How we're funded
The IPCRG Board of Directors agrees its strategic objectives annually. These guide our fundraising activities. IPCRG was set up to receive membership subscriptions from its Country Members (not individual members) and Associate Corporate Members. The subscription fee is set annually at the Annual General Meeting. However, Country Members do not have the capacity to fundraise nor to pay for an IPCRG subscription. IPCRG works in low, middle and high income countries, where primary care education and research, and specifically primary respiratory research and education, is typically underfunded compared to hospital-based research and education and other disease areas. We currently have very few Associate Corporate Members because corporate organisations tend to prefer to pay for projects aligned with their objectives, rather than contribute separately to the running of independent charities working in their scientific or clinical field.
Therefore, IPCRG primarily fundraises for its operations and projects that benefit Members through project fundraising that includes a contribution to overheads using two approaches initiated by IPCRG and guided by our strategic objectives:
- Applying for grants and donations in competitive processes, often in partnership with other organisations and our Members, such as research bids to NIHR eg RESPIRE, Breathe Well; Horizon Europe eg FRESHAIR and FRESHAIR4Life; capacity building bids to philanthropic arms of pharmaceutical companies eg Global Bridges;
- Sponsorship eg sponsorship of our World Conferences and Scientific Meetings and of specific projects
IPCRG has always worked hard to provide value to its funders with high quality thinking and production quality, and by keeping its own operating costs as low as possible. It has no office; the Board of Directors, who are all experts in their respective fields, are unpaid volunteers; the executive team is small, has always worked from home offices, operates virtually and is engaged on flexible contracts to enable IPCRG to respond to project needs.
Our aim is for no single source of funding to represent more than 25% of total funding at any one time. Directors review the distribution of funding sources at every Board meeting. Sometimes, timing of income means that one source of funding dominates. Where possible, multi-company funding is negotiated by approaching several companies to co-fund one project eg Asthma Diagnosis Jigsaw.
IPCRG also gains income through delegate fees from attending IPCRG events, such as our biennial World Conferences and Scientific Meetings, which contribute to covering the costs of those meetings. Despite tough cost controls, delegate fees are never sufficient to cover the whole cost which is therefore supplemented through grants or sponsorship or, where necessary, from the general funding pot of reserves accumulated from grants and donations over many years.
In all its fundraising IPCRG is guided by the following principles:
- Declaration of interests of members of all committees annually and at the start of each meeting
- Transparency: the source(s) of funding are always declared on the relevant resources and on our website
- Independence: our actions, resources and advice are guided by our clinical network’s professional skills, knowledge and experience and the evidence, not financial interests or the beliefs of funders
- Creative Commons Licence: IPCRG aims to pass on the benefit of project funding to the wider community by typically granting a Creative Commons Licence [BY-NC-ND 4.0] for intellectual property generated by IPCRG with that project funding
2 July 2025