Where the money comes from
The work is paid for from three kinds of source. All three have been used since the start, and all three are still in use.
Grants and partnerships
More than twenty since 2019, from many funders. Among them are United Nations Volunteers, Search for Common Ground, Peace Direct, IREX, USAID through Global Communities, Lenovo, GIZ, the United States Embassy and ChanceMaker.
BOOKBRIDGE, which incubated the academy (supported it as a new organisation) in 2018, gave a loan rather than a grant.
Earned revenue
Money from selling services, training and goods, including client projects done by the media lab and the software lab. That income has paid to run the organisation, and has paid for work that no funder was covering.
The founders’ own capital
The co-founders have put their own money into the organisation.
DreamSpace Academy does not call itself grant-led, and does not call itself independent of grant funding. Both would say which source matters most, and the share each source provides has never been measured. Until it is, the academy uses neither description.
DreamSpace Academy calls itself a social enterprise. That describes how it is organised. It does not say how the work is paid for.
In Sri Lanka, money for very young organisations is scarce, support is concentrated in Colombo, and there is little local venture capital. So young organisations here run on their founders’ own money, small private investors or foreign grants[60]. That limits the choices open to anyone working here.
What the funding model is meant to become
The academy aims to pay for a growing part of its own work, instead of raising the same money again every year. Four parts are meant to build on each other, each one feeding the next.
Units that earn
A community unit sells services and products to local people, at prices they can pay. BOOKBRIDGE expected its loan to the academy to be repaid this way.
Ventures that trade
Ventures that come out of the academy’s venture-building pathway create local business. Some of that value comes back as mentoring, partnerships and demand for the academy’s work.
Capital that recycles
Loans as well as grants. When a founder repays a loan, the money funds the next founder, and the relationship carries on.
Alumni who return
People taught here come back as trainers, mentors and directors. This is the one part of the cycle that can already be seen happening.
DreamSpace Academy already earns money, from its training and from client projects done by its media lab and software lab. But the organisation does not yet pay for itself (self-financing), with earned revenue and a share from franchise partners covering all of the work.
One part of the work has got there. The media lab paid its own way, and only then was DreamSpace Productions set up from it as a separate venture. The cycle above does not describe how the whole organisation works today.
How the academy describes its role
Two of the largest early programmes came to DreamSpace Academy through other organisations. The funder paid one organisation, which passed the work on, and so on down a chain. The academy was third in one chain and fourth in the other. In neither case did the funder give the grant to the academy directly.
That leads to two rules:
- Work done for another organisation (sub-contracted) is not described as the academy’s own programme. The academy says it took part as the incubator or as the delivery partner. That names its role without claiming the programme was its own.
- The academy does not write that it ran a particular funder’s programme when that funder did not hire it. Anybody who checks will find another organisation in between.
The academy has been on the receiving end of the same arrangement it now plans to run: incubated by one organisation, sub-contracted by two others. That is useful experience. It is not evidence that the academy can run the arrangement from the other end.
Bridging: different arrangements behind one word
Bridging means connecting people and work here with people and work elsewhere. The academy uses the word for four different arrangements. Each one has different money, a different partner on the other side, and different ways it can go wrong.
They are never added together into one number. Only one of them says anything about whether the academy’s way of working can be copied in other places.
| Arrangement | What moves | Who is responsible if the work goes wrong | Does it show the work can be copied elsewhere? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trainer placement | An individual. | The funder’s own programme. The academy plays no part in running the work. | No. It is income for one person. |
| Delivery devolution | The work in a group of schools (a cluster) or a district. | A local organisation, employing its own staff. | Yes. This is the only arrangement that works like a franchise. |
| Venue and convening | The use of the academy’s premises, and its name to bring people together. | Whoever runs the event. | No. It is hosting, not running a programme. |
| Exposure | Access to the contacts and networks the academy is part of. | Nobody. No programme is being run. | No. And the people who gain from it are often the academy’s own staff. |
Devolution: local organisations deliver school programmes
In this arrangement (devolution), the academy hands the running of school programmes to local organisations. Each one runs a cluster of schools with its own staff. Local people deliver the work, which is what was missing where one of the academy’s hubs closed.
Handing work to local organisations does not show that the academy’s way of working can be copied elsewhere. There are three reasons:
- The academy did not build those organisations. It handed work to groups that already existed, and handing work on is not the same as incubating a new organisation.
- The academy’s name is on work it does not control, which puts quality at risk.
- No terms are written down for any of these clusters: not the agreement, not the money, not the quality check.
The academy says that it hands school programmes to local organisations, and those organisations can be named. It does not count their clusters as units it built.
Replication: taking a site somewhere else
To open a physical site somewhere new, the academy uses the MakerSpace, run as a social franchise:
- a local partner provides the space for a unit rooted in its community
- the academy provides the unit’s design, a shared brand, shared quality standards, and a licence to run its programmes there
The programmes themselves do not need a franchise to travel. They also run in schools, at partner sites and online.
Any money left over after costs (surplus) is meant to go back into the work, not be taken out of it[48, 49, 51]. Before designing, costing or opening anything, the academy first studies the place and the community it would serve (a site diagnosis).
Replication explains this in detail: what stays the same everywhere, what must be adapted locally, and what the quality standards ask of each site.