# Kolab | Virtual Facilitation Platform for Workshops & Cohorts> Run workshops, cohorts, and multi-session programs in one immersive space. Video, canvas, spatial audio, and facilitation tools — built for gatherings, not meetings. --- ## Kolab | Virtual Facilitation Platform for Workshops & Cohorts (/) Kolab | Virtual Facilitation Platform for Workshops & Cohorts Skip to content Digital gatherings for humans. Kolab brings connection, creativity, and flow back to the digital space. Not another meeting tool - a living environment for facilitators, educators, and teams who care about presence. Try for free → Book a demo Trusted by teams worldwide Kolab suite Tools for human-centered digital collaboration Explore creative rooms, open with playful warm-ups, sketch side-by-side, spark pulse reactions, and let AI support the flow. Flow spaces & breakouts Move fluidly between rooms with a visible map and presence bubbles. Learn more → Icebreakers World Map, Monster Build, and Hidden Objects to warm up cameras fast. Learn more → Infinite canvas Sketch, cluster, and remix ideas with live cursors on a roomy board. Learn more → Agree / Disagree spectrum Gauge sentiment in seconds with playful spectrum reactions. Learn more → AI co-facilitation Prompts, clustering, and live summaries without stealing the mic. Learn more → Presence signals Cursors, reactions, and breakout changes surfaced live so you stay ahead. Learn more → What if digital spaces could feel like a… Playground Connected creativity A canvas for every moment Start fast with 200+ interactive templates designed for every kind of gathering. How it works Designed for engagement and connection A digital facilitation platform that respects how humans actually collaborate. Try for free → Welcome Set the stage together Drop people into an immersive map with cameras naturally on so everyone feels seen from the first beat. Spark Warm up with play Spin up World Map, Monster Build, or Hidden Objects to get voices flowing and cameras comfortable. Flow Move through the map Hop between rooms, keep presence bubbles visible, and let everyone track where the action is. Decide Make decisions visible Cluster ideas on the canvas, then pulse Agree/Disagree to land decisions without losing momentum. See it in action A better way to gather online A quick look at what makes Kolab sessions feel different from your average video call. It's working Digital facilitation that actually works Early data is unmistakable — sessions run in Kolab outperform standard Zoom meetings on every major engagement metric. 95% More engagement than video calls 2-3x Faster prep with AI + templates 200+ Ready-to-use templates ✳ Self-reported results from early pilots Purpose Built Tools for the whole team Teaching a class? Running a team meeting? Hosting a workshop? Kolab gives you the tools you need to succeed. I'm a Facilitator I'm a Program Leader I'm an Educator I'm a Team Organizer The Facilitator Run workshops, trainings, and guided sessions with engagement tools, templates, spatial audio, and flow control that feel in-person. Engagement tools, templates, and spatial audio built for live facilitation Flow control to move people through rooms without losing them Brings "in-person energy" online for facilitators, trainers, coaches, consultants The Program Leader Design and deliver multi-week cohorts, fellowships, accelerators, and learning journeys with persistent rooms, repeatable templates, and analytics in one home base. Persistent rooms and repeatable templates for every session Analytics to track cohort health across weeks Becomes the "home" for fellowships, accelerators, and L&D programs The Educator Teach interactive classes, seminars, or applied modules with guided breakouts, dialogue-first formats, templates, and engagement data that support human-centric pedagogy. Breakout flow and group discussion formats that are easy to see and guide Templates that keep students active in applied learning Engagement data that supports human-centric pedagogy for innovation labs and exec ed The Team Organizer Coordinate distributed teams for planning, retros, and collaborative strategy with shared canvases, async contribution, and better-than-Zoom collaboration in one environment. Shared canvases and async contribution with clear outcomes Breakouts and ceremonies that keep decisions visible Replaces Zoom + Miro + Slack for strategy leads, PMs, innovation and remote teams Testimonials What our users say “ Kolab helped our virtual sessions feel like we were really in the room together. Unlike typical video calls, the platform's spatial design and audio zones created an environment where people could move, connect, and share more openly. Philip Davidovich | Project Director Impact Fellowships Network (IREX) “ Kolab has given our Accelerator programs a completely different kind of virtual space — one that felt human, interactive, and made facilitation feel natural. 76% of participants in our most recent global cohort told us that Kolab enriched their learning experience. Samhir Vasdev | Founder and CEO DEV Design “ The platform really encourages people to turn their camera on and interact in a very natural way - no pressure (ugh) from the facilitator needed. Whitney Pyles Adams | Digital Learning Strategist Innovation + Global Development ← → Upcoming Events Join us live Hands-on workshops and sessions for facilitators and teams. View all events → Get started Experience the difference Try Kolab free for 14 days or book a personalized demo. Try for free → Book a demo --- ## About | Kolab (/about) About | Kolab Skip to content Building the future of human connection. Digital doesn't have to feel distant. Kolab exists to make online spaces feel alive, present, and deeply human. Our Mission Making distance disappear We're on a mission to transform digital facilitation. Not by adding more features, but by fundamentally rethinking how platforms should respect human behavior. Spatial awareness. Proximity audio. Natural navigation. These aren't just features - they're a philosophy of design that puts human connection first. Our Values What drives us Intimacy at scale Digital spaces shouldn't get colder as they grow. Kolab is engineered so large gatherings still feel personal. Natural over forced When the environment feels right, people turn their cameras on naturally. No pressure. No policies. Just presence. Gathering over broadcasting One-to-many is TV. Many-to-many is human. Our Story Experience meets empathy Kolab was born at TechChange, a team with 15 years of experience running live, cohort-based programs around the world. After convening over a million facilitators, educators, and community leaders, we saw a clear pattern: most digital platforms drain energy instead of creating connection. So we built Kolab - by facilitators, for facilitators - to honor how people actually gather and connect. Our Vision Where we're going We're building the future of digital gathering - spaces where movement replaces muting, sound follows proximity, ideas persist, and AI handles the invisible work. Not another broadcast tool, but a better environment to gather, imagine, and connect. Get started Experience the difference Try Kolab free for 14 days or book a personalized demo. Try for free → Book a demo --- ## A Butter Alternative for Facilitators | Kolab (/butter-alternative) A Butter Alternative for Facilitators | Kolab Skip to content Still missing Butter? A lot of facilitators never really replaced it. Zoom plus a board plus a polling tool is not the same thing, and everyone who used Butter knows it. Here is the most useful thing we can offer you, and it is not a demo. Send us a session you actually have to run. We'll build it in Kolab for you. Pick something real from your calendar. A workshop, a training, a cohort kickoff, a retro. Send us the agenda, or just describe how you used to run it in Butter. We will build the whole thing in Kolab, walk you through it on video, and hand it over. You run it. There is no charge for the first one and no card required. Send us your session See how Kolab compares Here's exactly what happens: you send the agenda, we reply within one business day with any questions, and within about a week you get a built Kolab space plus a short video walking you through it. Then you run it, or you don't. Either way the space is yours to keep. The question you should be asking "Why won't you shut down too?" This is the first thing every ex-Butter facilitator asks us, and it is the right question. You invested years of practice into a tool that disappeared. You are owed a straight answer rather than a reassuring one. When Butter announced its sunset, Jakob was unusually honest about why, and he was clear that it was not Miro's decision. He gave three reasons. Butter never reached sustainable revenue across five years. Running a video service carries brutal variable costs. And after the pandemic, most large companies consolidated on Teams, Meet or Zoom, and many simply would not permit an alternative. Those are three specific, structural problems. So rather than promise you we will be around forever, which nobody can honestly promise, here is how Kolab sits against each one. Butter's reason 1 Never reached sustainable revenue in five years, built largely on individual facilitator subscriptions. Where Kolab sits Kolab's revenue comes mostly from organizations buying per program, not from individuals on monthly plans. A single fellowship or cohort program is worth more than hundreds of individual seats, and it renews on a program cycle. Butter's reason 2 The variable costs of running a video conferencing service are extremely high. Where Kolab sits Still true, and we will not pretend otherwise. It is why Kolab is not chasing free-tier scale. The pricing is built to cover the cost of the sessions people actually run rather than to win a land grab. Butter's reason 3 Large companies standardized on Teams, Meet and Zoom, and many would not allow an alternative tool. Where Kolab sits This killed Butter's enterprise path, and it is the reason Kolab does not sell there. Kolab's buyers are fellowships, exchange programs, nonprofits, associations and universities who choose tools per program. Participants join by browser link with no install, which removes most of the IT objection. And the part we can actually guarantee. Kolab is independent and founder owned, built inside TechChange, which has been designing and running programs for over a decade. We are not looking for an exit. But the protection that holds no matter what happens to any company is portability, so your boards, transcripts and session content are exportable at any time, and always will be. If you followed Butter into Miro Some of you have now been acquired twice in eighteen months Butter was acquired by Miro in March 2025 and shut down in early 2026, with the best parts folded into Miro Engage. Plenty of Butter facilitators made that move because it was the path of least resistance. On September 10, 2026, Bending Spoons signed an agreement to acquire Miro for $1.355 billion, expected to close in Q4. We are not going to tell you what happens next, because nobody knows. But if you moved from Butter to Miro Engage and are now watching a second ownership change, the instinct to look around is a reasonable one. More on the Miro acquisition and what it means for facilitators Side by side What carries over, and what is genuinely different Written as honestly as we can manage. If you used Butter daily and spot something wrong here, tell us and we will fix it. Kolab Butter Built for facilitators, not meetings Yes, same premise Yes, the whole premise Agenda planner with timing Yes. Agenda and timers live in the facilitator view Yes, much loved Breakouts Yes, plus a visible map people walk between rather than being assigned Yes, with the ability to observe groups Canvas Native infinite canvas, in the room with the video Embedded, via Miro or MURAL in the toolbox Spatial audio Yes. A group of five can talk without anyone being moved or muted No Playfulness Reactions, presence signals, agree/disagree spectrum, icebreaker templates Reactions, sounds, GIFs, hands-up queue. A signature Templates 200+ templates designed to be run live Reusable session templates Third party embeds Supported, but a narrower library. Smaller team, fewer integrations Broad toolbox: Miro, MURAL, Google Docs, YouTube AI Kola, a co-facilitator that sees the canvas and helps during the session, plus transcripts and summaries after Recaps, transcripts and highlights after the session Between sessions Spaces persist. A cohort returns to the same room with last week's boards still up Session based. New room each time Status Live, independent and founder owned Shut down in early 2026 Setting expectations properly Kolab is not a Butter clone We would rather you know this before you fall in love with it again. There is real shared DNA, but these are not the same product and a few things will take adjusting. Things that might annoy you at first Kolab is spatial. People move around a map rather than being placed into rooms, which takes a session or two to get used to The canvas is native rather than an embedded Miro board, so your muscle memory will not transfer directly The integration library is narrower than Butter's toolbox was A lot of Kolab is built around multi-session programs, so some of it is overkill for a single standalone workshop Smaller team, so the roadmap moves in a different order than a funded startup's would Things you will recognize immediately It is built for the person running the session, not for the person scheduling a meeting Everything lives in one room. No tab juggling, no sharing board links in chat It is allowed to be fun. Cameras go on without anyone being asked twice Templates you can actually run, not documents you fill in Real facilitators shaping the product, several of whom ran their practices on Butter and were part of its community See the difference Fifty people into breakout groups, without clicking a thing This is the part a comparison table cannot convey. Two minutes will tell you more than the rest of this page. Real Kolab spaces. Participants join by link in the browser, with no account and nothing to install. Testimonials What our users say “ Kolab helped our virtual sessions feel like we were really in the room together. Unlike typical video calls, the platform's spatial design and audio zones created an environment where people could move, connect, and share more openly. Philip Davidovich | Project Director Impact Fellowships Network (IREX) “ Kolab has given our Accelerator programs a completely different kind of virtual space — one that felt human, interactive, and made facilitation feel natural. 76% of participants in our most recent global cohort told us that Kolab enriched their learning experience. Samhir Vasdev | Founder and CEO DEV Design “ The platform really encourages people to turn their camera on and interact in a very natural way - no pressure (ugh) from the facilitator needed. Whitney Pyles Adams | Digital Learning Strategist Innovation + Global Development ← → For organizations, not just individual facilitators Facilitating for an organization that still has a Butter-shaped hole? If you run cohorts, fellowships, accelerators or training programs, the tool gap Butter left is usually costing more than a subscription. It shows up as prep time, as energy drop in week four, and as a stack of three tools nobody wanted to be paying for. Priced per program, not per seat Grant and program funded teams budget by program. Our organizational pricing matches how the money actually arrives. Security review, handled We have a data protection and privacy overview written for IT and procurement, ready to send the day you ask. We build your first program with you Not a sandbox login. We design and build one real program cycle alongside your team. Start an organizational conversation Trusted by teams worldwide Tell us about a session you have coming up We will build it in Kolab and send you a short video walkthrough, usually within a week. No charge, no card, no obligation to switch anything. If you would rather just have the security and data protection overview to send to IT, say so below and we will send that instead. First name Email Organization (optional) Are you an independent facilitator or in-house? What's the session? Send it over → We reply within one business day. We will not add you to a drip sequence. Got it. We're on this. Someone from our team will reply within one business day to ask any questions we need, then we'll get building. In the meantime, the easiest way to feel how a Kolab session actually runs is to sit in on one: see what's coming up . Not ready to hand over a session yet? Fair enough. Come sit in on a live one instead. We run open sessions for facilitators most weeks, you join as a participant, and you get to feel how a Kolab room actually works with no sales conversation attached. If you used Butter, this is the fastest way to find out whether the feeling is there. See upcoming sessions Questions we get from people who used Butter Can I bring my Butter templates across? There is nothing left to export from, unfortunately. But send us the agenda, or just describe how the session used to run, and we will rebuild it in Kolab for you. That is what the free build is for, and ex-Butter sessions are the ones we most enjoy putting back together. What does Kolab cost? It depends on whether you are an independent facilitator or an organization running programs, because those are genuinely different products. Tell us which you are in the form above and we will send you the right number rather than making you guess from a table. Is it as playful as Butter was? Differently playful. Butter's charm was sounds, GIFs and reactions layered onto a call. Kolab's is spatial, so the play comes from people moving around a space that looks like somewhere rather than a grid. Watch the video above and judge for yourself, because this is a taste question and we would rather you decided than took our word. Do my participants need accounts? No. They join by link, in the browser, with nothing to install. That matters when you are facilitating for an org whose IT team blocks new software, which is the thing that hurt Butter most. Are there facilitators from the Butter community using Kolab? Yes, several, including people who were deeply involved in the Butter community, and some of them help shape Kolab. If you would rather talk to one of them before you talk to us, say so in the form and we will connect you. What about security and data protection? We have a security and privacy overview you can send to your IT or procurement team. Ask for it in the form, or read the summary at getkolab.ai/security . --- ## Contact | Kolab (/contact) Contact | Kolab Skip to content Let's connect. Book a demo, start a free trial, or get in touch with our team. Get in touch Tell us a little about what you're planning and we'll get back to you within one business day. First name Work email Organization (optional) Role / title (optional) What brings you here? (optional but encouraged) Send message → Thanks — we'll be in touch. We've received your message and someone from our team will reply within one business day. Ready to go? Try Kolab free Access in 2 minutes 14-day free trial Upgrade anytime Try for free → Have questions? We're here to help Contact Us hello@getkolab.ai Get Support support@getkolab.ai --- ## Kolab Design Lab: Facilitation in the Age of AI (/design-lab) Kolab Design Lab: Facilitation in the Age of AI Skip to content Kolab Design Lab · January 2027 cohort Facilitation in the age of AI A free four-week cohort for people who lead sessions. You bring one real session you have to run. We help you build it with AI inside Kolab, you rehearse it with the cohort where nothing is at stake, and then you run it for real. A cohort of about thirty, starting January 2027. Not a course about AI. A session you actually have to run, built and rehearsed before it counts. Anyone who runs sessions knows the gap between liking a new tool and trusting it enough to use it live. This program closes that gap on purpose. You leave with a session you have already run once, in front of people, before it mattered. Join the waitlist How the four weeks work Cost Free, by application Format Four weekly live sessions, run in Kolab Seats About thirty, starting January 2027 Requirement A real session you will run in early 2027 Applications are reviewed in December and spots confirmed before the holidays. Cannot wait until January? Join a Kolab Connect build-together this fall . Why this exists Trying something new in front of a live group is the hard part Anyone who leads sessions knows the feeling. You find a better way to do something and you still run the old version, because the new one has never been tested on real people and this is not the group to find out with. You do not get past that by watching a demo or reading a guide. You get past it by running the thing once where nothing is riding on it. That is the whole design of this cohort: build the real session, rehearse it with people who are rooting for you, then walk into the live version already knowing it works. Where AI fits. This is a program about people, and about the craft of holding a room. AI is in the background, doing the part it is good at: turning an idea for an exercise into something built and ready to run in minutes, so your attention goes to the humans in front of you rather than the tool. You will use it to shape your session, not to run it. Kolab is where that is possible. Why build it here Three things you cannot do with a whiteboard and a video call Kolab is the room this cohort runs in. Here is what changes when the canvas, the audio and the AI all live in the same place. Describe an exercise. It exists. Say what you want in plain language and a working interactive appears on the board in minutes. A poll, a sorting game, a card deck, something nobody has built before. Fifty people into groups of five, without clicking Spatial audio means people walk over to a conversation instead of being assigned to one. Breakouts feel like a room, and you can see the whole room at once. A canvas that is in the room, not in another tab Stickies, boards and video share one space. Nobody is pasting links in chat. And it is all still there when the group comes back next week. The four weeks You build one real session. We are with you the whole way. One live cohort session a week, led by Rachel Davis with Kolab's Facilitators in Residence, plus hands-on build help in between. Each week also brings a lightning hot seat with a guest expert. The whole thing runs inside Kolab, so you are learning the room by being in it. 0 Before we start Short videos so nobody spends live time on basics. You arrive having set up a space and seen the interface. 1 Week 1: What changes when AI is in the room A live look at building sessions with AI, MCP and interactives. You leave with the shape of your own session sketched. 2 Week 2: Build it A working session. You build your real session with help from the people leading the cohort, not on your own with a tutorial. 3 Week 3: The dry run Small groups of five. You run a segment of your session with the cohort as your participants. Nothing at stake. Immediate feedback. This is the part that makes the live version feel safe. 4 Week 4: Refine and get ready Fix what the dry run exposed. Practical facilitation and technical readiness for your actual date. 5 Then you run it, and come back You run your session for real, with light support from us if you want it. Then the cohort reconvenes to hear how it went, what worked and what broke. The deal It is free. It is not a giveaway. Free programs can be vague about what is expected. This one is not. Here is exactly what you get and exactly what we ask. What you get Hands-on help designing and building your session, from people who do this for a living A live demonstration of the AI-enabled creation process, MCP and interactives included A controlled dry run with the cohort before you go live Six months of Kolab Pro, free, starting when the cohort begins Founding membership in the Kolab community, with a listing on the Kolab site Craft you keep no matter what tool you end up using What we ask of you Run your session for real, inside a named organization, within the program window Come back to the cohort and tell us how it went, including what did not work Let us document the session and the organization, where they permit it Post publicly about what you built and learned. Your words, not ours, with a clear note that you are in a free program Give your participants a Kolab link so they can explore afterwards On the posting. We do not script, review or approve anything you write. Say what you actually found, including the parts that annoyed you. Honest accounts are the only kind worth having. Who this is for People who lead sessions and want to build the next one differently This is a good fit if you Lead sessions as part of your work: independent facilitator, program manager, learning lead, community or fellowship staff Have a real session on the calendar in the next 30 to 90 days, with a named organization and a real group of participants Use AI to shape your work, or want to, and have a paid account with Claude or a comparable tool. The build work depends on it Would rather learn by building something you have to deliver than by watching someone else build Probably not a fit if you Want a Kolab tutorial. We have videos for that and they are free without applying Do not have a session coming up. Apply anyway and say so, and we will hold you for a later cohort Are happy with how you run sessions today. Fair enough, and nothing here requires you to switch anything Want AI kept out of it entirely. We use it to shape sessions, not run them, and that is part of how the cohort works Who leads it Led by Rachel Davis Rachel is a facilitator and community builder who has spent years helping other facilitators find their footing in new tools. She was a Miro MVP and helped shape how that community and its template library grew. She now runs her own sessions and client work on Kolab, and she is the reason this program exists. Each week brings a lightning hot seat with a guest expert from Rachel's network, on the human side of the craft: play, presence, energy in a room. Meet the Facilitators in Residence she leads alongside Apply for the January 2027 cohort Ten minutes at most. The session question is the one that matters, so give it the most detail. We reply to every application. About you First name Email Organization Your role What kinds of sessions do you lead? The session you would bring Describe it When does it run? Choose one January 2027 February 2027 March 2027 Later, or no firm date yet Roughly how many participants? Choose one Fewer than 10 10 to 25 25 to 50 More than 50 Who is sponsoring the session at that organization? (name or role, optional) Working with AI Do you have a paid Claude, ChatGPT or similar account? Choose one Yes, Claude Yes, another paid AI tool Not yet, but I would get one for this No With new tools, you are usually the person who Choose one Tries everything first and figures it out Gets comfortable quickly once shown Prefers to keep things simple and proven Two more Where can we see your work? (optional) Why this, why now? (optional) Send my application → We review applications in December and confirm spots before the holidays. Applying does not add you to any marketing list. Application received. Thank you. We read every one of these ourselves and will confirm spots in December. If you want to feel how a Kolab room works in the meantime, sit in on an open session . Questions people ask before applying Is this a Kolab sales pitch? It is a program run by a company that makes a product, so we are not going to pretend there is no interest on our side. What we want out of it is sessions running inside real organizations, and honest accounts of how they went. If you finish the cohort and go back to your old tools, we would still rather have had you in the room. Why free? Because a cohort of people who have run real sessions in Kolab and can talk about them in their own words is worth more to us than a course fee. It is also how we learn what to make easier next. Why do I need a paid AI account? Because it is how you will shape and build your session, even though the cohort itself is about people, not tools. The build work assumes a paid Claude account or a comparable tool, and we would rather say that plainly than have you discover it in week one. What if my session is not inside an organization? The capstone has to run for a real group inside a named organization, whether that is your employer or your client. If it is a community meetup or a personal project, apply and tell us. It might be a fit for a later cohort. Do I have to post about it? Yes, that is part of the trade, and we mean it honestly. What you post is up to you, and we will never ask to see it first. A clear note that you are in a free program is the only requirement. What happens after the four weeks? You become a founding member of the Kolab community, which starts small and on purpose: a shared space with the people who went through this with you, regular build-together sessions, and a say in what Kolab becomes. Your Pro access continues for six months, and the strongest graduates have a path into the Facilitators in Residence corps, which is paid work. Is this a certification? No. There is no exam and no badge that says you passed. There is a session you built and ran, a community you helped found, and a listing on our site that says so. For most people who lead sessions, that is worth more than a certificate. --- ## Events | Kolab (/events) Events | Kolab Skip to content Upcoming events. Hands-on workshops and live sessions for facilitators and teams doing the work of bringing people together. Jun 26 Friday 3:00 PM Kolaboration Station By Carly O'Brien Virtual +25 Get started Experience the difference Try Kolab free for 14 days or book a personalized demo. Try for free → Book a demo --- ## Facilitators | Kolab (/facilitators) Facilitators | Kolab Skip to content The people behind the platform. Kolab is more than software. Behind it is a bench of experienced facilitators who design and run sessions with you, so your program lands every time. Facilitators in Residence Pair an expert with your program These facilitators know Kolab inside and out. Whether you want a thought partner to design a cohort session or a steady hand to run a live convening, we'll match you with the right person. Kristen Hecht Helping organizations design, deliver, and scale high-impact fellowship programs Kristen Hecht is a facilitator and leadership development consultant with a specialty in fellowship programs and cohort-based learning. Over the past 20+ years, she has designed, facilitated, and evaluated leadership experiences that have supported 5,000+ leaders across 20+ fellowship programs in 50+ countries. A natural connector, her work includes partnerships with Columbia University, Harvard University, Georgetown University, UC Berkeley, Habitat for Humanity, Vital Voices, and the United Nations Association. Notable program on Kolab: Impact Fellowships Summit (IREX) — a multi-day hybrid convening attended by 100+ fellowship practitioners from around the world. Fellowship cohorts Alumni engagement Social impact Rach Davis Collaboration co-pilot helping teams bring playful thinking to serious challenges Rach has spent 20+ years sneaking playful thinking into agencies, corporate teams, and nonprofits that didn't always know they needed it yet. A collaboration co-pilot with a zig-zaggy background across brand strategy, design thinking, facilitation, and user experience, she helps teams let their brains breathe and think sideways to break out of their own echo chambers. A certified LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® facilitator and maker who even 3D prints her own facilitation tools, she'll have you walking away a total convert to the idea that serious problems need playful thinking. Brand + Innovation Strategy Discovery Sessions Collaboration Creative Problem Solving Offsites + Team Retreats Craig Zelizer, PhD Helping impact professionals and organizations navigate AI and future work Craig Zelizer helps social impact professionals and organizations worldwide upskill on AI for impact, navigate the future of work, and convene with purpose. Founder of PCDN Global, he taught for 10 years at Georgetown, brings 20+ years of trisectoral experience across higher education, nonprofits, and startups, and has worked across more than 20 countries as a consultant, educator, and trainer. AI for impact Career development Convening for impact How it works A real human, not a marketplace 1 Tell us about your program Share your cohort, event, or workshop and what you want participants to walk away with. 2 We make the match We pair you with the facilitator whose style and experience best fit your audience and goals. 3 Run it together on Kolab Your facilitator helps design and run the session, so the platform never gets in the way. Get matched Pair a facilitator with your program Tell us what you're running and we'll connect you with the right person. Get in touch → --- ## Features | Kolab (/features) Features | Kolab Skip to content A new stack for coming together. Three core capabilities. One unified platform. Everything you need to facilitate meaningful digital experiences. Flow Spaces Conversations that move with you Create immersive multi-conversation environments where audio and video adapt to users as they explore. One continuous room with multiple conversation zones Up to 200 participants moving and connecting naturally Zoned sound that adapts to proximity Perfect for workshops, roundtables, brainstorming, and more Infinite Canvas Ideas without edges Shape ideas together in an infinite canvas that grows, layers, and adapts as collaboration unfolds. Stackable and switchable canvases Real-time co-creation with multiple collaborators 1,000+ visual elements: stickies, diagrams, photos, videos 200+ templates for workshops, cohorts, retros, and more AI Co-Facilitator Powered by AI Let Kolab AI carry the cognitive load - planning sessions, synthesizing discussion, and identifying next steps. Automated session summaries and insights Intelligent breakout formation and flow suggestions Agenda and activity generation tailored to your goals Continuity across sessions and cohorts Facilitation Tools Lead with ease Run the room with confidence using best-in-class facilitation tools. Keep sessions focused, fluid, and intentional - without pulling you out of the moment. Participant controls for muting, moving, and managing access Private and invite-only spaces for intentional gatherings Built-in prompts, timers, and card decks to guide flow Flexible breakouts and embedded tools for seamless activities Get started Experience the difference Try Kolab free for 14 days or book a personalized demo. Try for free → Book a demo --- ## Kolab for Facilitators (/for-facilitators) Kolab for Facilitators Skip to content Kolab for facilitators. Run sessions people actually get excited about, and bring your favorite clients along for the ride. Pick the plan that fits how you work and get started with your first Kolab space. Monthly Annual 2 months free Kolab Essentials For facilitators running smaller sessions. $ 30 / month or $300 / year Up to 25 participants per session 200+ facilitation templates Unlimited session length Live captions & transcription Password-protected sessions Participants join by link — no accounts needed Email support, 2 business days Persistent spaces Video recording, the Kola AI co-facilitator, and larger sessions are on Pro. Start free trial 30-day free trial through your facilitator link. No card required. Most popular Kolab Pro For facilitators running larger sessions with more moving parts. $ 99 / month or $990 / year Everything in Essentials, plus: Up to 100 participants per session Kola AI co-facilitator Session recording, yours to keep Priority support, same or next business day Start free trial 30-day free trial through your facilitator link. No card required. Everything you build stays when your trial ends. Your client's hooked. Bring their whole org onto Kolab. That's where Kolab does its best work. Bring the organization you facilitate for onto Kolab, we'll help you set up their space, and you'll earn a referral reward for their whole first year as a Kolab customer. 1 You bring the org Refer the organization you're facilitating for. 2 We set it up together We help you design and set up their Kolab space. 3 You earn Get a referral reward for their whole first year as a customer. Refer a client Talk to us Good to know How long is the free trial? 30 days when you arrive through a facilitator or referral link, 14 days otherwise. No card required either way. What happens after my trial? Start your plan and keep going. Your spaces, boards, and templates stay exactly as you left them. Bringing in a client org? Talk to us. We help you co-design and set up their space, and you become eligible for referral rewards on organizations you bring in. --- ## A Miro Alternative for Facilitators | Kolab (/miro-alternative) A Miro Alternative for Facilitators | Kolab Skip to content Looking at Miro alternatives? On September 10, 2026, Bending Spoons signed an agreement to acquire Miro. If that has you thinking about where your sessions live, here is the most useful thing we can offer you. Not a demo. Not a trial you have to figure out alone. Send us a session you actually have to run. We'll build it in Kolab for you. Pick something real from your calendar. A workshop, a cohort kickoff, a strategy day, a retro. Send us the agenda and whatever boards you already have. We will build the whole thing in Kolab, walk you through it on video, and hand it over. You run it. There is no charge for the first one and no card required. Send us your session See how Kolab compares Here's exactly what happens: you send the agenda, we reply within one business day with any questions, and within about a week you get a built Kolab space plus a short video walking you through it. Then you run it, or you don't. Either way the space is yours to keep. What actually happened The facts, without the speculation A lot of the commentary has been guesswork. Here is what is on the public record. $1.355B Enterprise value of the agreement Bending Spoons announced on September 10, 2026, in an all-cash transaction. Q4 2026 Expected close, subject to regulatory approval. Until then both companies continue to operate independently. ~90% Share of Miro's roughly $600M in annual recurring revenue that comes from business and enterprise accounts. Worth knowing if you are an individual facilitator wondering where you sit in the new owner's priorities. What we are not going to do is predict what happens next. Bending Spoons has a public track record across Evernote, WeTransfer, Komoot and others that has been widely reported, and you can read it and draw your own conclusions. What we will say plainly is this: the deal has not closed yet, so nothing about your Miro account changes today. This is a good moment to look at your options properly rather than in a hurry. See the difference Fifty people into breakout groups, without clicking a thing This is the part that is hard to explain in a comparison table. In Kolab the canvas, the video and the breakouts are the same room, so people move themselves instead of waiting to be assigned. Two minutes will tell you more than the rest of this page. Real Kolab spaces. Participants join by link in the browser, with no account and nothing to install. Read this part before you switch Kolab is not a drop-in replacement for Miro We would rather tell you this now than have you find out three weeks in. Miro is a canvas. Kolab is a room. Those are different products, and which one you need depends on what you actually do. Stay on Miro if this is you Most of your board work happens asynchronously between meetings You depend on deep Jira, Asana, or Azure DevOps integrations Your org has standardized on Miro across hundreds of non-facilitator seats You need the full third party marketplace and app ecosystem Your sessions run inside Teams or Zoom and that is not negotiable Look hard at Kolab if this is you You facilitate live, and the session is the product You are paying for Zoom plus Miro plus Mentimeter plus a breakout workaround You run cohorts, fellowships, or programs that repeat on a cycle Participants get lost switching tabs, and energy drops every time they do You want the space to still be there between sessions, not rebuilt each time Why people move One room instead of four tabs The reason facilitators end up on Kolab is rarely a feature. It is that the stack they have been holding together stops needing to be held together. Most people running live sessions are paying for a video tool, a board, a polling tool, and some workaround for breakouts, then spending the first ten minutes of every session getting forty people into the right places. In Kolab those are one thing. The canvas is in the room with the video. Breakouts are places on a map that people walk into rather than assignments you administer. Spatial audio means a group of five can talk without anyone being muted or moved. Your agenda, timers and templates sit in the facilitator's view, not in a second window you are alt-tabbing to. The compounding part is that spaces persist. A cohort that meets for twelve weeks comes back to the same room with last week's boards still on the wall, instead of a fresh empty link every Tuesday. If you run programs rather than one-off workshops, that is the difference that shows up in how people behave by week four. And the prep gets shorter. 200+ templates designed to be run live, plus Kola, an AI co-facilitator that can see your canvas and help you build and adapt the session while it is happening. Side by side Where each one is stronger Written as honestly as we can manage. If you spot something out of date, tell us and we will fix it. Kolab Miro Infinite canvas Yes, built for live use Best in class, deeply mature Async work between sessions Lighter. Boards persist, but Kolab is built around the live session Very strong. Comments, integrations, huge marketplace Video and presence Video is the room. Everyone is visible on the canvas and presence drives how the session moves Video calling on the canvas, added more recently. Many teams still run the call in Zoom or Teams alongside Spatial audio and mingling Yes. Participants move and conversations happen naturally No Breakouts Native. Facilitators can walk between groups Usually handled by your video tool, separate from the board Facilitator controls Agenda, timers, presence signals and pulling everyone to a board, in a dedicated facilitator view Timers, voting and facilitation tools on the canvas, with polls and interactive formats in Miro Engage AI in the room Kola, an AI co-facilitator that sees the canvas and helps you run the session AI features on the canvas Facilitation templates 200+ curated, designed to be run live rather than filled in Enormous community library Pricing model Per facilitator, or per program for organizations Per seat Ownership Independent and founder owned Acquisition by Bending Spoons pending, expected Q4 2026 Bringing your work across Getting your boards across, honestly Copy and paste from Miro into Kolab works, and it is getting better. It is not magic yet, and we would rather set that expectation now than have you hit it mid-migration. 1 Export your work now Whatever you decide about Kolab, get your boards out of any tool you do not own. Good practice regardless, and worth doing this week. 2 Paste handles the simple stuff Sticky notes and text copy across well. Frames, connectors and heavily designed layouts do not come over cleanly yet. We are actively working on it. 3 We rebuild the complicated ones by hand For anything involved, we do not rely on paste. We rebuild the board with you, and that is included in the free session build rather than being an extra. Send us your session Testimonials What our users say “ Kolab helped our virtual sessions feel like we were really in the room together. Unlike typical video calls, the platform's spatial design and audio zones created an environment where people could move, connect, and share more openly. Philip Davidovich | Project Director Impact Fellowships Network (IREX) “ Kolab has given our Accelerator programs a completely different kind of virtual space — one that felt human, interactive, and made facilitation feel natural. 76% of participants in our most recent global cohort told us that Kolab enriched their learning experience. Samhir Vasdev | Founder and CEO DEV Design “ The platform really encourages people to turn their camera on and interact in a very natural way - no pressure (ugh) from the facilitator needed. Whitney Pyles Adams | Digital Learning Strategist Innovation + Global Development ← → For organizations, not just individual facilitators Reviewing a Miro renewal for your whole organization? Different conversation, and worth having properly. If you run cohorts, fellowships, accelerators or training programs, you are probably paying per seat for a tool that most of those seats only touch during live sessions. That is the part worth looking at before you re-sign. Priced per program, not per seat Grant and program funded teams budget by program. Our organizational pricing is built to match how the money actually arrives. Security review, handled We have a data protection and privacy overview written for IT and procurement, ready to send the day you ask for it. We build your first program with you Not a sandbox login. We design and build one real program cycle alongside your team so you are evaluating the actual thing. Start an organizational conversation Trusted by teams worldwide Tell us about a session you have coming up We will build it in Kolab and send you a short video walkthrough, usually within a week. No charge, no card, no obligation to switch anything. If you would rather just have the security and data protection overview to send to IT, say so below and we will send that instead. First name Email Organization (optional) Are you an independent facilitator or in-house? What's the session? Send it over → We reply within one business day. We will not add you to a drip sequence. Got it. We're on this. Someone from our team will reply within one business day to ask any questions we need, then we'll get building. In the meantime, the easiest way to feel how a Kolab session actually runs is to sit in on one: see what's coming up . Not ready to hand over a session yet? Fair enough. Come sit in on a live one instead. We run open sessions for facilitators most weeks, you join as a participant, and you get to feel how a Kolab room actually works with no sales conversation attached. It is the lowest commitment way to answer the only question that matters. See upcoming sessions Questions we get from people making this decision What does Kolab cost? It depends on whether you are an independent facilitator or an organization running programs, because those are genuinely different products. Tell us which you are in the form above and we will send you the right number rather than making you guess from a table. Do I have to leave Miro to try this? No. Run one session in Kolab alongside whatever you use now, then decide. Switching tools is a decision worth making after you have felt the difference, not before. Do my participants need accounts? No. They join by link, in the browser, with nothing to install. That matters when you are facilitating for an org whose IT team blocks new software. Could Kolab get acquired too? Fair question to ask anyone right now. Kolab is independent and founder owned, and we are not looking for an exit. What we can also tell you is that your boards, transcripts and session content are exportable at any time, which is the protection that actually holds regardless of who owns what. I came from Butter. Is this the same thing? Not the same, but you will recognize the DNA. Several of the facilitators in our network ran their practices on Butter and now help shape Kolab. If you want to talk to one of them before you talk to us, say so in the form and we will connect you. What about security and data protection? We have a security and privacy overview you can send to your IT or procurement team. Ask for it in the form, or read the summary at getkolab.ai/security . --- ## Pricing | Kolab (/pricing) Pricing | Kolab Skip to content Built for facilitated programs — not meetings. Run workshops, cohorts, and multi-session programs in one space. Video, canvas, spatial audio, and facilitation tools — together. Event Pass One standalone session. No subscription required. $ 499 per event One-time payment Up to 100 participants Up to 3 hours of live session time 200+ facilitation templates Interactive canvas, spatial audio, and breakout zones Kola AI co-facilitator Board access for 14 days after your event Priority tech support Running this more than once? See Program Starter. Book an event Most popular Program Starter Your cohort or program series, in one persistent space. $7,500 / year standard rate $ 5,000 / year Founding rate · through Dec 31, 2026 Built to live in your program budget, not your software stack. Everything in Event Pass, for a full program cycle (~10 sessions) Persistent spaces that don't expire (vs. the 14-day board) Up to 100 participants per session Kola AI co-facilitator Guided onboarding + one facilitator training Priority support One program / cohort series Your branding on the space More than one cohort, or want a Kolab facilitator to run sessions for you? Talk to us. Start your program Enterprise For organizations running multiple programs. Let's talk Everything in Program Starter, plus… Multiple programs and cohorts Embedded facilitation — a trained Kolab facilitator co-designs and runs sessions Multiple facilitator seats Custom participant limits Organization-wide template library Advanced analytics + reporting SSO + access controls Custom integrations Dedicated onboarding + account support SLA + uptime commitment Talk to us Running your own sessions as an independent facilitator? There are dedicated facilitator plans with monthly or annual pricing, separate from these program plans. See facilitator plans → Need something custom? Complex event, multi-session program, or a trained Kolab facilitator to design and run it (from $250/session)? Tell us what you're planning. Tell us → Every plan includes The core Kolab experience Video & screen sharing Interactive canvas Audio zones No downloads for participants Facilitation templates Trusted by teams worldwide FAQs What you need to know What's an Event Pass? An Event Pass is a one-time purchase for a single live session — up to 100 participants and 3 hours — with full access to templates, the canvas, spatial audio, and the Kola AI co-facilitator. Your board stays available for 14 days after the event for follow-up. If you're running a recurring cohort or program, Program Starter is the better fit. What's the Founding Program rate? Program Starter is $7,500 a year at the standard rate. Through December 31, 2026, founding partners pay $5,000 a year. The founding rate locks in for as long as your program runs continuously with us, so you can put a single, predictable number into a grant or program budget and know what renewal looks like. If you are writing that budget now, we keep adaptable proposal language you can drop into your technical approach, MEL plan, and budget narrative. Can I include Kolab in a grant proposal or bid? Yes, and it is much easier if the platform is written in before the proposal goes out rather than added after the award. We publish ready-to-adapt proposal language covering technical approach, participant engagement, MEL, accessibility, data protection, risk, and budget justification, in short and long versions you can edit. Send us your platform section or budget line before you submit and we will review it at no charge, with no obligation to include us. What does Program Starter include? Everything in Event Pass across a full program cycle (~10 sessions), plus persistent spaces that don't expire, guided onboarding and a facilitator training, your branding on the space, and priority support — for one cohort or program series. Running more than one cohort, or want a Kolab facilitator to run sessions for you? That's a custom quote — talk to us. Who needs a Kolab account? Only facilitators. Participants join through a link—no sign-up, no downloads. How is Kolab different from Zoom or Miro? Kolab combines video, canvas, spatial audio, and facilitation tools in a single environment. Instead of stitching together multiple tools, facilitators run structured, interactive sessions in one place. What does “persistent space” mean? A persistent space saves your boards, activities, and outputs between sessions. It's designed for cohorts and programs that meet repeatedly—not one-off meetings that disappear when the call ends. Does Kolab support asynchronous use? Yes. Participants can return to spaces to review materials, contribute asynchronously, and revisit outputs—depending on how facilitators configure access. Is Kolab secure? Yes. Kolab uses modern, browser-based infrastructure with enterprise-grade options available on Enterprise plans, including SSO, access controls, and SLAs. Can I upgrade or downgrade later? Absolutely. Plans can grow with your programs — start with an Event Pass, move into Program Starter for a cohort, or scale to Enterprise across multiple programs. Testimonials What our users say “ Kolab helped our virtual sessions feel like we were really in the room together. Unlike typical video calls, the platform's spatial design and audio zones created an environment where people could move, connect, and share more openly. Philip Davidovich | Project Director Impact Fellowships Network (IREX) “ Kolab has given our Accelerator programs a completely different kind of virtual space — one that felt human, interactive, and made facilitation feel natural. 76% of participants in our most recent global cohort told us that Kolab enriched their learning experience. Samhir Vasdev | Founder and CEO DEV Design “ The platform really encourages people to turn their camera on and interact in a very natural way - no pressure (ugh) from the facilitator needed. Whitney Pyles Adams | Digital Learning Strategist Innovation + Global Development ← → --- ## Put Kolab in your proposal | Kolab (/proposals) Put Kolab in your proposal | Kolab Skip to content Put Kolab in your proposal. Whether you are drafting a five page concept note, a full technical application, or the budget narrative, this page gives you language you can adapt for describing how your program will actually be delivered. Written for cohort programs, fellowships, communities of practice and convenings. Free to use, and yours to edit. Start here Kolab in a nutshell If you need one paragraph and nothing else, take it from here. This is our standard description, cleared for use in proposals, concept notes and partner sections. Three lengths, because page limits vary. K Standard description of Kolab Vendor and partner descriptions, concept notes, capability statements ⌄ One line One paragraph Full description Kolab is a virtual facilitation platform for cohort programs, workshops and convenings, bringing live video, spatial audio and a shared interactive canvas into a single browser-based space that participants join by link. Kolab is a virtual facilitation platform built for cohort programs, workshops and convenings rather than for general meetings. It combines live video, spatial audio for moderated small group discussion, and a persistent interactive canvas in a single browser-based space that participants join by link, with no account to create and nothing to install. Each session can produce a recording, transcript, automated summary and participation record. Kolab is developed by TechChange, a US-based company that has designed and delivered technology-enabled learning programs for global health, exchange and international development organizations for over a decade. Kolab is a virtual facilitation platform purpose-built for cohort programs, fellowships, communities of practice and multi-session convenings, rather than for general meetings. It brings live video, spatial audio for moderated small group discussion, and a persistent shared interactive canvas into a single browser-based environment. Participants join by link, with no account to create, nothing to install, and no per-participant license to assign, which lowers the barrier for participants joining from institutions with differing IT policies or from low bandwidth environments. Facilitators build sessions in advance from a library of structured facilitation formats, and cohort spaces persist between sessions, so participant work accumulates across a program and remains available for alumni engagement after it ends. Each session can generate a recording, transcript, automated summary and participation record, exportable for monitoring and reporting, and live captions are available throughout. Kolab is developed by TechChange, a US-based company that has designed and delivered technology-enabled learning programs for global health, educational and cultural exchange, and international development organizations for over a decade. Copy Naming. Kolab, one word, capital K. Developed by TechChange, a US-based company. If your funder asks for a vendor letter of commitment or support, ask us and we will send one on letterhead. A note on the AI features. Kolab includes an AI co-facilitator and automated session summaries. We have deliberately left them out of the short descriptions, because naming AI in a concept note tends to pull a reviewer straight into data protection questions before you have the space to answer them. If your program wants to feature them, use block 3 and block 9 together, so the capability and the safeguards arrive at the same time. Choose your stage Where you are in the process Different stages need different amounts of detail. Bracketed fields are yours to fill in, and everything here is meant to be edited rather than pasted untouched. 1 Concept note or SOI Five pages, no room to spare. Use the nutshell above plus the short version of block 1 . Two or three sentences is the right amount. 2 Full application Where the substance goes. Blocks 1 to 5 for approach, engagement, MEL, accessibility and sustainability. Blocks 10 to 12 for asynchronous delivery, partner description and selection rationale. 3 Budget and compliance Blocks 6 , 7 and 9 cover facilitation support, the budget narrative and data protection. Block 13 is the partner letter. For IT and vendor review, send them the security page or its PDF. 4 Before you submit Send us your platform section or budget line. We will review it at no charge and confirm anything you need in writing. The language Thirteen language blocks Written for cohort programs, fellowships, exchange and alumni programming, and capacity building. Click any block to open it, and click any [highlighted field] to type your program's details. Matching fields fill in together across all thirteen blocks, and carry through into the downloads. Or take the whole set with you Every block and every version, with placeholders intact and guidance notes marked for deletion. Edit it in your own template rather than working block by block. Download for Word Download as Markdown Expand all 1 Technical approach and delivery methodology Technical approach, program design, methodology ⌄ Short Long Sessions for [PROGRAM NAME] will be delivered on Kolab, a facilitation environment built for multi-session cohort programs rather than a general purpose video conferencing tool. Participants join each session through a single link with no account creation or software installation, and every cohort works inside a shared space that persists between sessions so that materials, group work, and prior outputs remain in place across the full program cycle. Sessions for [PROGRAM NAME] will be delivered on Kolab, a facilitation environment built for multi-session cohort programs rather than a general purpose video conferencing tool. Participants join each session through a single link with no account creation or software installation required. Each cohort is assigned a persistent workspace that combines live video, moderated small group discussion, and a shared interactive canvas in one place. Facilitators build the session agenda in advance, so activities, prompts, and materials load for participants at the right moment rather than being screen shared or distributed by email. Small group discussion happens inside the same space through audio zones, which allows facilitators to move between groups, listen in, and bring the full cohort back together without the transitions and lobby waits that interrupt momentum in conventional video platforms. Because the workspace persists between the [NUMBER] scheduled sessions, participant contributions accumulate visibly over the life of the program. Participants can return to work produced in session one during session eight, which supports the iterative design of [PROGRAM NAME] and reduces the time spent re-establishing context at the start of each convening. Copy Adapt this: name the specific activities your program actually runs. Reviewers reward proposals where the platform choice is clearly tied to the program design, not bolted on. 2 Participant engagement and retention Technical approach, participant experience, retention strategy ⌄ Short Long Retention across a [NUMBER] session program depends on whether participants are contributing or watching. Kolab is structured around active participation, with small group discussion, shared visual work, and live input built into the session environment rather than added through separate tools. Between sessions, each cohort receives a visual session recap that sustains momentum and reduces the drop-off that typically follows the first few convenings. Attrition in virtual cohort programs is rarely a content problem. It is a participation problem. When participants spend sessions watching a shared screen and typing into a chat window, engagement declines predictably after the first few convenings. Kolab is structured around active contribution. Participants work directly on a shared canvas, move between small group conversations, respond to live prompts, and see their own contributions become part of the cohort's visible record. Facilitators can form and reform small groups in seconds, which makes rotating discussion formats practical rather than logistically expensive. For [PROGRAM NAME] , this supports the peer learning objectives described above by giving each of the [NUMBER] participants repeated, structured opportunities to speak and contribute in every session. Engagement is also sustained between convenings. Each completed session generates a recap that program staff review and release to the cohort, including key points, decisions, and agreed next steps, along with a visual summary of the session's work. This addresses the loss of continuity that occurs when participants leave a session and retain little of it by the following month. The persistent workspace reinforces cohort identity over the [DURATION] program period. Participants return to a space holding their own prior work and their peers' work, which supports the retention target of [TARGET] . Copy Adapt this: if your proposal states a retention or completion target, tie this paragraph directly to it. That connection is what earns the points. 3 Monitoring, evaluation and learning MEL plan, data collection, indicators, reporting ⌄ Short Long Delivering on Kolab generates a structured session record that supports MEL reporting without adding a data collection burden on participants. Each session produces a transcript, an automated summary capturing key points, decisions and action items, per-speaker participation data, and the work produced on the shared canvas, all exportable to [ORGANIZATION] systems for analysis and reporting. Virtual program reporting often relies on attendance counts and post-session surveys, which tell a funder who showed up and how they felt but very little about what happened in the room. Delivering [PROGRAM NAME] on Kolab produces a structured session record as a by-product of delivery rather than as an additional data collection task. Each completed session generates a full transcript and an automated summary that captures key points, decisions reached, and action items agreed, exportable in Markdown or Word format. Sessions can be recorded, and a central dashboard holds recordings, transcripts, and summaries across all cohorts, so the MEL team can work across the [NUMBER] sessions of the program rather than reconstructing each convening separately. The platform also reports per-speaker talk time. For [PROGRAM NAME] this provides direct evidence on equity of participation, showing whether contribution is distributed across the cohort or concentrated among a few participants, and allowing facilitators to adjust session design in response. This supports reporting against [INDICATOR] with observed data rather than self-reported perception. Alongside these records, the work produced on the shared canvas remains available as a durable qualitative artifact. Because all of this is produced in the course of normal delivery, it imposes no additional response burden on participants, which matters for cohorts already completing [NUMBER] program surveys. Copy Strong for: funders asking for evidence of inclusive or equitable participation. Per-speaker talk time is observed data, which is a materially stronger claim than a post-session survey question about whether participants felt heard. 4 Accessibility, connectivity and inclusive participation Inclusion plan, accessibility, participant support ⌄ Short Long Kolab runs entirely in the browser with no account creation, no software installation, and no license assigned per participant, which removes three common barriers for participants joining from [REGIONS] . Video quality adapts to available bandwidth, participants can individually reduce incoming video to conserve their connection, and live captions are available throughout the session, including during small group discussion. Participation barriers in virtual programming are often practical rather than technical. Participants are asked to create an account on a platform their institution has not approved, install software on a device they do not administer, or wait for a license to be provisioned before they can join. Kolab removes those steps. Participants join [PROGRAM NAME] sessions by opening a link in a browser and entering a name. There is no account to create, nothing to install, and no per participant license to assign, which matters for a cohort drawn from [NUMBER] countries and [NUMBER] institutions with differing IT policies. Connectivity. Video quality adapts to available bandwidth. Participants on constrained connections can also individually stop receiving incoming video to conserve bandwidth, without affecting what anyone else sees and without being required to turn off their own camera. This allows a participant on a limited connection to remain a visible, contributing member of the session rather than dropping to audio only or leaving entirely. Language and accessibility. Live captions are available during sessions, color coded by speaker, and continue to function during small group discussion as well as full cohort plenary. This supports participants with hearing differences and participants working in a second language, both relevant for a cohort spanning [NUMBER] countries. Session transcripts are available afterward for participants who wish to review content at their own pace. [ORGANIZATION] will run a technical orientation before session one and provide a connectivity fallback as described in the risk section. Copy Claim carefully: captions and adaptive bandwidth are real features. Do not assert WCAG or Section 508 conformance in a proposal without a formal accessibility audit on file. If your funder requires a conformance statement, ask us before you write one. 5 Alumni engagement and sustainability Sustainability plan, alumni strategy, post-award continuity ⌄ Short Long The cohort workspace does not close when the program ends. [ORGANIZATION] will maintain the space as an alumni home for [PROGRAM NAME] , hosting periodic convenings and keeping participant-produced materials accessible, which extends the value of the award beyond the period of performance at modest continuing cost. Alumni engagement usually fails for structural reasons rather than a lack of intent. The program ends, the meeting links expire, the shared documents scatter across drives, and the cohort loses the place where it met. Kolab spaces persist. At the close of [PROGRAM NAME] , the cohort workspace remains available and becomes the alumni home for that group, holding the materials, frameworks, session recaps, and outputs the cohort produced together. [ORGANIZATION] will use this space to host [FREQUENCY] alumni convenings, to introduce successive cohorts to prior participants, and to keep alumni reachable for follow-on opportunities. This also strengthens the sustainability case. Because the platform is licensed by program rather than by participant, alumni can be convened without adding license cost per person, and successive cohorts inherit a working environment and a library of session designs already built during this award. The marginal cost of running each subsequent cohort is materially lower than the first, and external facilitation support declines accordingly as described in the staffing section. Copy Strong for: exchange and fellowship programs where alumni networks are an explicit funder priority. This block often does more work than the technology paragraphs. 6 Facilitation and delivery support Staffing plan, key personnel, consultant costs, scope of work ⌄ Short Long, small cohort Long, multi-pod at scale Hourly and LOE In addition to the platform license, [ORGANIZATION] will engage Kolab facilitation support to build the session environments for [PROGRAM NAME] , to train the staff and facilitators who will deliver them, and to co-deliver [NUMBER] high-stakes convenings. This is budgeted as professional services, separate from the software line. A delivery environment is only as good as the sessions designed inside it. [ORGANIZATION] will therefore budget facilitation and delivery support alongside the platform license, in three defined scopes: Program build. Kolab specialists translate the existing [PROGRAM NAME] curriculum into built session environments, including agendas, activities, and canvas layouts, so that program staff begin from working sessions rather than a blank space. Scoped per cohort, covering up to [NUMBER] sessions. Facilitator enablement. Program staff receive structured training on running sessions, managing small group discussion, and adapting session designs, together with a written facilitation guide specific to [PROGRAM NAME] . Delivery capacity therefore sits inside [ORGANIZATION] rather than with an external vendor. Co-delivered sessions. For high-stakes convenings, including the opening session, the [EVENT NAME] convening, and the closing session, an experienced facilitator co-delivers alongside program staff. Each co-delivered session includes design review, a technical dry run, live delivery, and a debrief. Support is weighted toward the first year and declines thereafter as internal capability builds, from [AMOUNT] in year one to [AMOUNT] in the final year. This structure is deliberate: it treats external facilitation as a capacity building investment with a declining cost curve rather than a permanent dependency, which reinforces the sustainability position described above. [PROGRAM NAME] delivers to approximately [NUMBER] participants per cohort across [NUMBER] concurrent pods, with [FREQUENCY] live sessions and [NUMBER] cohorts across the period of performance. At that scale, delivery does not rest on a small number of program staff, and the support model is built accordingly. Facilitator corps model. Rather than co-delivering routine sessions, Kolab trains and equips the pod facilitators who deliver them. Each cohort begins with a facilitator training intensive, a supervised practice run, and a written facilitation guide covering every session in the cohort sequence. This builds delivery capacity at the pod level, where the sessions actually happen. Training recurs by design. Pod facilitator rosters change between cohorts, so [ORGANIZATION] budgets facilitator training once per cohort rather than only in year one. Session designs, canvas layouts, and facilitation guides are reused across cohorts, so the cost per cohort declines even though training recurs. This is a more accurate reflection of how a multi-cohort program at this scale sustains quality than a support line that tapers to zero. Live support during delivery weeks. During active session weeks, Kolab provides scheduled office hours for pod facilitators, so that questions arising in delivery are resolved between sessions rather than escalating into program risk. Co-delivery reserved for signature convenings. Full facilitated delivery is budgeted only for the [NUMBER] [EVENT NAME] events at up to [NUMBER] attendees, plus the opening and closing sessions of each cohort. These are the convenings where scale, visibility, and stakeholder attendance justify an experienced facilitator leading the room. Facilitation and delivery support is budgeted at [RATE] per hour against the following level of effort for [PROGRAM NAME] : Program build, [NUMBER] hours per cohort, covering session environments, agendas, activities and canvas layouts for up to [NUMBER] sessions. Facilitator training and enablement, [NUMBER] hours per cohort, covering the training intensive, a supervised practice run, and a written facilitation guide. Co-delivered sessions, [NUMBER] hours per session, covering design review, technical dry run, live delivery and debrief. Advisory and office hours support, [NUMBER] hours across the period of performance. Total level of effort is [NUMBER] hours at [RATE] per hour, for a total of [AMOUNT] across the [NUMBER] month period of performance. This is budgeted under professional services and is separate from the platform license described in the budget narrative. Copy Which variant: use the small cohort version when program staff deliver the sessions themselves. Use the multi-pod version when delivery runs through pod or partner facilitators whose rosters change between cohorts, because a tapering support line misdescribes what that program actually needs. Use the hourly version when your funder's budget template requires a rate and level of effort rather than deliverable pricing. Budget mechanics: facilitation support is a professional services or consultant line, not software. Keeping it separate from the platform license makes both easier to defend in review, and lets you scale one without reopening the other. Facilitation is scoped per program, so tell us the shape of the program and we will send figures you can put in the budget. 7 Budget narrative and cost justification Budget narrative, cost reasonableness, other direct costs ⌄ Short Long Large program The Kolab license is requested at [AMOUNT] per year as a direct cost, pro-rated across the [NUMBER] month period of performance, covering delivery of [NUMBER] cohorts of approximately [NUMBER] participants. Because the platform is licensed per program rather than per participant, and consolidates the video conferencing, whiteboard, and live polling tools the program would otherwise license separately, the cost is approximately [AMOUNT] per [DENOMINATOR] . Facilitation support is budgeted separately under professional services. Platform license. [AMOUNT] per year, requested as a direct cost and pro-rated across the [NUMBER] month period of performance. This covers delivery of [NUMBER] cohorts of approximately [NUMBER] participants each, comprising [NUMBER] sessions per cohort, session recording, transcription and summary generation, and continued alumni access as described in the sustainability section. Cost reasonableness. Kolab is licensed by program rather than by participant. Across the award the platform cost is approximately [AMOUNT] per [DENOMINATOR] . Delivering the same program on separately licensed tools would require a video conferencing subscription, a collaborative whiteboard subscription, and a live polling subscription. Because those tools are licensed per host rather than per participant, the comparison is drawn on the [NUMBER] facilitator and program staff licenses that would be required, at a combined cost of [AMOUNT] across the period of performance. The consolidated license is lower in direct cost, and it also removes the participation ceiling that per-host licensing imposes, since participants join without a license being provisioned, tracked, or reclaimed. Facilitation support. Budgeted under professional services at [AMOUNT] in year one and [AMOUNT] thereafter. Year one includes the program build for [NUMBER] cohorts, facilitator enablement, and [NUMBER] co-delivered sessions, as detailed in the staffing section. Escalation and period of performance. Where the period of performance extends beyond twelve months, the license is budgeted pro-rata for partial years. Subsequent full years carry a [PERCENT] escalation consistent with the escalation applied elsewhere in this budget. Cost treatment. The platform license is a direct cost of program delivery, not general administrative overhead, and is budgeted accordingly. [ORGANIZATION] will apply its negotiated indirect cost rate consistent with [POLICY] . Platform license. [AMOUNT] per year as a direct cost, pro-rated across the [NUMBER] month period of performance, covering [NUMBER] cohorts, approximately [NUMBER] participants in total, and approximately [NUMBER] live sessions. Cost reasonableness. At this scale the platform license represents approximately [PERCENT] of the total program budget and approximately [AMOUNT] per live session delivered. Licensing is per program rather than per participant, so the cost does not vary with cohort size, and the program can scale participation without a corresponding increase in platform cost. Delivering the same program on separately licensed tools would require video conferencing, collaborative whiteboard, and live polling subscriptions for the [NUMBER] facilitators and program staff running sessions, at a combined cost of [AMOUNT] across the period of performance, and would additionally cap concurrent session capacity at the number of host licenses purchased. Subrecipient treatment. As [ORGANIZATION] is a subrecipient under [PRIME] , the platform license is budgeted within [ORGANIZATION] 's direct costs for program delivery and treated under its negotiated indirect cost rate consistent with [POLICY] . Facilitation support. Budgeted separately under professional services at [AMOUNT] across the period of performance, reflecting the facilitator corps model described in the staffing section, in which facilitator training recurs once per cohort while session designs are reused. Copy Choose the right denominator. Cost per participant works for cohorts in the tens. For programs reaching hundreds or thousands, a per-participant figure becomes so small it reads as unserious, and cost per session delivered or cost as a percentage of total program budget is the stronger framing. Pick one and use it consistently. Get the comparison unit right. Whiteboard and polling tools are licensed per host, not per participant. Never multiply a per-seat price by participant count to build a comparison figure. A reviewer who checks will treat the whole budget narrative as inflated. Compare facilitator and staff licenses, and make the participation ceiling the second half of the argument. 8 Risk mitigation and continuity Risk matrix, contingency planning, assumptions ⌄ Short Long [ORGANIZATION] will mitigate delivery risk through a technical orientation before session one, a documented connectivity fallback for participants who cannot maintain a stable connection, at least two trained facilitators per cohort so that no session depends on a single individual, and post-session export of recordings, transcripts and materials so that program records are retained independently of the platform. Participant connectivity. Video quality adapts to available bandwidth, and participants can individually reduce incoming video to conserve their connection. Participants who cannot sustain a stable connection will be supported through a documented fallback, including audio-only participation and access to the session recording, transcript and outputs afterward. A technical orientation will be held before session one to surface issues in advance rather than during a live convening. Facilitator availability. At least two trained facilitators will be available for each session, so that no convening depends on a single individual. Session designs are stored in the program workspace and can be run by any trained facilitator. Participant absence. Sessions produce a recording, transcript and written summary, so a participant who misses a convening for travel, connectivity or time zone reasons can recover the content without requiring a separate catch-up session. Access control. Cohort spaces can be password protected, so that a session link circulated beyond the intended participant list does not grant access. This is relevant for sessions involving [SENSITIVE CONTEXT] . Data and record continuity. Recordings, transcripts, summaries and participant-produced materials will be exported after each convening and retained in [ORGANIZATION] systems, so that program records do not depend on continued platform access. Vendor continuity. Kolab is developed by TechChange, which has delivered technology-enabled learning programs for exchange, international development, and global health organizations for over a decade. Should the platform become unavailable during the award, sessions can be delivered on conventional video conferencing using materials drawn from the exported records described above, with reduced participant interactivity but no interruption to the program calendar. Copy Do not skip the last paragraph. Naming a fallback for platform unavailability is what makes a reviewer comfortable with a smaller vendor. Omitting it invites the question instead of answering it. 9 Data protection, consent and AI processing Data protection plan, safeguarding, privacy, legal or ethics review ⌄ Every statement below is documented on our security and privacy page , which names our sub-processors, quotes the contractual language on model training, and states plainly where the answer is currently "not yet." It is also available as a PDF you can attach to a proposal or procurement pack. If your reviewer asks something it does not answer, write to will@getkolab.ai. Short Long Recording, transcription and summary generation are controlled by [ORGANIZATION] staff rather than enabled by default, and capture of small group and side conversations is off unless deliberately turned on. Participants in [PROGRAM NAME] will give informed consent before session one and will be told what is recorded, who can access it, and how long it is retained. Records are hosted [CONFIRM: DATA LOCATION] , encrypted in transit and at rest, retained for [CONFIRM: RETENTION PERIOD] , and processed for transcription and summarization by [CONFIRM: SUB-PROCESSOR] under terms that [CONFIRM: MODEL TRAINING POSITION] . Data collected. Delivery of [PROGRAM NAME] generates session recordings, transcripts of participant speech, automatically generated session summaries, and participant-produced materials on the shared canvas. Participants provide only a display name in order to join, with no account, email address or institutional credential required, which limits the personal data held to what the program itself requires. Host control and default settings. Recording, transcription and summary generation are enabled by program staff rather than running automatically. Capture of small group and side conversations is disabled by default and will be turned on only where participants have specifically consented, which allows small group discussion to remain unrecorded when the subject matter warrants it. Informed consent. Participants will receive, before session one, a written description of what is recorded, what is transcribed, who has access, where records are stored and how long they are retained. Consent will be documented as part of [ORGANIZATION] 's standard participant agreement. Participants who decline recording will be accommodated through [ACCOMMODATION] . Hosting, encryption and transfer. Data is hosted [CONFIRM: DATA LOCATION] and encrypted in transit and at rest. Where participants are located in jurisdictions that restrict cross-border transfer of personal data, transfers are conducted under [CONFIRM: TRANSFER MECHANISM] . Access control. Cohort spaces are password protected, and session records are visible only to hosts and to team members explicitly granted access. Access will be limited to the [NUMBER] named [ORGANIZATION] staff identified in the staffing plan. [CONFIRM: VENDOR-SIDE ACCESS POSITION] . Automated processing. Transcription, live captions and session summaries are produced through automated language processing provided by [CONFIRM: SUB-PROCESSOR LIST] . Participant speech is processed solely to generate those outputs, and [CONFIRM: MODEL TRAINING POSITION] . Automatically generated summaries are reviewed by program staff before being shared with participants or used in reporting, so no evaluative finding rests on unreviewed machine output. Retention and deletion. Session records are retained for [CONFIRM: RETENTION PERIOD] , after which [CONFIRM: DELETION BEHAVIOR] . [ORGANIZATION] will export and hold the records it requires for reporting within its own systems, and will action participant requests for deletion within [NUMBER] days. Sensitive sessions. Where [PROGRAM NAME] convenes participants discussing [SENSITIVE CONTEXT] , sessions will be run without recording or transcription and the cohort space will be password protected. Regulatory position. For participants in the European Union and United Kingdom, processing is conducted on the lawful basis of [BASIS] , with [ORGANIZATION] as data controller and Kolab as data processor under a data processing agreement. [ORGANIZATION] has completed [ASSESSMENT] for this program. Copy Four things not to claim. These are the current honest limits, and asserting otherwise will cost you more than omitting them. There is no data residency or region selection option today, so do not promise in-region storage. There is no automatic retention expiry, so describe deletion as something you will request rather than something that happens on a schedule. There is no access log for recordings yet, so do not describe an audit trail. And we do not yet issue our own data processing agreement, though our infrastructure providers are certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework with Standard Contractual Clauses available. If your funder requires any of these, raise it with us early rather than at award. The strongest sentence in this block is that participant speech is not used to train AI models. It is the question that stalls legal review in this sector, and it is answerable with contractual language your reviewer can check independently on our security page without asking us for anything. 10 Asynchronous content, participation tracking and certificates Technical approach, learning design, deliverables, certification ⌄ Short Long Alongside Kolab as the live delivery environment, [ORGANIZATION] will use the TechChange learning management system to host asynchronous content between live sessions, track individual participation against completion requirements, and issue completion certificates to participants in [PROGRAM NAME] . Both platforms are provided by the same partner under a single agreement, so [ORGANIZATION] manages one relationship rather than assembling a live platform and a course platform separately. Cohort programs rarely consist only of live convenings. Between sessions, participants complete reading, watch recorded content, submit work, and build toward a certification requirement, and funders typically expect participation and completion to be documented at the individual level. [ORGANIZATION] will therefore deliver [PROGRAM NAME] across two platforms provided by the same partner: Kolab as the live facilitation environment, and the TechChange learning management system for asynchronous content and participant records. Asynchronous content. Session materials, recorded content, reading, and between-session assignments are hosted in a structured course environment organized to the [NUMBER] session program sequence, so participants always know what is expected before the next convening. Participation tracking. Individual progress against completion requirements is tracked at the participant level and exportable for reporting, which allows [ORGANIZATION] to report against [INDICATOR] with individual-level evidence rather than aggregate attendance. Certification. Participants who meet the completion requirements for [PROGRAM NAME] receive a completion certificate issued through the platform, meeting the certification deliverable described in [SECTION] . Single partner. Because both platforms are provided under one agreement, [ORGANIZATION] manages a single vendor relationship, a single point of technical support, and a single data protection posture across live and asynchronous delivery. Copy Only use this block if the LMS is in your agreement. It is included in some configurations and not others, so confirm with us before including it, along with the specifics of how records move between the two platforms. 11 Vendor description and past performance Partner and vendor descriptions, capability statement, past performance ⌄ Short Long Exchange and public diplomacy Kolab is a facilitation environment for cohort programs and multi-session convenings, developed by TechChange, which has designed and delivered technology-enabled learning programs for exchange, education, international development and global health organizations for over a decade. Kolab is currently used to deliver fellowship, exchange and capacity building programs by [REFERENCE ORGANIZATIONS] . Kolab is a facilitation environment purpose-built for cohort programs, fellowships and multi-session convenings. It combines live video, moderated small group discussion and a persistent shared canvas in a single browser-based space, with a library of structured facilitation formats that program teams adapt to their own curriculum, and automated session records including transcripts, summaries and recordings. Kolab is developed by TechChange, which has spent over a decade designing and delivering technology-enabled learning programs for exchange, education, international development and global health organizations. That history informs the platform's design priorities, including participation from low bandwidth contexts, delivery by program staff rather than technical specialists, and program-based rather than per-seat licensing suited to grant funded work. Kolab is currently used to deliver fellowship, exchange and capacity building programming by [REFERENCE ORGANIZATIONS] . References are available on request. Kolab is a virtual facilitation environment purpose-built for cohort-based exchange programming: multi-session cohorts, fellowship programs, and virtual exchange between participants in different countries. It combines live video, moderated small group discussion and a persistent shared workspace in a single browser-based environment that participants join without creating an account. Kolab is developed by TechChange, which has spent over a decade building and delivering virtual programming for educational and cultural exchange, youth leadership, and international education organizations. That experience shapes the platform's priorities for exchange programming specifically: participation from participants in low bandwidth environments, second-language accessibility through live captions and transcripts, cohort spaces that persist into alumni engagement, and licensing structured per program to fit grant-funded periods of performance. Kolab is currently used to deliver virtual exchange, fellowship and alumni programming by [REFERENCE ORGANIZATIONS] . References are available on request. Copy Match the sector language to your funder. For exchange, educational and cultural affairs, and public diplomacy programs, use the exchange variant. Development-sector framing reads as a different world to an exchange program officer, and references to prior development work can actively distract. Before you name references: ask us . We will confirm which client names are cleared for use in a proposal and can supply a reference contact if your funder requires one. 12 Rationale for selection Procurement justification, vendor selection memo ⌄ Short Long Kolab was selected for [PROGRAM NAME] because it meets five requirements that conventional video conferencing and whiteboard tools do not meet in combination: participants join without accounts or installed software, cohort workspaces persist between sessions, small group discussion is managed inside a single environment, session records are generated automatically for MEL reporting, and licensing is per program rather than per participant. [ORGANIZATION] assessed delivery platforms for [PROGRAM NAME] against the following requirements: 1. Participants join without creating accounts or installing software, given a cohort drawn from [NUMBER] institutions with differing IT policies. 2. Cohort workspaces persist between sessions so that participant work accumulates across the [NUMBER] session program. 3. Small group discussion, shared visual work and full group plenary occur within one environment rather than across separate tools. 4. Session transcripts, summaries and participation data are generated as part of delivery and exportable for MEL reporting. 5. Licensing is structured per program rather than per participant, consistent with grant budgeting and with a program that scales participation across cohorts. Conventional video conferencing platforms meet requirement one but not requirements two or three. Collaborative whiteboard tools meet requirement two but require a separate video platform and are licensed per host, which caps concurrent session capacity. Kolab meets all five requirements in a single environment and satisfies the combined requirement set at the lowest total cost across the period of performance. [ORGANIZATION] also considered [ALTERNATIVE] and [ALTERNATIVE] , which were not selected for the reasons above. Copy Use honestly. This is a rationale for selection, not a claim that no alternative exists. If your procurement rules require competition, run it and use this to document the criteria. 13 Letter of interest from Kolab Partner letters, letters of commitment, teaming annexes ⌄ This one runs the other way. The other blocks are things you write about us. This is what we write for you. Preview it here, then tell us the program and we will return it signed on letterhead, usually within one business day. If your solicitation specifies particular language for partner letters, send that instead and we will match it. Partnership paragraph Full letter TechChange, through its virtual facilitation platform Kolab, will serve as technology partner for [PROGRAM NAME] . TechChange has worked at the intersection of technology and international programming for over a decade, delivering digital learning programs, hybrid convenings and capacity building initiatives for government agencies, foundations and implementing partners in more than 100 countries. For this award TechChange will provide platform access across the full program lifecycle, session design support, and facilitator training for [ORGANIZATION] staff, with facilitation services available as an optional scope. A signed letter of commitment is included at [ANNEX REFERENCE] . [DATE] [NAME] , [TITLE] [ORGANIZATION] [PROGRAM NAME] RE: Letter of interest, technology partnership for [SOLICITATION OR AWARD NAME] Dear [NAME] , TechChange, through its virtual facilitation platform Kolab, is pleased to express our interest in partnering with [ORGANIZATION] on [SOLICITATION OR AWARD NAME] . We would serve as a technology partner rather than simply a vendor, bringing experience in virtual facilitation environments, AI-assisted session design, and international program delivery. About TechChange and Kolab. TechChange has worked at the intersection of technology and international programming for over a decade. We have delivered digital learning programs, hybrid convenings and capacity building initiatives for government agencies, foundations, universities and implementing partners across more than 100 countries, including firsthand experience with the operational realities of donor-funded programming: multi-country cohorts, differing institutional IT policies, and participation from connectivity-constrained environments. Client references are available on request. Kolab is our purpose-built virtual facilitation platform, designed for the engagement-driven, multi-session programs that define high quality virtual exchange and cohort learning. It combines live video, an interactive canvas workspace, and spatial audio in a single environment, removing the need to move between separate video, whiteboard and polling tools during a session. Participants join by link with no account creation required, which lowers onboarding friction for diverse global cohorts. Capabilities aligned to this award. Spatial audio zones allow participants to move between conversation groups, supporting facilitator-led breakouts, gallery walks, World Cafe formats and cross-country team collaboration without switching rooms or losing context. A library of more than 200 facilitation templates draws on established practice in pedagogy, design thinking and Liberating Structures. Kola, our AI co-facilitator, helps facilitators build agendas, generate activities matched to learning objectives, and produce session summaries, and can be switched off entirely for any space. Persistent spaces let cohort teams return to their collaborative artifacts and build on prior work across a multi-month cycle. Chat translation allows participants to write in their own language and read in their preferred one. Adaptive video and a participant-controlled low bandwidth mode support participation from connectivity-constrained environments. No-account join removes downloads, accounts and IT approvals for participants. Alignment with program goals. [PROGRAM NAME] convenes approximately [NUMBER] participants across [REGIONS] over [DURATION] , with an emphasis on [PROGRAM FOCUS] . This is the program shape Kolab was built for: cross-country team-based work, facilitated dialogue, and cohort learning that builds relationships over time rather than a series of one-off webinars. Virtual programming of this kind requires more than a tool. It requires an environment in which remote participants feel present and part of a community, which is the outcome Kolab is designed to produce. Proposed partnership model. We envision a partnership beyond platform licensing, and can contribute at several levels depending on program needs and budget. Platform access covers dedicated Kolab spaces across the full program lifecycle, including pre-program onboarding, synchronous sessions, asynchronous team collaboration and post-program follow-on activity. Session design support covers collaborative agenda development, so that sessions are pedagogically sound and technically well suited to the environment. Facilitator training and onboarding equips [ORGANIZATION] staff to run sessions independently, with ongoing support between convenings. Facilitation services, if desired, provide trained facilitators to co-run sessions and reduce operational load on program staff. Finally, as an actively developing platform, we welcome the opportunity to shape features around this program's real-world requirements. Pricing approach. We price by program rather than by seat, which aligns with how implementers budget by grant cycle rather than by headcount. For an initiative of this scope we would work with [ORGANIZATION] to develop a program-level package covering platform access, onboarding and support, with facilitation services layered on as an optional scope. Current published pricing is available at getkolab.ai/pricing, and we will confirm a costed line item you can place directly in the budget. Commitment. TechChange is committed to this partnership. We believe the combination of [ORGANIZATION] 's expertise in [PROGRAM AREA] and Kolab's purpose-built facilitation technology makes a compelling case to [FUNDER] , and demonstrates genuine innovation in how virtual programming is delivered. We welcome the opportunity to discuss scope, pricing and integration in more detail, and we are prepared to move quickly to support your proposal timeline. Sincerely, Nick Martin Founder and CEO, TechChange Creator of Kolab nick@techchange.org Copy What we deliberately left out. No named clients, because we will not put another organization's name in a document until they have cleared it, and the same applies to yours. No comparative performance claims against other platforms, because a benchmark in a partner letter is a commitment you would have to defend at award. Ask us and we will confirm in writing what we can substantiate. Security review For the IT reviewer Most proposals hit a vendor security review at some point, usually late and usually with a short turnaround. Everything a reviewer needs is on one page, written to be checked rather than to impress, and downloadable as a PDF you can attach directly to a procurement pack. Participants hold no account A display name and a system-generated ID. No email, no password, no profile. For most IT reviews this is the answer to the question actually being asked. US hosting, encrypted throughout All persistent data in the United States. TLS 1.3 in transit, WebRTC SRTP for live media, AES-256 at rest. Region selection is not available today. Capture requires consent Nothing records unless a host starts it. Everyone sees a labelled indicator, the recorded participant must actively agree, and breakout audio is excluded by default. No training on participant speech Kolab runs no model training pipeline, and our processing sub-processors are contractually barred from training on this content. The clauses are quoted and linked. Named sub-processors A full table of who touches what data and in which region, rather than a general assurance. AI can also be switched off per space entirely. No staff override Recordings require host or facilitator access to that specific space. There is no administrator backdoor in the product. Read the security and privacy page or download the PDF . Same source, same wording. Data processing agreements, completed vendor security questionnaires and program-specific commitments are available on request from will@getkolab.ai. Budget Where the budget line goes Pricing lives on the pricing page . Three structural notes that are easy to get right early and awkward to fix later. Guidance on cost comparisons and per-participant figures sits inside block 7, next to the language it applies to. Two lines, not one The platform license is software, budgeted as a direct cost of program delivery. Facilitation and delivery support is professional services or consultant costs. They are reviewed differently and approved differently, so keeping them separate makes both easier to defend, and lets you scale one without reopening the other. Periods of performance are rarely round If your award runs twenty-one months, the license is budgeted pro-rata for the partial year rather than rounded up to two. Where a multi-year budget carries an escalation factor, apply the same factor here as elsewhere in the budget so the line does not stand out. Check the tier before you submit If your program is larger than the pricing page describes, the right configuration sits above it: multiple concurrent cohorts, several programs sharing one agreement, convenings above one hundred participants, bundled asynchronous content and certification, or organization-wide access. Tell us the shape of the program while the budget is still in draft. A program budgeted at the wrong tier is far harder to correct after submission than before. Ask us What we will put in writing Anything you assert in a proposal, you have committed to delivering. These are the things we will confirm on letterhead so you are not writing from inference. Ask at any stage, including the night before a deadline. Letter of commitment or support Signed, on letterhead, confirming our role in your program. Preview the wording in block 13, then send us the solicitation lang [Content truncated — full page at https://www.getkolab.ai/proposals] --- ## Resources | Kolab (/resources) Resources | Kolab Skip to content Resources for facilitation. Real-world guidance for facilitators doing the work of bringing people together. Free Guide Virtual Facilitation Playbook Practical strategies for building connection, energy, and flow online in the modern era. Download for free → Free Guide Accelerator & Fellowship Programs Practical guidance for designing accelerator and fellowship programs that foster connection, engagement, and sustained participation online. Download for free → Free Guide Transitioning to Independent Consulting A practical guide for social impact professionals. Download for free → Free Guide Virtual Events & Conferences Playbook Field-tested strategies for hosting virtual events and conferences that keep people present, active, and connected. Download for free (coming soon) Get started Experience the difference Try Kolab free for 14 days or book a personalized demo. Try for free → Book a demo --- ## Security & privacy | Kolab (/security) Security & privacy | Kolab Skip to content Security & privacy. A plain-English summary for IT reviewers, program officers, and legal teams. Written to be checked, not to impress — where the honest answer is “not yet,” we say “not yet.” Start here Most of your participants never give us any data. Participants do not create an account, and they do not install anything. A participant clicks a link, opens a browser, types a display name, and they are in the room. That is the entire join flow. At join we create a lightweight guest record containing a display name and a system-generated ID — nothing else. Email is null. Full name is null. There is no password, no profile, no verification step, and no invitation to make an account later. If a participant types “Sam,” what we hold about Sam is the word “Sam.” Two optional extras, both off unless the participant chooses them. “Remember me” stores a token in their own browser so a returning participant keeps their name and preferences. LinkedIn sharing is opt-in, per person, per space. Decline either and we hold nothing. For most IT reviews this is the answer to the question actually being asked. The people your program serves are not becoming users of a software product. They are joining a room. Hosts and facilitators — the people who create and run spaces — do hold accounts, with a name and an email address. That population is small and known to you. Send this to your IT reviewer The same content as a PDF you can attach to a proposal, a procurement pack, or a vendor review. Same source, same wording. Download the PDF Data handling What we store, where, and for how long Where All persistent data is hosted in the United States: application data in a PostgreSQL database, and session media and artifacts in DigitalOcean Spaces object storage in DigitalOcean’s New York (NYC3) region. Real-time audio and video are routed by LiveKit Cloud and are not stored except through the recording feature described below. Region selection Not available today. Storage region is a single global setting, not a per-customer option. If regional data residency is a requirement for your programme, raise it during procurement — we will give you a straight answer on timing rather than a checkbox we cannot honour. What we store Account records for hosts; guest records (display name and ID) for participants; the contents of boards and spaces your teams create; messages sent in a space’s chat; and — only when a host explicitly starts them — session recordings, transcripts, and AI summaries. Kolab does not currently have direct messages: chat happens in the space, in front of the people in it. Retention We do not currently apply an automatic retention period. Recordings, transcripts, and summaries are retained until deleted. Configurable per-space retention with automatic expiry is scoped work, not a shipped feature, and we would rather tell you that than describe a cleanup process we do not run. Deletion on request An account owner can request deletion of any recording, transcript, or summary, or of all data associated with their account, and we will carry it out. Today this is performed by our team on request rather than through a self-service button. Ask and we will confirm in writing when it is done. Consent Recording and transcription Nothing is captured unless a host deliberately starts it. When capture is running: Every participant sees an in-session disclosure. A status indicator labelled ● REC (recording) or ● TXN (transcribing) appears for everyone in the room for as long as capture is active. It is a labelled indicator, not a subtle dot, and it is announced to screen readers the moment capture begins. The recorded participant must actively consent. Kolab’s recording follows one participant’s perspective. That person receives a prompt that cannot be dismissed by clicking away or pressing Escape — they choose Allow or Not right now. It names the host who asked and lists exactly what will and will not be captured. What is never captured: chat, agenda and session notes, and conversations with Kola, our AI assistant. A recording is produced by a separate recording client that renders only the canvas and the video — not the chat panel, not the message previews that appear when a new message arrives, and not any other interface chrome — so chat cannot appear in the output even if a participant has it open on their own screen. Side conversations are excluded by default. Transcription captures main-room audio only; it pauses automatically during spatial audio, zoned conversations, and breakouts. A host can turn on side-conversation capture, but it is off by default and stays off unless someone deliberately changes it. Encryption In transit and at rest In transit. The application is served over TLS 1.3. Real-time audio and video use WebRTC’s SRTP with DTLS-SRTP key exchange. Connections to our object storage use TLS. At rest. Object storage is encrypted with 256-bit AES full-disk encryption by our storage provider. Our real-time media provider encrypts its persistent stores with AES-256. Sub-processors Who else touches the data Provider What they do What they receive Region DigitalOcean Hosting, database, object storage All stored data US (NYC3) LiveKit Real-time media routing, recording, speech-to-text Live media; recording pipeline US Deepgram (via LiveKit) Speech-to-text for transcripts and captions Session audio US Anthropic AI summaries and the Kola assistant Transcript text; assistant conversations US Google Generated graphic-recap images (facilitator-triggered) Summary text as an image prompt US DeepL / Google Translate Chat translation, per-user opt-in Chat message text US/EU Filestack File and image uploads to boards Uploaded files US Postmark Transactional email to account holders Host email addresses US Stripe Payments Billing data only — never session content US PostHog Product analytics Usage events and web telemetry US Deepgram is reached through LiveKit’s inference platform rather than under a direct contract with us, so LiveKit’s commitments are the operative ones — which is why we cite them below rather than Deepgram’s own terms. Your participants’ speech is not used to train AI models Kolab does not train models on participant audio, transcripts, or summaries, and our processing sub-processors are contractually prohibited from doing so. Two links a reviewer can check without asking us for anything: “LiveKit contractually requires each Inference Sub-processor used through LiveKit Inference not to retain, log, train on, fine-tune on, or otherwise use Inference Data for model improvement.” The same page names Deepgram as an inference sub-processor. livekit.com/legal/sub-processors “Anthropic may not train models on Customer Content from Services.” Anthropic Commercial Terms §B — anthropic.com/legal/commercial-terms Kolab itself operates no machine-learning training pipeline of any kind. We have never trained a model, and we do not export session content anywhere that one could be trained. AI is a per-space switch AI features are controlled per space by the facilitator. When Kola is off for a space, no session content from that space is sent to an AI provider. A programme that would rather not involve an AI sub-processor at all can run with AI disabled and lose nothing but the AI features. Access Who can see your recordings Access to recordings and transcripts requires Host or Facilitator access to the specific space they belong to. There is no staff or administrator override in the product. Our internal admin role covers billing and usage telemetry — it grants no access to session content, and the AI and agent interfaces are scoped by the same permission checks as the application itself. A small number of named engineers hold production infrastructure credentials, as at any hosted service. That access exists for operations and incident response, not content review. We do not currently keep an access log for recordings and transcripts. An audit trail visible to hosts is planned. We would rather tell you it is planned than call our analytics data an audit log. Security contact Will Chester — will@getkolab.ai Report a suspected vulnerability, ask a question this page does not answer, or request a deletion to that address. We aim to acknowledge security reports within two business days. On request, not on this page: data processing agreements, completed vendor security questionnaires, sub-processor change notifications, and programme-specific data handling commitments. We do not yet offer a Kolab data processing agreement of our own — our infrastructure providers maintain their own transfer mechanisms, and LiveKit and DigitalOcean are certified under the EU–U.S. Data Privacy Framework with Standard Contractual Clauses available — so if your review requires a DPA with us directly, raise it early and we will work through it with you. Last updated 20 August 2026. Writing a proposal? The matching language blocks live on the proposals page . Get started Experience the difference Try Kolab free for 14 days or book a personalized demo. Try for free → Book a demo --- ## Program license terms | Kolab (/terms/program) Program license terms | Kolab Skip to content Program license terms. The standard terms behind every Kolab Program Agreement. Written so a program director can read them before lunch and a lawyer can check them after. Draft. This page and the document it links to are pending legal review and are not yet in force for any client. Agreements executed before publication reference the version identified in that agreement. How it works Two documents. One is short and about you. One is longer and the same for everyone. The Program Agreement is three pages. It names your programs, the term, the fee, what is included, and who to call. It is the only document that changes from client to client, and it is the one you sign. The Standard Terms are the legal terms every Program Agreement incorporates by reference: licence scope, data and AI handling, availability, liability, and so on. They are versioned and dated. Your Program Agreement names the version that applies to you, and that version does not change under you unless we both agree in writing. If the two ever conflict, the Program Agreement wins on fees, scope, term, and inclusions. The Standard Terms win on everything else. Kolab Program License Standard Terms, v1.0 The full document, ten pages, as a PDF. This is the file your Program Agreement references as Annex 1. Download v1.0 (PDF) Plain English The terms most clients ask about A summary, not a substitute. Section numbers refer to the Standard Terms. You are licensed by program, not by seat A Program is the unit of licensing. Within a licensed program you get unlimited spaces, sessions, and facilitator accounts, with multiple tracks and repeat runs of the same agenda included. The only per-session limit is participant count, stated in your Program Agreement. Participants join by link and never need an account. Sections 1.2, 3.2, 3.4 Your content is yours You own everything created in your sessions: canvas content, recordings, transcripts, and AI summaries. We access it only to run and support the platform. We will not use it for marketing or product development without your written consent. We own the platform and the template library, and when our facilitators build a session for you from your agenda, the resulting board is yours and the templates underneath it stay ours. Sections 6.1, 6.2, 9.1, 9.2, 9.7 Recording requires consent, and some things are never recorded Recording captures one person’s view of a session and requires that person’s active consent. Chat, agenda notes, and conversations with Kola are never in a recording. Breakout audio is excluded from transcription by default. You are responsible for any additional notices your participants’ jurisdictions require. Section 6.3 AI is a switch, and your data does not train models Kola sends only the session information needed for a given request to our AI provider, and can be turned off entirely for any space. Neither we nor our providers use your session content to train AI models. AI outputs may contain errors and are not an official record. Our sub-processors are listed on the security page . Sections 6.5, 6.6, 6.12 Nothing expires, and you can always leave with your data Spaces persist for your whole term with no automatic deletion. You can request export or deletion at any time. When the agreement ends you have sixty days to export everything. Data is encrypted in transit and at rest. We will tell you about any security incident affecting your content within seventy-two hours. Sections 6.4, 6.7, 6.10 What we have not done yet, in writing We have not completed a SOC 2 audit, we do not offer regional data residency, and we do not yet keep a recording access log. The Standard Terms say so, so that no client can be surprised later. We will notify you if any of that changes during your term. Sections 6.8, 11.3 If we ever shut Kolab down You get at least ninety days notice, access and export through that period, and a refund of prepaid fees for any time after. We would rather put this in the contract than ask you to take vendor viability on faith. Section 8.5 Fees, term, and liability Fees are per program per year, invoiced in advance, Net 30. Your payment is not contingent on your funder paying you. Agreements are fixed term and do not auto-renew; we talk sixty days before the end. Discounted rates apply only to the years your Program Agreement states. Our liability is capped at what you paid us in the preceding twelve months, with the usual carve-outs for indemnification and confidentiality. Sections 2, 7, 13 Which document says what Program Agreement vs. Standard Terms Program Agreement (yours, signed) Programs licensed and team names Term and program years Fees, rate applied, invoice schedule What is included and what is not Design sessions and builds committed Contacts on both sides The Standard Terms version that applies Standard Terms (versioned, same for all) Licence scope and restrictions Content ownership, recording, data, AI Availability and support commitments Payment terms, refunds, renewal Termination and discontinuation Confidentiality, warranties, liability Governing law and general provisions Funder-required terms If your grant or cooperative agreement requires specific terms to be passed to vendors, they attach to your Program Agreement as a rider and take precedence to the extent the funder requires. Bring them to us at proposal stage rather than at signature and we will fold them in. Versions Version history Version Date Status Notes v1.0 September 2026 Draft, pending legal review First Standard Terms for Kolab program licences. Replaces use of the TechChange services agreement for Kolab engagements. When we publish a new version, existing agreements stay on the version they name. We will tell current clients what changed and offer the new version at renewal. Questions about a contract Contracting and invoicing: operations@techchange.org . Security and data handling: will@getkolab.ai . Anything else: nick@techchange.org . We do not yet offer a data processing agreement of our own. If your review requires one, raise it early and we will work through it with you. Last updated 21 September 2026. Related: security and privacy , pricing , proposal language .