Graduating is just the start
By the time our cohort reaches the end of our 18-week incubation programme, they know they have been on a journey. “Transformational” and “life-changing” are words that often appear in our final exit survey. But we know that the end of the incubation programme is when their real work begins – and often, that means raising funds.
For our 2025 cohort, almost all initiatives were able to secure enough of their year-one budget to launch. Around $250,000 of that funding came from seed grants that we provide ourselves on graduation, but the majority was raised from external donors and foundations. Since graduating in November, our 2025 cohort has collectively secured more than $1.5 million in just six months – an 85% increase on the previous year’s graduates. This brings the total raised by all initiatives that the K4G team have helped kickstart since 2022 to more than $10 million.
Measuring the ongoing impact of our graduates
Raising funds is not, in itself, a measure of impact or success and as a programme, our own success is measured by the impact of our alumni. For the more mature initiatives we helped kickstart several years ago, measuring that impact is much easier – it is now visible. However, with new organisations, we look for the early indicators that suggest they are gaining traction and that impact is likely to follow.
For a minimum of two years after graduating, our alumni are contractually-obliged to report their metrics to us each quarter. And although we track many different KPIs and OKRs, the amount of funding a new initiative is able to raise from impact-focused donors has proven to be a useful general indicator.
Some of our highest-raising initiatives from our 2025 cohort include:
- Documentary filmmaker support org Who Let The Docs Out, who have also now become a new re-granter for filmmakers in the movement in their own right.
- Hospitality consultants Vegan Hospitality who are helping the hospitality and tourism industry change menus and create accessible and attractive plant-forward guest experiences.
- Lawyer community Lawyers for Animals who are helping to bring private prosecutions as a result of footage from over 100 farm investigations where authorities have failed to act.
- Movement builders AGORA who are facilitating local leadership retreats and conferences conducted in the participants’ own language and context.
Measuring the ongoing impact of our graduates
Of course, not all ideas work out, and that is a crucial part of the incubation process. You can never be completely sure about all the assumptions we help our cohort stress-test during the incubator until the rubber hits the road. As boxer Mike Tyson put it, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.”
Also, some ideas were never meant to work out. K4G does not exist simply to launch new initiatives; we exist to create a huge positive impact in our movement. And an important part of the work we do is stopping as many “bad” ideas from launching as we do helping develop new ones. If a talented founder spends several years working on the wrong idea, that is a huge loss to the movement. If instead we can help them pivot, realign, strengthen, or, in some extreme cases, even shut down an idea that was never going anywhere – freeing up a talented founder to work on something more impactful – then that can have as much value as launching a new successful initiative.
Because when the right talented individuals are matched with the right impactful ideas, funding often follows.