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Economic Impact Institute

Building the digital foundations for a new economic think tank

A new-formation CIC needed a professional digital presence, a research library and a way to publish briefings to policy audiences from day one.

Visit the live site
Weeks from kickoff to launch
[X]
Publications in the launch library
[X]
Team members editing without dev involvement
[X]

Draft seed. This case study is scaffolding for the real EII write-up. Every [X] and [TODO(copy)] is intentionally visible. Do not publish (featured: true will still surface it on the home page during development, so flip to false before shipping if needed).

The organisation

The Economic Impact Institute is a newly formed Community Interest Company working at the intersection of academic economics and public policy. Its founders came together to build an independent think tank that publishes accessible, rigorous work aimed at UK policymakers, journalists and civil society.

The challenge

A new organisation launching in the policy space starts with a credibility gap. A funder, a journalist or a partner department needs to see a legitimate operation (website, research output, team, contact) before it will engage. At the same time, the founding team is small and cannot spend weeks learning a bespoke CMS in order to publish a briefing.

They came to us with three needs:

  • A professional-looking website that reflects the seriousness of the work.
  • A structured library for briefings, papers and policy notes with proper metadata (topic, author, published date, DOI where relevant).
  • An editorial workflow the team can operate themselves from day one, no round-tripping through a developer to publish.

What we built

Digital Presence. A production website built on modern tooling (Next.js, TypeScript, Vercel), designed around the reader (press, policy, funders) rather than the organisation. Accessibility to WCAG 2.2 AA. Fast on mobile. Real photography and typography commissioned to match the seriousness of the work.

Digital Systems. A publications library with:

  • Structured front matter (topic, author, published date, format, DOI)
  • Author profiles that pull automatically into every piece they've written
  • A "policy briefing" content type with an executive summary, key findings and downloadable PDF
  • A search index built at deploy time. Instant, no third-party tool needed

Editorial workflow. The team writes in Markdown via a browser-based editor with a preview panel. Draft, review, publish, no developer in the loop. Version control lives underneath (Git) so nothing is ever lost.

Digital Partnership. Ongoing monthly support: updates, small improvements, second-opinion advice on things like DOI registration and paper metadata standards.

The outcome

  • Site launched [X] weeks from kickoff.
  • [X] briefings live at launch, with the editorial pipeline running end-to-end.
  • [X] team members editing and publishing without developer support.
[TODO(copy): client testimonial]

Reflections

Building for a new organisation is a rare chance to get the foundations right the first time. We chose modern, boring tooling that will still work in five years, kept the content model narrow enough to actually use, and made the editorial experience the first-class citizen. If you're launching something in the sector and want to skip the "everything on WordPress" trap, get in touch.

Ready when you are.

Tell us what you're trying to do. A short, free conversation is often enough to see the shape of what you need.