This week, a
letter in The Telegraph called for continued commitment to the Charity Research Support Fund - Government funding that tops up the grant money higher education institutions receive from charities. Our Chief Executive here at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, Professor Alan Ashworth, was one of the signatories to the letter, which included 42 medical research organisations and 130 leading scientists. I had a look at some facts and figures about just how important the fund really is for us here at The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR).
So firstly, what is the Charity Research Support Fund? It was introduced in 2006-7 to support charity funded research at higher education institutions. When charities provide project grants, these tend to cover the direct costs of the project, like staff salaries and equipment, but not the indirect costs like lighting the laboratories and library and administrative costs.
To allow universities to run research projects, the UK has a system of dual support, where project grants pay for the direct costs, and the indirect overhead costs are paid through block grants from the Government’s funding councils. The Charity Research Support Fund makes up part of these block grants, and ensures that research organisations don’t lose out by undertaking charity-funded research.
At the moment the Government contributes about 28p for every £1 of charity grant funding that higher education institutions like the ICR receive. With medical research charities funding more than £1 billion of research in 2011, this extra funding really does make an enormous difference to the sector. Anyone who has ever given money to research charities will be pleased to hear that this scheme means that their donation will go further, allowing charities to fund a greater number of research projects, knowing that they don’t need to worry about covering the indirect costs.
With the spending review coming up later this month, and the Government looking for ways to make further cuts, now is the time to make the case for just how important the Charity Research Support Fund is. This funding stream isn’t guaranteed after March 2015, and the impact of losing it would mean that institutions which are heavily funded by charities could lose millions of pounds of research funding.
Here at the ICR we are one of the 10 highest recipients of charity research funding in the UK higher education sector, which is even more impressive when you consider that we are a specialist organisations focusing on cancer research, unlike the large universities which work across a huge number of subjects. We receive 73% of our research grants from charities, making us eligible for £9.5 million of funding through the Charity Research Support Fund this year. This money really does make a huge difference to us and the amount of research that we can do.
So what can we do to raise awareness of this funding and how much it means to us? The medical research sector is making the case about the importance of the fund. Breast Cancer Campaign has been
running a campaign encouraging people to write to their MP to ask them to support it in the run-up to the spending review. You can sign up through their website, and they have a letter which you can edit before it is automatically sent to your MP.
The Charity Research Support Found is vital for higher education institutions like us, for charities and for the public – because it means donations go further. If we’re going to continue to make the discoveries that defeat cancer, we must hope the Government is listening to the scientific community.
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