Knowledge Futures is an independent nonprofit organization that partners directly with knowledge creators to make information useful. We began 2023 in a strong position to make some key strategic changes to ensure the health of our organization. After a successful fundraise in 2022, we had the runway, leadership, and organizational nimbleness in place to test out some changes to PubPub that would enable us to better respond to the needs of our users. This report reflects on how our work in 2023 enabled us to launch a new version of PubPub—PubPub Platform—in 2024. It will also provide more information about what we seek to accomplish in the year ahead. We will continue to lay the foundation upon which Knowledge Futures can become an institution that groups seek out to make their information useful and to achieve real progress.
Organizational Updates
Leadership Changes
To succeed in achieving our sustainability goals and advance the mission of Knowledge Futures, a change in the configuration of KF’s leadership team was needed. As of our board meeting in April 2024, Travis Rich, KF’s co-founder and first Executive Director, has stepped away from this role to begin a new one: Head of Research and Development. This new function within the organization directly reflects that we intend to show up for our collaborators with flexibility and creativity to define and realize new possibilities. Zach Verdin, our former Head of Growth and Innovation, is now the Executive Director of Knowledge Futures.
“This decision stems from the recognition that we require a renewed focus on the technical vision that initially inspired our creation. By prioritizing R&D, we are creating a space for rapid idea development, prototyping, and discovery which allows us to say yes to more ideas, explore possibilities more quickly, and fully commit to the iterative, collaborative process that leads to transformative advancements. Concurrently, we need a leader who is energized by driving our organizational vision and goals, and Zach is exceptionally suited to this role.” —Travis Rich
“I believe deeply in our new mission to make information useful and I deeply believe in our team. We have realized the idea of a new kind of knowledge organization thanks to Travis being bold enough to start; his humility and leadership (especially in this moment); and the team, friends, and fellow travelers who have contributed to Knowledge Futures since 2015. Now we need to advance it. This is a position and moment for which I feel uniquely qualified.” —Zach Verdin
KF embarks on partnership with Unjournal to design and build what will become the initial features of PubPub Platform
Supporting a more bespoke review process for this overlay journal meant designing with both flexibility and specificity to accommodate Unjournal’s highly structured evaluation workflow. The process and development required to do so paved the way for KF’s conception of PubPub Platform.
As a multi-organizational collaboration with CHOP and UPenn, we launched an interactive course on Academic Entrepreneurship based on the book they published with us on PubPub in 2022.
Co-edited by Iowa State’s Abbey Elder and Simon Fraser University’s Juan Pablo Alperin, this series asked how we can better our recognition models in academia.
Given the rapid evolution and mounting societal impact of generative AI, the Office of the President saw an opportunity to promote the technology's responsible and publicly beneficial uses, inform the public conversation, and foster wise, farsighted policy. It did so by publishing papers within 8 categories from groups across MIT.
PubPub Platform
PubPub Platform is as much a change in how we work with communities as it is a shift in the infrastructure we’re building. We have learned that many communities want to work with us and pay for our services, but to do so at a greater scale they require a more custom implementation of PubPub for their specific needs than PubPub Legacy can provide. PubPub Platform responds to these needs by providing a customizable, full-stack knowledge infrastructure. We will spend 2024 building out the core features of PubPub Platform and solidifying key initial partnerships. We will announce these partnerships and publish the demos that emerge from our work together for all to see.
At its core, PubPub Platform is a centrally hosted tool that allows groups to customize their workflow and their publishing outputs, including various file types and knowledge applications. The possibilities of what can be done with PubPub Platform go well beyond anything that can be published using our current editor and site builder. In addition to providing this flexibility, PubPub Platform has also been built with no proprietary dependencies, allowing it to be much more easily self-hosted and deployed on-prem than PubPub Legacy. Excitingly, many of our first Platform partners are groups we were already working with on Legacy. We hope this continues to be the case.
You will find a full description of the new PubPub Platform and how we will be working with partners moving forward on our website.
At the time of publication for this report, the audit of KF’s FY2023 financial statement has not yet concluded. When it does, the report and associated tax statements will be available on the KF website.
Revenues
FY 20231
FY 20222
Gifts & Grants
$84,649
$1,910,625
Services
$198,927
$90,715
Membership
$201,900
$96,554
Total Revenues
$485,521
$2,097,894
Expenses
Personnel
$2,139,159
$1,565,545
Professional Fees
$625,945
$200,753
Travel, Meetings, & Events
$61,214
$26,420
General & Administrative
$150,785
$106,501
Other
$13,875
Total Expenses
$2,990,978
$1,899,219
You can view financial and tax statements from previous years on our website.
Knowledge Futures, Inc. is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization in the United States of America. Tax identification number: 84-3111259
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0)
