Live UTI Free Funding Policy
Live UTI Free is a user-centric, patient advocacy organization. Our primary activities focus on providing unbiased, evidence-based information to sufferers of recurrent and chronic UTI, via the website https://liveutifree.com.
We welcome support in the form of grants, sponsorship, individual donations, and project funding, when it is deemed appropriate and is likely to provide value to our audience.
This funding policy outlines our policy on external funding, and explains how we make decisions around this. While some examples are listed, the intention is not to provide a comprehensive definition of all possible partnership opportunities. Please get in touch directly if you would like to discuss a collaboration.
Purpose Of This Policy
Live UTI Free exists to help and support our global community. It is extremely important to us that we foster a sense of honesty and transparency within our community, and that starts with being fully transparent to the people we are here to serve.
In everything we do, we aim to maintain a relationship with our users in which they feel they can rely on us to provide unbiased information.
In reality, our vision of helping more people find better testing and treatment, will come to fruition more quickly if we broaden our relationships and implement collaborations with organizations and companies that allow us to improve our website and our offering.
The purpose of this funding policy is to exist as a framework that allows us to work with other organizations who have contributions that may be of value to our audience, and who wish to support our work via funding of one of the types described below.
Our goal is to build projects that will ultimately help us help our audience. Our ‘audience’ refers to users of our website, our followers on twitter, instagram and facebook, and those on our email list.
By outlining our funding policy here, we aim to:
- Ensure that Live UTI Free maintains a consistent and transparent approach when we work with commercial companies and partners
- Establish our commitment to remaining independent of commercial influences
- Clarify the position of Live UTI Free with regard to our audience, our practitioner network, commercial companies, other organizations and the wider community
All members of the Live UTI Free team are required to adhere to this policy, and keep up to date with any revisions to the policy.
Funding Categories
Project Funding
Project funding refers to projects where Live UTI Free will collaborate in partnership with another organization or individual.
Examples of project funding may include:
- Funding to develop materials that allow us to interpret scientific and/or technical information for our audience, regarding a service or clinical product provided by a commercial company.
- Funding to collaborate on resources around a particular topic, eg. chronic UTI and sexual health.
- Funding to support patient perspective research.
Such a project may be one of mutual interest. The following will apply to this type of relationship:
- Live UTI Free will always maintain editorial control over all content published on our website and social media accounts, and any other materials produced in support of the project.
- Live UTI Free will only publish information about individual products or services when we believe it will be of use to our audience. When doing so, an unbiased approach will be taken. We will provide complete information representing multiple sides of the ‘argument’ where possible. Where this is not possible, incomplete information will be acknowledged.
- Live UTI Free will not recommend specific pharmaceuticals, treatment approaches or clinicians, but will provide information about different options available when possible.
- It is understood that the intention of such a relationship is that both Live UTI Free and any commercial partners will benefit.
Recruitment Or Consulting For Third Parties
Members of the Live UTI Free team may occasionally provide expertise to third parties on the topics of user research, website optimization, patient perspective research, patient recruitment and digital communication.
Third party relationships will remain confidential unless direct involvement by the Live UTI Free community is required, and a written agreement is in place that covers how such a relationship will be acknowledged. Any such activities are independent of the content provided on https://liveutifree.com.
Sponsorship
Sponsorship refers to a scenario where a company or other partner funds a single activity of Live UTI Free. Examples may include:
- Sponsoring production of new content for our audience, such as downloadable resources.
- Sponsoring creation of new audio/audiovisual content for our audience, such as a podcast series, or interviews with practitioners or UTI sufferers.
- Funding the attendance of the Live UTI Free team at a research conference.
- Funding the temporary appointment of a team member to Live UTI Free to assist with a specific activity, eg. data analysis, research.
In the case of sponsorship, the following will apply:
- The company will have no influence over the activity for which the sponsorship is granted.
- Live UTI Free will always maintain editorial control over all content published on our website and social media accounts, and any other materials produced in support of the activity.
- Live UTI Free will not endorse or promote the products or services of the sponsor.
- Where appropriate, sponsorship of any activity will be visually acknowledged in a way appropriate to the activity, eg. logo, link, or Live UTI Free external funding icon with link a to the sponsor. The exact wording and/or location of the acknowledgement will be agreed in negotiation with the sponsor.
Unrestricted Grants
Companies, organizations and individuals may offer financial support and in-kind support to Live UTI Free. Any support that fits the following criteria is defined as unrestricted grants:
- The funding partner has no involvement in the project for which the funds are used.
- Live UTI Free can independently allocate funds as it sees fit.
- Live UTI Free will acknowledge the grant, however the funding partner’s logo will not be used and Live UTI Free will control the way in which the acknowledgement takes place.
Funding: Guiding Principles
Live UTI Free is only interested in collaborative partnerships or funding that will have a positive impact on our users, and may help them on their path to better testing and treatment.
Live UTI Free will maintain an open and transparent relationship with all funding partners.
In order to ensure these points remain true, Live UTI Free will vet all potential funders to be satisfied that:
- There are strong grounds for believing that a funding arrangement will result in benefit to Live UTI Free and our users
- No adverse publicity will result from accepting the funds.
Live UTI Free will review potential funding partners, including their reputation in working with patient organizations, and their track record with regard to funding.
If there is any cause for concern, Live UTI Free will reconsider or reject the funds.
Live UTI Free will not knowingly accept any type of funding from a company that produces what we consider to be unethical products or services.
Live UTI Free will not recommend specific pharmaceuticals, clinicians or treatments.
Live UTI Free will ensure the responsibilities and contribution of the Live UTI Free team and any funding partner, are agreed to in writing.
The funding partner must agree to abide with the guidelines outlined herein.
If a company makes any attempt to coerce Live UTI Free to conform to its business and/or marketing agenda, either explicitly or implicitly, or does not conform to the agreed responsibilities, Live UTI Free will reject the funds or terminate an ongoing project.
Where appropriate Live UTI Free may solicit funding from consortia composed of two or more partners from the same industry.
Activities That Cannot Be Externally Funded
There are activities and content at the core of Live UTI Free that will always be funded internally. This is to ensure an unbiased approach is retained, and to enable us to frequently update information as new research becomes available. These core activities and content include:
- The core information pages on the Live UTI Free website – those articles linked to directly from the homepage, and personal stories contributed by our community.
- Social media content that is posted directly via the Live UTI Free twitter, facebook or instagram accounts – this does not include paid advertising that forms part of an awareness, research, recruitment or education campaign.
- The Live UTI Free practitioner network – practitioners may not pay to be listed on the core information pages on the Live UTI Free website.
- Emails to our community mailing list – we will not provide access to our mailing list in any form. This does not include funding that forms part of an awareness, research, recruitment or education campaign. Email addresses and personal information will never be shared with an external party.
- Personal data we collect from our community will not be published, sold, traded or passed on to any third party. See more about this in our legals.
Guidelines For Funding Partners
Live UTI Free will not enter into or continue a relationship with any funding partner, if the relationship and related activity may damage the reputation of Live UTI Free.
In support of this, we ask all funding partners to:
- Seek written approval from Live UTI Free before using our name or logo, referring to any of our initiatives, or quoting our content in any type of public communication.
- Appoint a single point of contact within their organization to liaise with the appropriate team member at Live UTI Free, in order to establish clear lines of communication early on. We request that this person be authorized to make decisions regarding any aspect of the proposed funding.
Live UTI Free retains the right to veto any content produced in connection with any funding, and we request that sufficient approval time is allocated for this purpose, as it may require approval from one or more team members.
As a user-centric, patient advocacy site, Live UTI Free will collaborate with commercial companies, non-profits, and other organizations, when it is deemed beneficial to our users.
This policy may be updated at any given time.