Trustees agree 2027 programme targets
Five figures the Foundation will measure itself against, published before the work begins rather than after it ends.
At their first planning meeting the trustees agreed a set of targets for the Foundation’s programmes to reach by the end of 2027. They are published on the homepage, labelled as targets rather than results, and they are the numbers we expect to be judged against.
The targets
Five figures cover the first two years of delivery.
- Five thousand people trained through Foundation programmes.
- Forty communities reached with hubs or courses.
- Three thousand women and young people supported into skills or work.
- Sixty per cent of participants in work or further study within six months of finishing.
- Twenty-five partnerships formed with government, industry and universities.
Each programme page carries its own targets underneath these, at the level of cohorts, hubs and fellows.
Why publish targets before the work starts
The honest reason is that it removes an option we would otherwise have. An organisation that sets its targets after the fact will, with the best will in the world, choose the measures it happens to have done well on. Publishing in advance closes that door. It also lets a prospective partner or funder assess whether our ambition is proportionate to our size before committing anything.
There is a cost to this. Some of these numbers will be wrong, and being wrong in public is uncomfortable. We think that is a reasonable price for being checkable.
How they were set
The targets were built from the bottom up rather than chosen because they sounded impressive. A Digital Futures cohort is twenty-four people. A hub can support a known number of regular users given one facilitator and six shared laptops. Multiply by the number of cohorts and hubs we believe we can staff and fund, and you arrive at a figure.
The trustees then pushed two of the numbers up and one of them down. The one that came down was the six-month progression rate, because the evidence from comparable programmes suggested our first estimate was optimistic for a first cohort with no employer relationships yet established.
The number we are least sure about
Sixty per cent in work or further study at six months is the target we would revise first. It depends on the labour market, on employer partnerships that do not yet exist, and on our ability to keep in touch with people six months after they finish, which is harder than it sounds and is where most tracking quietly fails.
We are publishing it anyway, with that caveat attached, because a target you only publish once you are confident of hitting it is not a target.
What could change them
The baseline study running across six communities in the Federal Capital Territory may contradict assumptions built into these figures. If it does, we will revise the targets before delivery begins and say here what changed and why. Revising a target in response to evidence is legitimate. Revising it in response to underperformance is not, and we will not do the second while calling it the first.
How we will report
Our first annual report, covering 2026 and 2027, is due in 2027. It will give actual figures against each of these targets, with the method used to measure them, and it will name the ones we missed alongside the ones we met.
Until then these numbers stay on the homepage marked clearly as targets. If you ever see them presented as achievements, that is an error and we would like to know about it.
