Ofcom Community Radio Fund Grant - Final Report

Resonance was Awarded a Grant in the 2024 round of Ofcom's Community Radio Fund to support staff costs in relation to audio production projects, specifically, the management and delivery of revenue generation in speech recording activities. The role focuses on diversifying income streams that will provide a long-term self-sustaining income for Resonance. We're really grateful to Ofcom for their support. In accordance with the Grant Agreement, we're publishing non-confidential excerpts from our final grant report below.

The grant paid for staff costs related to new commercial income streams at Resonance’s new premises in Waterloo, primarily in relation to premises and studio hire and selected audio production services. With the recording project in its initial early stages in early March 2024, the responsibilities of project set-up, delivery, engineering, studio hire and audio production were spread across several staff, freelancers and engineers. Initially, the project was to deliver batches of audio periodically throughout the year, with up to 900 speakers in Q4 2023/24 and again in 2024/25. Since the project was staged in sections of a few hundred speakers at a time, without guarantee of future orders, we opted to direct freelance staff time to the project and employ engineering flexibly across: Freelance Production Engineer/Trainer, Technical Manager and Project Lead.

The grant has significantly improved the sustainability of the station, covering delivery costs worth £18,056, enabling us to realise significant income and contributing significantly to our projected operating surplus. We have also established a new capability for recording services and a template for commercial studio hire that is scalable and replicable.

The activity has boosted our off-air social gain resulting in more than 900 potential volunteers and members of the public visiting our premises, many of whom heard about our work and gone on to volunteer. Several of our current key volunteers found out about our work through this programme. The project has boosted volunteer engagement and enabled us to share skills related to audio production which have allowed us to hire out our Main Studio. The income raised from the project has enabled us to finance the build of our new Main Studio and begin work on a second broadcast studio (est. completion: September 2025), using recycled equipment from our studio on Borough High Street, further contributing to on-air and off-air social gain objectives and increasing our training and broadcast capacity.

We're incredibly grateful to the Community Radio Fund for its support.