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\"Fundraising and Strategic Planning : Innovative Approaches for Museums appraise strategies museums employ to raise funds including admission prices, membership categories, donor and affinity groups, and specialized event-driven efforts while examining new crowdfunding models such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo\"--Provided by publisher.

STUDY QUESTIONHow are ART and IUI regulated, funded and registered in European countries?SUMMARY ANSWEROf the 43 countries performing ART and IUI in Europe, and participating in the survey, specific legislation exists in only 39 countries, public funding (also available in the 39 countries) varies across and sometimes within countries and national registries are in place in 31 countries.WHAT IS KNOWN ALREADYSome information devoted to particular aspects of accessibility to ART and IUI is available, but most is fragmentary or out-dated. Annual reports from the European IVF-Monitoring (EIM) Consortium for ESHRE clearly mirror different approaches in European countries regarding accessibility to and efficacy of those techniques.STUDY DESIGN, SIZE, DURATIONA survey was designed using the online SurveyMonkey tool consisting of 55 questions concerning three domains—legal, funding and registry. Answers refer to the countries’ situation on 31 December 2018.PARTICIPANTS/MATERIALS, SETTINGS, METHODSAll members of EIM plus representatives of countries not yet members of the Consortium were invited to participate. Answers received were checked, and initial responders were asked to address unclear answers and to provide any additional information they considered important. Tables of individual countries resulting from the consolidated data were then sent to members of the Committee of National Representatives of ESHRE, asking for a second check. Conflicting information was clarified by direct contact.MAIN RESULTS AND THE ROLE OF CHANCEInformation was received from 43 out of the 44 European countries where ART and IUI are performed. Thirty-nine countries reported specific legislation on ART, and artificial insemination was considered an ART technique in 35 of them. Accessibility is limited to infertile couples in 11 of the 43 countries. A total of 30 countries offer treatments to single women and 18 to female couples. In five countries ART and IUI are permitted for treatment of all patient groups, being infertile couples, single women and same sex couples, male and female. Use of donated sperm is allowed in 41 countries, egg donation in 38, the simultaneous donation of sperm and egg in 32 and embryo donation in 29. Preimplantation genetic testing (PGT) for monogenic disorders or structural rearrangements is not allowed in two countries, and PGT for aneuploidy is not allowed in 11; surrogacy is accepted in 16 countries. With the exception of marital/sexual situation, female age is the most frequently reported limiting criteria for legal access to ART—minimal age is usually set at18 years and maximum ranging from 45 to 51 years with some countries not using numeric definition. Male maximum age is set in very few countries. Where permitted, age is frequently a limiting criterion for third-party donors (male maximum age 35 to 55 years; female maximum age 34 to 38 years). Other legal constraints in third-party donation are the number of children born from the same donor (in some countries, number of families with children from the same donor) and, in 10 countries, a maximum number of egg donations. How countries deal with the anonymity is diverse—strict anonymity, anonymity just for the recipients (not for children when reaching legal adulthood age), mixed system (anonymous and non-anonymous donations) and strict non-anonymity.Public funding systems are extremely variable. Four countries provide no financial assistance to patients. Limits to the provision of funding are defined in all the others i.e. age (female maximum age is the most used), existence of previous children, maximum number of treatments publicly supported and techniques not entitled for funding. In a few countries, reimbursement is linked to a clinical policy. The definition of the type of expenses covered within an IVF/ICSI cycle, up to what limit and the proportion of out-of-pocket costs for patients is also extremely dissimilar.National registries of ART and IUI are in place in 31 out of the 43 countries contributing to the survey, and a registry of donors exists in 18 of them.LIMITATIONS, REASONS FOR CAUTIONThe responses were provided by well-informed and committed individuals and submitted to double checking. Since no formal validation was in place, possible inaccuracies cannot be excluded. Also, results are a cross section in time and ART and IUI legislations within European countries undergo continuous evolution. Finally, several domains of ART activity were deliberately left out of the scope of this ESHRE survey.WIDER IMPLICATIONS OF THE FINDINGSResults of this survey offer a detailed view of the ART and IUI situation in European countries. It provides updated and extensive answers to many relevant questions related to ART usage at national level and could be used by institutions and policymakers in planning services at both national and European levels.Study funding/competing interest(s)The study has no external funding, and all costs were covered by ESHRE. There were no competing interests.ESHRE Pages are not externally peer reviewed. This article has been approved by the Executive Committee of ESHRE.

Financial constraints have an important impact on the development of eco-innovations but their effect varies according to the type of funding. This article studies the interaction between public funding on the one hand, and internal and external lack of funding on the other. The empirical analysis is based on a sample of European small- and medium-sized enterprises, and exploits information on firms’ involvement in eco-innovation activities, their drivers, and obstacles. Our results show that, even accounting for demand-pull effects and regulatory interventions, access to public funds and fiscal incentives is effective for improving the firm’s ability to introduce eco-innovations, particularly if the company has ample funds from either internal or external sources. Our findings suggest also that public funding is perceived by firms as complementary to other external finance.

Science investments should benefit everyone; however, research still predominantly lacks gender integration, resulting in incomplete findings and inequitable outcomes. Moreover, despite some progress, gender disparities persist in the research workforce. Research funders, including science granting councils, are pivotal in driving gender transformation through shaping knowledge production and research infrastructure. We report on key findings from the Science Granting Councils Initiative (SGCI) in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) Gender Equality and Inclusivity (GEI) Project - a multi-year participatory intervention aimed at strengthening the capacities of councils to integrate GEI across their functions. Participating councils were located in 13 African countries, and their actions spanned four domains: building organisational GEI infrastructure; reshaping norms, practices, and power relations that perpetuate gender inequality; implementing targeted measures to address women's unequal access to resources and research opportunities; and promoting collective ownership of efforts to advance GEI in the research and innovation ecosystem.

Although funding acknowledgements (FAs) have been around for nearly three decades, there are not yet enough theoretical and practical studies of them to enable FAs to be considered a consolidated area of research. Fortunately, newly published findings and promising data sources presented in recent years have helped better our understanding of the process of scientific creation and communication and provide evidence of the importance of FAs. This paper seeks to help demonstrate the crucial role FAs play in evaluating research funding’s performance. A methodology based on the use of linked open metadata from diverse sources is presented for this purpose. The methodology highlights the important work analysts do to increase the accuracy, solidity, and diversity of the results of FA-based quantitative studies by gathering and analysing the data furnished by funding organisations. Lastly, the projects funded by the Spanish National Science and Research Agency from 2008 to 2020 are evaluated to verify the method’s usefulness, robustness, and reproducibility. Also, a new unit of analysis is introduced, funders, to create a new type of co-occurrence network: co-funding. In conclusion, funding agencies’ experts and analysts will find that this methodology gives them a valuable instrument for boosting the quality and efficacy of their activities, complying with transparency and accountability requirements, and quantifying the scope of funding results.

What is the impact of access to political party finance – money that parties use to fund their campaign activities – on politics in Africa? While multiparty elections have become more regular in the developing world, many opposition parties are still failing to win elections. This paper argues that poor access to political finance weakens democratic consolidation and negatively impacts the participation of less-resourced candidates who are unable to self-fund. As a result, opposition parties are forced to rely on weak promises of aid from international donors and unreliable state funding. This in-depth analysis of political finance, based on extensive interviews with politicians and government officials in Zimbabwe, political documents, news reports and a review of court cases, reveals that uneven financing has weakened opposition parties and serves as an extra advantage for incumbents.

Background Lack of transparency around manufacturing costs, who bears the bulk of research and development costs and how total costs relate to the pricing of products, continue to fuel debates. This paper considers the case of olaparib (Lynparza®), recently indicated for use among BRCA-mutant breast cancer patients, and estimates the extent of public and philanthropic R&D funding. Methods We know from previous work that attempting to ascertain the amount of public and philanthropic funding using purely bibliographic sources (i.e., authors’ declarations of funding sources and amounts traced through funders) is limited. Since we knew that a publically funded research unit was pivotal in developing olaparib, we decided to supplement bibliographic data with a Freedom of Information request for administrative records on research funding data from this research centre. Research In terms of stages of product development, work conducted in the pre-clinical research stage was the most likely to report non-industry funding (> 90% of pre-clinical projects received public or philanthropic funding). Clinical trials were least likely to be funded through non-industry sources—although even here, contrary to the popular assertion that this is wholly industry-financed, we found public or philanthropic funding declared by 23% of clinical trials. Using information reported in the publications, we identified approximately £128 million of public and philanthropic funding that may have contributed to the development of olaparib. However, this amount was less than one-third of the total amount received by one research institute playing a pivotal role in product discovery. The Institute of Cancer Research reported receiving 38 funding awards to support olaparib work for BRCA-mutant breast cancer totalling over £400 million. Conclusions Government or charitable funding of pharmaceutical product development is difficult to trace using publicly available sources, due to incomplete information provided by authors and/or a lack of consistency in funding information made available by funders. This study has shown that a Freedom of Information request, in countries where such requests are supported, can provide information to help build the picture of financial support. In the example of olaparib, the funding amounts directly reported considerably exceeded amounts that could be ascertained using publically available bibliographic sources.

Due to population aging and sociodemographic change, there is an increasing reliance on residential aged care facilities in the Asia–Pacific region. Most countries have adopted taxation as the primary means to levy capital for funding universal health services and means-testing of benefits may be further incorporated as a policy balance between horizontal equity and fiscal sustainability. It was hypothesized that residential care needs are evaluated by assessments relating to funding; this scoping review seeks to synthesize how such assessments relate to the care needs of residents. Searches were conducted in concordance with a priori protocol for English-language literature published since 2008 in Embase, CINAHL, PubMed, Scopus, JBI, TROVE, and four peak international organizations for studies and reports that describe the assessment of residents’ needs in Asia–Pacific countries that used a mixture of taxation and means-testing to publicly fund residential aged care. One paper and 47 reports were included. Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore utilize a taxation and means-tested user charge approach to fund residential aged care needs. The common care needs assessed include health conditions, daily activities, cognition, psychiatric, and behavioral needs. While essential care needs are publicly funded, other holistic care needs, such as spirituality and autonomy-based needs, still need to be covered for meaningful occupation by the residents.

PurposeThis article studies the tensions between universities' accountability and autonomy in response to the demands of public steering mechanisms coordinating higher education institutions.Design/methodology/approachDemonstrating the tension between accountability and autonomy, the impact and relevance of public steering mechanisms coordinating higher education are studied via a survey with selected representative Finnish universities. The response rate was an exceptionally high 94%. In addition to the statistical analysis of the survey, open-ended questions were also analyzed to give a more in-depth understanding of the findings. The study uses paradox theory and institutional complexity as its theoretical lenses.FindingsThe empirical analysis of this study shows a considerable gap between the experienced impact and the experienced relevance of the steering mechanisms in higher education. The authors’ further analysis of the open-ended data shows that indicator-based funding allocation has undermined the perceived university autonomy. The authors highlight the paradoxical tensions of university autonomy and higher education institutions' steering mechanisms' requirement for accountability. Finding an acceptable balance between accountability and institutional autonomy plays an important role in designing higher education policies.Originality/valueThe authors found that even if a steering mechanism is experienced as impactful, it is not necessarily considered relevant. One of the key aspects in understanding the reasons behind this mismatch is related to university autonomy. Most impactful steering mechanisms become considered less relevant because they also endanger institutional autonomy. In this sense, it could be expected that steering mechanisms should better balance accountability and autonomy.

This study examines how national public funding and macroeconomic conditions affect higher education performance, measured by graduation rates. A panel dataset covering 2013-2022 and ten Lithuanian public universities integrates economic, financial, and institutional variables. Lithuania applies a mixed higher education funding model that combines institutional support with elements of student-based financing, where part of the public resources follow individual enrollment patterns. Both immediate and lagged effects are analyzed using multiple regression models with time-lag factors. A review of academic literature indicates that increased funding does not necessarily lead to better outcomes; instead, the strategic allocation of resources to priority areas is particularly important. The results confirm that macroeconomic factors are statistically significant and that overall public funding does not have a positive impact unless it is allocated efficiently. On the contrary, funding directed toward research and infrastructure consistently shows a positive effect. These findings underscore the importance of evaluating the effectiveness of education policy through lagged impact analysis.