One of the toughest things about being a private limited company working in the social space is that we don’t neatly fit into the usual boxes.
We’re not eligible for most grants, donations or publicly funding initiatives. And to the uninitiated, the words private company can trigger an assumption that money must be “swishing about”, or that profit somehow comes before purpose.
The reality couldn’t be further from the truth.
Being a private company means that, aside from the occasional grant, the only money we can truly rely on is the revenue our customers choose to spend with us. That constraint has shaped us in ways I’ve come to value deeply. It forces focus.
- Focus on delivering a genuinely great service.
- Focus on making our platform better.
- Focus on stripping away the noise that often comes with networking and new business development.
- Focus on pursuing excellence.
Over time, I’ve come to realise that this focus is our USP. It drives us to keep pushing - carefully, responsibly and as hard as we can afford - to deliver something of real value.
What we’re building next
Looking ahead to 2026, we’re preparing to push harder than ever.
In the new year, we’ll be launching a powerful new search experience for our Enterprise clients. All of our platforms have seen recent upgrades, where users typing in everyday language are prompted with helpful synonyms and are guided towards carefully curated combinations of user-generated and hand-crafted content. For example, someone typing “I am lonely” can now be gently directed toward relevant, supportive resources rather than a mere list of links.
Next, we’ll build on this with semantic search - technology that understands meaning, not just keywords. Instead of matching exact words, semantic search interprets intent. It allows people to discover activities, community members and content together, even if they don’t quite know how to describe what they’re looking for. And it keeps learning so that the next search is even better than the one before (similar to Google).
Alongside this, we’re developing a guided conversations tool that creates personalised pathways for users, based on what they’re experiencing and how severe those challenges might be. The goal is simple: to help people feel understood, not overwhelmed.
This idea began last year while exploring these challenges with partners in Carmarthenshire. In 2026, we’re hoping to co-design this work with them and with our clients in Warrington, alongside the Department of Health and Social Care who reached out to our clients in Warrington when they heard about this development. Together, we want to create an easy-to-use self-help portal that helps residents find the right support at the right time; in doing so, reducing unnecessary contact with adult social care services (and without creating any new additional resources).
Measuring what matters
The rapid development of AI in 2025 certainly opened my eyes to what might now be possible. We’d be foolish to ignore it and my plan is to make 2026 the year we use AI to become more sophisticated at reporting. Mind you, it's complicated...
Our platforms support a whole-system approach where friends / relatives / neighbours / groups / professionals / businesses / charities access tools to support one another. Every stakeholder, whether affected or affecting, has different reporting needs.
A charity, for example, may want to understand the Social Value created by its volunteers. A GP practice, by contrast, is more likely to focus on how many unnecessary appointments or hospital admissions were prevented. A business might be interested in the collective impact of their employer-supported volunteering programme, while a professional working in Adult Social Care may care most about how many appropriate referrals were made to alternative community resources. A true whole-system approach needs to measure all of these outcomes.
Before AI, this would have been a huge, costly project. Over Christmas, however, I built the bare bones of a reporting tool that can already begin to answer some of these questions. I’m genuinely excited to develop this further.
It will require careful co-design with our Enterprise clients and require us to capture a few new datasets but, on the whole, we already have a lot of data we can interpret and we can achieve a lot of new insights with what we have.
Why Enterprise matters in 2026
I’ve mentioned our Enterprise model a few times and I want to clarify what that means in practice. This year we're being more selective about what we deliver and for whom. That’s partly a response to rising costs but also a deliberate strategic choice.
Technology and innovation requires sustained investment - not just in development, but in security, reliability, support and long-term maintenance. At the same time, the costs of running a responsible tech business have increased sharply in recent years, from pension contributions and tax rises to salaries and third-party services.
The Enterprise model enables us to focus on the level of quality and reliability our customers expect, while creating a sustainable foundation for ongoing investment.
This model is a genuine win-win. It works for us by generating the income we need to keep improving the platform. It works for our clients by enabling collaborate and shared resources (including licence costs). And it works for communities by providing a single, easy-to-access front door for information and support, rather than being bounced between separate organisations.
What started as a theory back in 2018 is now a proven strategy, with places like Devon Connect, Connect Torfaen, Connect RCT, Living Well Warrington and others leading the way. Our Innovator model remains excellent and high value for money, but if collaboration is going to thrive, it has to be worth the effort. That's why we're committed to delivering clearer and more tangible benefits for Enterprise clients.
Supporting grassroots communities
Of course, we know many grassroots groups want to use technology like ours, but they operate on tiny budgets and may not have the network or size of community to justify any sort of half-decent investment in our software. Besides which, there's Facebook and WhatsApp!
That’s a challenge, because we want our social impact to reach as far and wide as possible and each year we receive dozens and dozens of enquiries that we simply struggle to support.
We’ve tried to support these organisations before, and—if I’m honest—we haven’t always succeeded. Even a £500-a-year licence can come with significant support needs, especially with a sophisticated platform like ours.
This year, informed by some excellent feedback, we’re going to try again—but differently. We’ll be launching a new, more affordable timebanking platform designed specifically for community timebanks and micro-volunteering. Rather than fully bespoke systems, this will be a shared platform—more like WhatsApp—where groups can create their own space with timebanking built in. Group owners will be able to control what members can do: post offers and requests, log hours, send thank-yous, run events, and use small incentives—all within a fair and trusted system. Pricing will start at around £500 per year, with optional upgrades for things like advanced stats, micro-incentives, donations, custom landing pages and memorable URLs. Going Where the Energy Is For the past 15 months, Made Open has been a quiet partner in testing Time4Good with charities in Plymouth and Cornwall, while also talking with larger organisations about neighbourhood health initiatives. Ironically—despite being based in Cornwall—our first Time4Good contract is with a charity in Maine, USA. With the enormous challenges facing the US right now, including cuts to Medicaid, this organisation sought us out after seeing what we were doing. We worked hard together to make it happen. I’d love to do more locally—and we will—but I’ve learned to follow a simple rule: go where the energy is. Life’s too short to chase shadows. A Personal Note On a personal level, my focus in 2025 shifted toward strategy—articulating what was already in my head and helping clients think more clearly about what I call the five Ps: purpose, partners, platform, processes and people. I didn’t quite finish that work, but I will in 2026, and I’m looking forward to embedding it into how our clients operate day to day. I absolutely love what I do. Yes, there are moments when I feel deflated—when I wonder why a vision of a kinder, more connected world isn’t more widespread. But those moments are also what drive me. When I was younger, I wasn’t always treated kindly. These days, I sometimes think about thanking those people—for giving me such clear direction to head in the opposite direction. Last year, in my personal life, I had just one interaction with a supplier who did exactly what they said they’d do: on time, on budget. I don’t know whether service standards slipped after Covid or whether it’s cultural, but it’s something I care deeply about. I arrive on time. I do what I say I’ll do. I try to be helpful, cheerful, and respectful. I keep my opinions in check. I try to be interesting. It’s not complicated—but it matters. That mindset runs through Made Open. Quietly. Consistently. And with a lot of heart. Here’s to 2026—and to going where the energy is.