We need your support

By Alex Singleton | 4 July 2005

When the Globalisation Institute was founded back in January, I never imagined we'd have such a successful first six months. The Institute only became a full time operation at the beginning of April, and yet we're already making an impact. On shows and stations like BBC Breakfast, Newsnight, the ITV News Channel, Channel Four News, CNBC and Sky News, we've been putting the positive case for free markets, free trade, international development that works, less international red-tape and greater prosperity the world over. Our report Trade Justice or Free Trade? was featured in a sermon by the Archbishop of Canterbury. We're the number one source for pro-globalization perspectives in the UK. On a personal level, I'm being booked for speaking engagements left, right and centre - from the New Economics Foundation to the Young Britons' Foundation to the Trade Justice Movement, and by dozens of schools and universities.

But we need to do so much more. We're borrowing office space at the moment - on the top floor of the Institute of Economic Affairs - but we'll shortly outgrow that space. To increase our output further, we need your support for more staff - plus computers for them to work on. We want to start a seminar programme in the autumn - and we need your support to make this possible. We also have exciting plans for expanding our website with topic-based portals for students and researchers to find out about the important issues in globalization today.

When I started the GI, I recognized the risk of being tied to a three or four major donors. It's relatively easy money but it means any hope of independence is lost. I've seen it happen to other start-ups and it warps all sense of research priorities. I also know that if we went to the government and asked for "civil society funding", we would be more cautious about criticizing bad government policies. Our independence is important to us and it is something we are not willing to compromise on.

But to do all the things we want to, we need your support. We're busy increasing economic understanding of the important issues of our time, working with policy-makers across the political divide, explaining why international taxes and regulation are not such a great idea and explaining the economic policies that will make a more prosperous, wealthy and happy world. So if you value free markets, low taxes and open trade, dig out your credit card and make a donation to the Globalisation Institute today by clicking the button below.

P.S. With every donation of £50 or more, we'll make sure you get invited to our launch party later this month on the rooftop bar at the fashionable London venue, Soho House.