Independence

Intellectual independence

CORE chooses its own research questions and publishes its own findings. A client commissioning a diagnosis, an exercise or an advisory engagement receives the result whatever it says; no client, funder or member has the right to review, delay or suppress a finding before it is published. Where a finding is uncomfortable for the organisation that paid for it, we say so to them first, and then we publish it.

Financial independence

CORE is a non-profit association: there are no shareholders and no dividends. Members are paid for the hours they work on a project, at rates benchmarked annually against EU reference salaries for the relevant expertise and applied identically to everyone with comparable skills. Every project budget, including compensation, is ratified by a vote of the membership before the proposal is submitted.

Funding disclosure

CORE is funded by project grants, contracted advisory work and the contributions of its members. Each engagement runs as a separate work package with its own budget, and no more than 20 per cent of a project's gross budget may be allocated to central administration — legal, IT, audit and joint dissemination. The remainder goes to the people doing the work.

We publish the funder of a research output alongside the output itself, and we decline work that requires a predetermined conclusion.