Early Years Award, 2026
EYC also used its knowledge for its June 2026 Family Learning in the Early Years Award entry. The award recognised the programme. The knowledge base helped assemble the evidence; no causal claim about winning is made here.
Reporting uses the same stable knowledge
EYC’s documented reporting use includes annual City Bridge Impact & Learning Reports. The knowledge base supplies the stable frame, while current attendance, survey and financial information is provided alongside it. It does not replace period data or the team’s review.
Explore what would fit your organisation
See the illustrative backtest, read how the work is put together or explore a commissioned build.
Discuss a Funding Knowledge Base build