Wrapping up 2025, Hello 2026!

Happy Boxing Day! In the UK, we are observing Boxing Day today and whether you're out shopping today or watching a football match or eating yesterday's leftovers, we hope you're still getting some time to rejuvenate before welcoming 2026.

As we are thinking about it too, we've been reflecting on our year as well. Yes, we had some setbacks - like a client we were super excited about who ghosted us and refused to pay despite having access to more than half of the work being done (I'll blog about it).

Let's start with our favourite parts of 2025:

In no particular order, we're taking a moment to celebrate our favourite parts of 2025:

1. Taking this from one to two of us. I started this earlier on my own in 2024 and it felt right when Shumaila came on board. She brings a great wealth of experience and insight, and her interest in data analytics is key to Strides Insights and what we can do for clients.

2. Getting our first client. Thanks Muriel, your belief in our work was great! Look out for our blog post on this in the coming weeks about the work we did for her.

3. Planning for and running our workshops. We enjoyed the format and the chance to meet some great people who were interested in the same kind of work. Doing these especially after the setbacks we had in the summer made us

4. Business development programmes - Seeds Hub and CatalyseHer. Having a community with other businesses for good was fantastic. Seeds Hub helped us work on some business fundamentals and CatalyseHer pushed us to really think about our impact. I can't wait to share what we did with our CatalyseHer pitch in January, when the winners get announced because it was good to learn how to send in a pitch.

5. Getting this website and blog up. Because we get to have a little space on the Internet to share these thoughts with you.

What will we do more of in 2026?

Of course, we are also going to add a few things we'll do more of in 2026:

1. Deposits up front. Our initial 30 minute consultations will still be free, but we are not conducting work or providing advice without an initial deposit or payment. From previous work experience, it also prevents data projects from bias later on when clients request changes because results are not dependent on whether we will get paid.

2. More fractional work and workshops. We are limiting consultation projects because we enjoy having a long-term relationship with our clients and we enjoy working with workshop clients on their research, data and public policy practice.

3. Leaning into our impact. We know we want to know we're doing what we set out to do: make data, research and public policy work more accessible to smaller organisations.

From our CatalyseHer pitch

We look forward to doing more of this with you in 2026! Thank you for your business, your support and your encouragement.