Foundation for a Smoke-free World (“Foundation”) directly solicits early-phase concept memos and proposals from organizations identified and known to be well suited to advance its Mission and programs.
Foundation also coordinates grant solicitations by issuing periodic calls for:
Foundation does not accept unsolicited proposals. However, Foundation does invite interested parties to contact support@smokefreeworld.org to discuss ideas that may stimulate its Purpose.
Requests for Proposals and Letters of Intent (“grant applications”) are submitted through Foundation’s online grants submission system, which provides explicit and clear guidelines to grant applicants.
Grant Applicants are required to provide the following information on prescribed templates:
All research must be conducted in line with Open Science principles. These principles include (1) making all data available for re-analysis, (2) publishing all results whether positive or negative, and (3) making data available for publishing in peer-reviewed journals that offer open access.
Applicants must have the internal capacity for sex- and gender-based analysis where appropriate and the Foundation encourages a gender balance in team leadership and team composition.
Foundation maintains separate files for each grant applicant in which all correspondence and other information is retained.
All grant applications are evaluated by experts both internally and externally and, if recommended for progression, are subject to review and oversight at various levels of leadership within Foundation’s structure, including its Science Oversight Committee, Board of Directors, and legal team. Included in the evaluation is a review of the Applicant’s ability to appropriately administer the grant.
All Grant Applicants are advised of the outcome of their applications in accordance with the dates and timelines announced within the call for proposals.
Grant Applicants selected for further consideration will be contacted to develop the parameters of the proposal.
The terms and conditions of all grants awarded under this process are memorialized in a formal Grant Agreement.
Foundation maintains a Conflict of Interest Policy which can be found in Article VIII of Foundation’s Bylaws.
As part of the grant application process, each Applicant is required to disclose in writing any direct or indirect ownership or investment interest in, or any past or present financial relationship, including, but not limited to, salary or wages, remuneration, consulting fees, honoraria, expert testimony fees or speaking engagement fees received from, a tobacco company or any commercial entity involved in the development and/or commercialization of nicotine-containing products or the tobacco reduction or smoking cessation field or that otherwise may be affected by the scientific research conducted or funded by Foundation.
Bioethics is a broad field that connects biological sciences with ethical concerns. Research ethics is a subfield of bioethics that focuses on issues related to basic and clinical research. In this Grant Policies and Procedures, the term “research” refers to any systematic investigation designed to develop or contribute to generalizable knowledge. This includes, but is not limited to, medical experiments, surveys and observational studies, neuroimaging, and genetic studies. (These ethical guidelines do not apply to marketing research which involves insight survey, polls, or focus group.)
At the request of the United States Congress in 1974, experts in medicine, law and ethics came together to form the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavior Research (i.e., the “National Commission”). As part of its findings, the National Commission stated that research involving humans should be guided by three (3) ethical principles: beneficence, respect for persons, and justice.
Beneficence
Beneficence provides that all research must be done for the good of both the participants and the broader community. Implied in the term beneficence is another principle, called nonmaleficence, which holds that research should not result in harm.
Respect for Persons
Respect for persons, sometimes called “respect for autonomy,” emphasizes the importance of informed consent from competent individuals, and special protection for vulnerable populations (described below).
Justice
‘Justice in human subjects’ research means that the goods or benefits derived from research must be distributed fairly.
The order of these principles does not indicate the importance of one over another; they are understood to conflict at times and must be balanced and weighted accordingly.
The ethical standards governing the research on human beings can be divided into three subfields: (1) standards relating to research protocol; (2) standards relating to the selection and treatment of research subjects; and (3) standards regarding the relationships with the communities in which the research is conducted.
Standards Relating to Research Protocols
Scientific validity
Risk – Benefit Ratio
Social Value – Aims of Study
Social Value – Publication
Conflicts of Interest
Standards Relating to Human Participants
Respect for Study Subjects
Fair Selection of Subjects
Informed Consent
For these purposes, vulnerable human beings are persons who are incapable of protecting their own interests because they lack sufficient power, intelligence, education, resources, or other attributes needed to protect their own interests. Vulnerable subjects include (among others) children, pregnant women and their developing fetuses, persons from impoverished communities, persons who lack capacity, prisoners, severely ill persons, and subordinate members of hierarchical groups.
All research on human subjects must be approved in advance by one or more scientific and ethical review committees or Institutional Review Boards (“IRB”). Review committees must be independent of the grantee’s research team, and no benefit they may derive from the research should be contingent on the outcome of their review. Review committees should conduct periodic reviews of all research they have approved, including monitoring study progress.
When research is conducted outside the U.S., and especially when research is conducted on vulnerable populations, it is preferable that a national or local ethical review should be conducted by a committee that has established ties to the community where the research will be conducted, and to the subject population. Advice from local authorities can help avoid unnecessary problems and expense. All research must be approved by a locally approved IRB or equivalent AND approved through a corporate review process.
Foundation, as a private foundation, exercises “expenditure responsibility” in accordance with Section 4945(h) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended, with respect to the making of a grant to an organization, domestic or foreign, that is not a public charity. Expenditure responsibility requires a private foundation to exert all reasonable efforts and establish adequate procedures to see that a grant is spent solely for the purpose for which it was made, obtain full and complete reports from the grantee on how funds were spent and make full and detailed reports with respect to such expenditures on an annual basis on the private foundation’s Form 990-PF filed with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service.
The general requirements for expenditure responsibility are a pre-grant inquiry regarding the grantee, a written agreement, and annual reports from the grantee. The grant-making procedures Foundation has established, as outlined above, including the application process, the terms of the Grant Agreement and the required reporting and recordkeeping by the grantee, shall comply with the requirements of “expenditure responsibility.”
Alternatively, with respect to the making of a grant to a foreign organization that is the equivalent of a public charity under U.S. law, in lieu of exercising expenditure responsibility, Foundation may make an “equivalency determination.” An equivalency determination involves a determination that a foreign charity is the equivalent of a public charity under U.S. law based on a legal opinion analyzing the foreign organization’s ability to qualify as such, which involves an analysis of financial information, governing documents, programs and activities and other relevant information.