Coronavirus - COVID-19 Update
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have taken the decision to close ODI Leeds for events and workspace hire until at least 1 May.
We began our 7th year at the start of March 2020, with significant expectations and hopeful that we would be able to continue our growth and progress to date.
As you know ODI Leeds is a completely independent non-profit business that receives no direct funding from any public or private body or organisation. We generate revenue for our mission-led work in four ways:
- Sponsors
- Innovation & Collaboration Workspace
- Innovation Projects
- Data Projects
Coronavirus has had a major impact upon our Innovation & Collaboration Workspace operations, which will inevitably impact our Innovation & Data Projects, as many of these start out as events and from the conversations and interactions that happen at ODI Leeds.
ODI Leeds will need to act quickly and pro-actively to ensure our business survival.
We have reviewed all of our operations and this is our current plan:
Events & Space Hire
We have taken the decision to close for all events until at least 1st May. In reality we are not expecting any new events or workspace, large or small to be booked at ODI Leeds for at least 3 months.
We have a five star food hygiene rating, and have reviewed our hygiene and space operating processes and will continue with our improved cleaning procedures.
Sponsorship
Many of our sponsors renew their sponsorship at the start of the calendar year and at the end and start of the Financial year.
Almost all of our sponsors have committed for 2020 & 2020/21 - we thank them very much for this show of support. Our Sponsorship & Data Projects team will work out how we best support our sponsors over the next few months - as an organisation that is built upon the web of data and the internet we already have ideas on how we can work with them and have the tools to help :)
We have always managed our costs closely and we have completed a full financial review of our operations and wherever possible we will be looking to manage our costs.
Action
We are by nature an optimistic organisation and therefore our team will be working on ways we can help and support all of our sponsors, our communities, and people & organisations who need assistance.
We will be sharing and updating the projects and programmes we already have in progress, and also looking for opportunities for new projects that are align with our sponsor's priorities and our mission-led ethos.
We are already using the sponsorship support to start a project under our #OpenDataSavesLives programme to convene, collate, crowd-source, and then map & visualise important data about COVID-19 to help us all navigate what I am sure will be a very challenging six months or so.
ODI Leeds is part of an amazing data community. We might all need a little extra help and support at this time, so lets help each other weather this storm.
