To raise sufficient income to drive impact and to reach our organisational goals, in line with our strategy for 2022 - 2025.

Project Address: LexIcon Library and Cultural Centre, Queen's Rd, Dún Laoghaire, Dublin, Ireland

While we are clear about WHAT we want to achieve, we are less sure about HOW to ensure that we have sufficient funding to deliver our goals. The below are some of the actions we believe we need to take:
1. Increase our traded revenue: while we have been successfully growing our traded income, the growth has been slower than anticipated. The school environment is a difficult market to sell to: they are busy and distracted, and each school’s attitude to and budget for internet safety is different. The Dept of Education has not made it compulsory that this topic must be covered so it is up to each individual school whether to cover it and no additional budget is made available for it. Moreover, schools tend to have limited budgets to spend on external training and there are many competitors in the space (other internet safety providers and other trainers, eg anti bullying, mental health etc). The Covid pandemic also impacted negatively on our sales growth with school closures and when they reopened, schools were struggling to catch up or adapt to the ‘new normal’.

We diversified into other markets, e.g. social workers, non-formal youth services, children’s charities and corporates with some success but believe we need to take a more strategic approach to really tap into these potential markets. Furthermore, we developed two new products (the CyberSafeTool for Schools and an eLearning course) but have struggled to build sufficient sales.

2. Develop relationship with Government and other statutory bodies: we want the Government to make internet safety compulsory or part of the school curriculum. In addition, we would like to explore securing accreditation for our schools programme. We also want to develop a working partnership with Tusla, which is the dedicated State agency responsible for improving wellbeing and outcomes for Irish children.

3. Corporate relationships: to date our relationships (and income) from corporates has been ad hoc. In recent years, we have built some very successful relationships (for example with Permanent TSB bank and Accenture), but overall we need a more robust strategy to engage with corporates in order to secure longer-term partnerships and funding opportunities. In addition, we feel there is scope to engage in CSR activities and ask corporates to sponsor part of our education programme (so it could be offered for free). 

4. Fundraising and Giving: to explore options around fundraising and establish a Giving Circle

5. International / European funding: we are a small team with limited capacity. To date, we have not properly explored funding that may be available internationally and we believe this would be a worthwhile exercise.

We want CyberSafeKids to be on a secure and sustainable financial footing so that we can deliver our strategic objectives, specifically ensuring that children are safer in online environments.

We have a target to reach the following income targets by May 2024: