Support the Institute

intellectual independence and transparency of funding

Sovereign Institute exists to anticipate the strategic decisions Romania has to make and to build the concrete options for answering them. This work needs private, independent and transparent funding.

An institute that wants to be able to say uncomfortable things should depend neither on a single funder nor predominantly on a single category of funding. Independence is built through diversity: individuals, companies, foundations, competitive grants and institutional partnerships, all subject to the same editorial rules.

We need people who believe Romania needs long-term thinking and who are willing to fund it without buying conclusions. Supporters can ask for standards, transparency and results. What they cannot ask is that the analysis arrive at the conclusion they would prefer.

Most of the research Sovereign Institute produces is and remains public, free to anyone. Supporters are not paying to read. They are paying so that the institution producing this work exists and can pay the people who produce it.

This is the most important section on the page. We put it before the levels and the benefits, because it is the condition on which everything else works.

An institute that changes its conclusions according to who funds it is no longer a research institute. It is a public relations service with academic vocabulary. So that we do not end up there, we have imposed rules on ourselves which we publish and against which anyone can hold us to account.

These rules protect Sovereign Institute and the supporter in equal measure. A serious funder has no need for the world to believe they bought the conclusion of research they supported.

The same rules apply in full to research funded through grants or European funds. The source of funding is declared, and the funder does not approve conclusions.

Sovereign Institute is not a consultancy. Whatever the level of contribution, we do not offer risk analysis on your company, individual consultancy, personalised private briefings, confidential reports written for a single recipient, representation of interests or lobbying.

There is a second reason alongside independence. Sovereign Institute works with professionals who have their own practices, and some of them do exactly this kind of work in their own name and outside the Institute. The Institute does not build products that would compete with the private activity of its own people.

Everything we deliver to supporters is either public or collective and institutional: analyses addressed to a whole category of supporters, group discussions with several experts in the room, research questions of public interest that we answer openly.

We hold ourselves to a high standard of transparency: each year we publish the structure of our funding, its distribution by category and the identity of supporters who accept public recognition. For contributions where the funder asks for confidentiality, we publish the aggregate value within the relevant category, within the limits permitted by law. The Board of Directors knows the identity of the funder in every case and applies the rules on conflicts of interest and funding concentration.

We believe an organisation that sets out to influence public debate should say who pays for it. It is the only way a reader can judge for themselves whether they have grounds for reservation about what we write. We ask you to understand this objective when you decide to support us.

What we publish, specifically

For the Supporter level we publish neither names nor individual amounts. The contributions are small and breaking them down adds no relevant information for the public. We publish instead the number of supporters in that category and the total collected.

Until legislation makes this kind of transparency mandatory for all organisations of this type, we apply it voluntarily, in the form described above. If the legal framework changes, we will align with it.

If you prefer to remain anonymous

Your right to confidentiality is fully respected. It is enough to tick the relevant box in the contribution form or to write to us, and the contribution will be listed as anonymous within its category.

We make no benefit conditional on agreeing to publication of your name, we do not insist and we do not come back with later requests. The choice can be changed at any time, in either direction.

The annual transparency report

Separately from the list of supporters, we publish an annual transparency report, drawn up in accordance with the legal provisions applicable to non-profit associations established under Romanian Government Ordinance no. 26/2000. The report covers income and expenditure, the structure of funding by category, the activity carried out in the reference year and, where applicable, projects funded through grants or European funds, naming the funder.

We use the term annual contribution rather than price. You are not buying a subscription, you are supporting an institution. The period 14 September – 31 December 2026 is Founding Season, and contributions made during it are founding contributions.

Founding Season is deliberately an exception. Those joining now are not buying cheaper access to a level that will cost more later. They are taking the risk of supporting an institution before it has fully proved its worth. That is why founding recognition is permanent.

Recognition as a Founding Supporter or Founding Patron is permanent. The current benefits of each level are, however, tied to the contribution for the year in progress.

A predetermined share of revenue actually received is reserved for research and cannot be used for other expenditure except by an exceptional decision of the Board of Directors. That share rises as Sovereign Institute grows.

The more Sovereign Institute grows, the larger the part of every additional euro that goes directly into intellectual production. At one million euro of annual revenue, almost half the entire organisation is research.