Tackling the new climate
Immediate changes
Changes to the applications process
Summary
The British Lung Foundation has funded medical research into lung disease since its inception in 1985, funding over 200 separate research grants totalling nearly £20 million. Traditionally, the BLF has offered annual grant streams available to fund research into any form of lung disease, and we have funded the highest quality applications. In addition to these regular calls open to any disease field, we have offered grants for research into specific disease areas according to our research strategy or to the availability of disease-specific funding streams.
The past few years have seen a dramatic change in the financial climate. This has resulted in people becoming understandably more keen to influence how their donations are spent. Increasingly, donors are specifying that their research donations must be used for a particular purpose - usually for research into a specific disease. The consequence is that we are now receiving more restricted funding for research into specific disease areas and less funding for ‘general’ research with no such restriction. These disease-specific restrictions make it difficult for the BLF’s Scientific Committee to award grants based on merit alone, since the funding restrictions increasingly influence which applications we can fund.
In 2008 we were able to award £668,000 to excellent applicants. However, the Scientific Committee were unable to fund several of top-ranked applications because unrestricted funds were not available, and the available disease-specific funds did not match the subject areas of these applications. In addition, we were unable to fund research in particular restricted areas due to the lack of quality proposals in those areas. Regrettably, a great deal of hard work from the relevant applicants, members of the Scientific Committee, external peer reviewers and BLF staff was wasted and went unrewarded.
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Tackling the new climate
This situation in 2008 arose partly due to the timetabling of our financial year and our grant round. The BLF financial year runs from July to June, with the allocation of research funds in the following November. By November, our accounts have been audited and accurate figures for available research funds can be provided. However, this means that funding restrictions are not known until shortly before the Scientific Committee’s awards meeting. This is long after grants have been advertised, applications made and evaluation begun.
The BLF recognises that we need to alter these systems in order to adapt to the new financial climate and donor habits. Therefore we have set up a Working Group to review the BLF Scientific Committee structure and function as well as the mechanisms used to apply for and award grants. The aim is to devise a system that is fairer, less labour intensive for applicants and evaluators alike, and results in a lower proportion of unsuccessful applicants. This will include a review of how and when we call for grant applications, how we evaluate applications and how we make grant awards.
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Immediate changes
There were several restricted research funds which we did not allocate in 2008. These will rollover for use in the 2009 grant round and include:
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£4,634.00
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ARDS
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£872.00
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Role of Connective Tissue in Lung Disease
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£123,885.00
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June Hancock Mesothelioma Award
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£100,440.00
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Mick Knighton Mesothelioma Award
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£4,400.00
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Peter John Foord (Equipment)
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£234,231.00
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TOTAL
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The BLF Fundraising Team is working hard on the current financial year (July 2008 –June 2009), to raise additional funds for research in 2009. Unfortunately, it is impossible to predict how these funds may be restricted and to which disease areas. However, it is likely that only a small proportion of the research budget will be unrestricted.
An increase in disease-specific funding restrictions means less freedom for the Scientific Committee to make awards on merit alone. This leads to difficulties in making awards from grant schemes in which applications can be made in any disease area, such as our Project Grant scheme. This was demonstrated in the 2008 grant round when we were not able to award the highest-ranking Project Grant applications as the top-ranked bids did not match the disease areas to which our donations were restricted and ‘unrestricted’ research funds were not available to fund them. For this reason, the Working Group has recommended that we should take a more targeted approach in calling for funding applications. Consequently, we intend to offer grants only when we are confident that funding is available and, where necessary, we will restrict grant calls to disease areas which correspond to the funding available.
In light of this, the Working Group has advised that the advertised call for general ‘Project Grants’ for 2009 should be withdrawn. This will help to prevent a repeat of the situation experienced in 2008, where applications were submitted and evaluated but had no chance of being funded at the awards meeting due to lack of appropriate funds. This situation will be reviewed for the 2010 grant round.
Please note that the following grants will all go ahead in 2009 (numbers of awards we hope to make are shown in brackets)
- BLF Research Fellowship award (1)*
- Mick Knighton Mesothelioma Research Fund award (1)
- Targeted Project Grant in Lung Cancer (1)
- Targeted Project Grant Lung Disease in Children (1)
- Trevor Clay Memorial PhD Studentship award (1)*
- Travel awards* (20)
- Young Investigator of the Year award* (2)
For all BLF Grants, we will only award applications of sufficiently high quality, regardless of whether they are funded from restricted or unrestricted monies. If applications are not deemed to be of high enough quality, we reserve the right to make no award.
*we welcome applications investigating any lung condition in these grant schemes.
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Changes to the applications process
Going forward, the Working Group has also agreed that the grants allocation process needs to be modified. The following mechanism was suggested for offering grants when we are confident about availability of funds:
ADVERT PLACED
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FULL APPLICATIONS1 SCORED (1-6) BY SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE (current structure)
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ONLY THOSE WITH MEAN SCORE ABOVE A CUTOFF (AROUND 4) ARE PEER REVIEWED
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PEER REVIEWS & APPLICATIONS LOOKED AT BY “SUB PANEL”2 WHO MAKE FUNDING RECOMMENDATIONS
1 Bypassing preliminary applications will mean removal of an entire stage of evaluation, streamlining the process.
2 Consisting of the Chair of the Scientific Committee plus members of the Scientific Committee relevant to the subject area being discussed. Members of this Board are not eligible for funding.
Award competitions will be offered in a rolling process, as and when available funds are confirmed.
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Summary
The British Lung Foundation recognises the need for change in response to the changing economic climate. By altering the way we offer and award research grants as described, we look forward to a fairer system which offers better value from our research investment and more effective support of the UK respiratory research community.
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