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MND Association of England Wales and NI Wins Award For Successful Research Foundation Campaign
The MND Association has received an award for our successful Research Foundation campaign which secured multi-million pound Government funding for MND research.
The MND Association Research Foundation campaign won in the campaigning and public affairs category of the 2009 Science Communication awards, organised by the Association of Medical Research Charities (AMRC).
The awards are held every two years and are designed to celebrate AMRC members’ excellence in communicating science and to recognise and reward best practice in science communication.
The judges commended the Research Foundation’s clear objectives and direct approach, which is great praise for a campaign that involved so many people connected to the MND Association. It was a hard-fought category, which saw the Association nominated alongside Breakthrough Breast Cancer and the Prostate Cancer Research Foundation.
The Research Foundation
The MND Association set up the Research Foundation in 2006 with the aim of raising £15 million for MND research. We put together a business case and lobbied in Parliament for half of this funding to be provided by the Government. We were delighted when, in 2007, this was secured through the setting up of a funding partnership with the Medical Research Council.
Dr Kirstine Knox, chief executive of the MND Association, says: "The Research Foundation campaign was inspired by our vision of a world free of MND and by people with MND themselves, who we know from our membership survey place a high priority on research.
"I would like to pay tribute to everyone affected by MND who played a role in our campaign. Hundreds of people affected by the disease wrote to the then Prime Minister Tony Blair to press our case for funding and these letters had a tremendous impact."
What the judges said
The judges praised the Research Foundation campaign for: “a clear presentation of what’s the problem, what can be done about it, a business case for doing so wrapped up with the emotional case”.
In the words of one of the judges: “When I have £100,000 to give away, the MND Association would get it for that sort of direct approach.” The manner in which we garnered support for our campaign was also singled out for praise as well as our “sophisticated lobbying”.
Our campaign was also praised for: “a really excellent business case, focusing not just on the human rationale, but also speaking to the Government on its own terms, i.e. potential financial savings, alignment with Government’s own health research agenda, how the pharma and biotech industries would be involved, and how a partnership with the MND Association could benefit Government, not the other way round.”