The Forum is a not-for-profit Community Interest Company that provides its services on an open access basis. Its annual running costs are estimated to be £650,000, and the Forum is dependent on sponsorship and grants to meet these expenses.
Funds were provided by the Advent Health Protection Foundation, part of Advent Venture Partners, to cover the costs of the feasibility study and other pre-launch costs. Zurich Insurance Company, the Forum’s Founding Sponsor, provided the funds to take the Forum from concept to fully operational status.
Benefits for major sponsors
It is anticipated that at any one time there will be between six and 10 major sponsors, mostly large corporations from non-competing sectors. In addition to full, corporate, Forum membership benefits, each of the major sponsors will receive (if that is their wish) prominent acknowledgement of their support for the Forum. This can include a rotating schedule of advertisements on the Forum’s home page and prominent acknowledgement of their support in all the Forum’s:
» marketing and public-relations communications
» communications with its members and users
» press releases and public announcements
» seminars, conferences, and other public events
The principal benefits to major sponsors are those that flow naturally from supporting a beneficial project. With the beneficiaries of the Forum’s work spread globally, throughout the developed and developing world, support for the Forum can play an important part in enhancing the image of a socially responsible corporation.
Support for the Forum provides a close association between the sponsor and the solution to future health threats, including high-profile areas of public concern such as bioterrorism, avian flu, and threats that have yet to emerge.
Through its close association with the UK’s Health Protection Agency, international connections, and carefully targeted information resources, the Forum is in a unique position to contribute on a global scale to minimising the consequences of emerging and future health threats.
The Forum can provide sponsors with a powerful means of projecting their commitment as socially responsible corporations to an audience that ranges from the highest-level national and supra-national policymakers, to the ultimate beneficiaries of improved global health protection — each and every one of us.
