Institutions rarely arrive with the problem named correctly.
A museum calls it a website problem. A school calls it an AI policy problem. A foundation calls it a communications problem.
Very often, these are one problem: the way the institution thinks, the way it appears, and the way it works no longer fit together as one thing.
The Coherence Audit is how I find out whether that is true of your institution — and where, exactly, the drift is.
What the audit examines
How your institution thinks
What you actually believe about your learners and your public. What you consider worth teaching or showing, and what you refuse to. Whether your programs still express that belief — or have quietly drifted away from it.
How your institution appears
Your website, your public language, your visual presence. Not as decoration — as the public claim you make about how you think. I read your appearance the way your visitors, partners, and funders read it, and I name where it misrepresents you.
How your institution works
How decisions are made, how the team moves, where hours disappear — and, where relevant, how AI is exposing or intensifying existing misalignments. This is the layer where an institution either becomes coherent or quietly contradicts itself in private.
How it runs
Week 1
You share selected public and internal materials and complete a structured written intake. Two or three members of your team may be invited to answer a short written set of questions, and you describe one real working process — how a programme is launched, a decision made, or a piece of public communication produced.
Weeks 1–2
I review the materials, trace the relationships between the three layers, and send one focused round of written questions. No workshops or recurring meetings are required.
Week 2–3
You receive the Coherence Report, a short written guide to reading it, and seven days of written follow-up. An optional conversation can be arranged if useful.
Approximately two to three hours of institutional time in total. Everything else happens on my side.
What you receive
The Coherence Report — a written document of twelve to fifteen pages.
It names the principal gaps between the three layers, ranks them by consequence, and sets out what your institution should do in its first ninety days — whether or not you ever work with me again.
It is written judgment, signed by one person. Nothing in it is generated for volume. There is no dashboard, no score against a template, no benchmark borrowed from an institution that is not yours.
What it is not
The audit is not a rebrand, not an AI implementation, and not a strategy retreat.
It does not produce a new website, a new mission statement, or a new tool. It produces something rarer: an accurate account of where you are, and a defensible order of what to do about it.
The fee
The Coherence Audit is a fixed-fee engagement, agreed in writing before work begins.
Founding rate for the first two institutions: €1,500. Standard fixed fee: €2,400.
The audit is complete in itself. Some institutions end there. Some continue into a full engagement — in which case the report's ninety-day roadmap becomes its first working document.
Confidentiality
All internal materials are treated as confidential. Data handling — including any use of AI-assisted tools — is agreed in writing before the audit begins, and client materials are deleted after an agreed period.
Who it is for
Museums and science centres. Schools and founder-led education organizations. Foundations and mission-driven institutions that suspect their thinking, their appearance, and their operations have drifted apart — and want that suspicion examined by someone who has run an institution, not only advised one.
To begin, write to sofiko@sofikobigvava.com with the name of your institution and one sentence about what feels unfinished.
I will reply with a short written fit assessment and, where appropriate, the intake form and a fixed-fee proposal. If the audit is not the right instrument for your situation, the fit assessment will say so directly.
A live introductory call is not required. An optional thirty-minute conversation can be arranged if useful.