Policies
External Support Policy
How the coalition accepts — and declines — outside funding, secondments, and in-kind support without letting any of it steer the mandate.
The coalition is capitalised by its members, and that is deliberate: an institution funded by its own membership answers to its own membership. External support — co-financing, trust contributions, secondments, technical partnerships, in-kind assistance — can multiply what the coalition delivers, and the coalition welcomes it. But outside money always arrives with outside expectations, and this policy exists to make sure support amplifies the mandate without ever steering it.
What the coalition accepts
External support is accepted in four forms, each governed by a written instrument before anything changes hands.
- Co-financing — external capital alongside coalition capital in specific transactions, on documented common or parallel terms.
- Trust contributions — funds entrusted for defined purposes such as preparation facilities or capacity programs, administered under coalition rules.
- Secondments and technical partnership — expert staff and institutional knowledge contributed by members, peer institutions, and qualified partners.
- In-kind support — data, tools, facilities, and services that advance a program without cash changing hands.
The conditions of acceptance
Every form of support is subject to the same four conditions, applied before acceptance and enforced for the life of the arrangement.
First, mandate alignment: support must advance work the coalition has already decided to do through its own governance. Contributions offered to redirect priorities — however generous — are declined, because a mandate auctioned to the largest contributor is no longer a mandate.
Second, source integrity: contributors are screened under the same counterparty standards as borrowers, including beneficial ownership and sanctions exposure. Third, no governance rights: contributing does not purchase a seat, a vote, or a veto anywhere in coalition governance. Fourth, transparency: every accepted arrangement above the de-minimis threshold is published — contributor, amount or nature, purpose, and terms.
What the coalition declines
The coalition declines support that fails screening, support conditioned on political alignment or commercial favouritism, support whose confidentiality requirements would defeat publication, and support that would make a core function dependent on a single external source.
Dependence is the quiet failure mode: a program that cannot survive one contributor’s exit is a program that contributor controls, whatever the agreement says. Concentration limits therefore cap what share of any program’s budget a single external source may represent, and core operations — governance, integrity, evaluation — accept no external funding at all.
Seconded personnel
Secondees work under coalition direction, coalition rules, and coalition confidentiality for the term of their assignment, and recuse from any matter touching their home institution’s interests.
The recusal register is maintained by the integrity office and audited annually. Secondment agreements name the rule plainly: a secondee serves the coalition while seconded, and a home institution seeking influence through its people has misunderstood the arrangement it signed.
Oversight
The external support register is reviewed annually by the audit committee of the Governing Council, which examines concentration, screening compliance, and whether any accepted support has drifted from the purpose it was accepted for.
Findings are published in the annual report. Arrangements that have drifted are corrected or wound down. The measure of this policy is simple and public: the coalition’s priorities, read across a decade, should be explicable entirely by its members’ decisions — and they are.
Institutions and partners interested in supporting coalition programs can open the conversation through the contact page; the partnerships team responds within ten business days with the screening and documentation the arrangement would require.
Engagement