Make your Patron Pledge today

Every £ of patron funding goes into making the Summit happen and making its content outlast the day. There is no shareholder, no commercial agenda, and no commission on patron gifts. Specifically, your contribution funds:

•      Rising Stars. Travel, access and hospitality for early-career researchers, clinicians and innovators who would otherwise be priced out of the room.

•      Exceptional, uncommercial speakers. Fees, travel and logistics for voices whose ideas merit a global stage, independent of any commercial agenda.

•      World-class production. Broadcast-quality AV, lighting and post-production so the best sessions reach far beyond the 150 people in the room.

•      Open content & lasting impact. Recording, editing and freely sharing Summit sessions, so the conversation educates long after 17 November.

•      Summit delivery. Venue, catering, curation and the small production team that makes a highly curated day run smoothly.

Roughly a third of the 180 seats each year go to patrons and their recommendations. The other two thirds — chairs, speakers, early-career academics and open applicants — are invited free. Patron funding is what keeps those seats free.

Yes — and we are always grateful for the offer. The Summit is built on more than money. Useful ways to contribute beyond a financial gift include:

•      Expertise. Speaker and Rising Star recommendations, session design input, or acting as a LiH Awards judge.

•      Network. Warm introductions to organisations that might become patrons, to exceptional speakers, or to candidates for the academic cohort.

•      In-kind contributions. If you have a product or service that belongs in the room, our Summit Day Gifting Patron tier is designed for exactly that (see next question).

•      On-the-day support. A small number of volunteer, press and production roles are curated each year. Get in touch early if you’d like to be considered.

•      Content amplification. Helping distribute post-Summit recordings through your own channels and communities.

Where we can’t replace a financial gift with time alone is the operational cost of running the Summit itself — venue, production, travel, hospitality. Patron funding is the only way those are met. If you want to help but a financial contribution isn’t feasible this year, please do email us as we would love to hear how you would like to help.

Quite possibly! That is the intent behind our Summit Day Gifting Patron tier (in-kind, bespoke) that you will find in the Patron Info Pack, above.

Your branded product becomes part of the Summit Gift Bag experience, placed into the hands of a curated room of clinicians, founders, investors, researchers and policy leaders. Depending on fit, this can also include hosting a branded stand on the day.

A few things to know:

•      Curation is tight. We favour authentic alignment with the mission — nutrition, supplementation, wellbeing, diagnostics, wellness and adjacent categories. Not every product is a fit, and that protects the experience for everyone.

•      Volume. Plan for approximately 150–200 units so every delegate receives one.

•      Lead time. The earlier the conversation, the more we can do with it. Please reach out as soon as you think there might be a fit.

Email marje@leadersin.org with a short description of the product and why you think it belongs in the room.

No. The Summit is curated, not commercial. Tickets are never sold, and every delegate is invited on the basis of what their perspective brings to the day. A patron gift is not a seat fee.

What a patron contribution actually does is fund the seats of people who couldn’t otherwise be in the room: early-career researchers we’ve identified as Rising Stars, clinicians from under-represented settings, independent thinkers, and the uncommercial speakers we invite without asking them to pay their own way.

A Personal Patron at £500, for instance, effectively underwrites a place for someone a generation behind them in the field. A Principle Patron funds four. A Title Patron funds twelve. Patron recognition, proximity to the agenda, and the post-event VIP dinner all flow from the gift — but the gift itself pays forward, not inward.

If at any point a potential patron is only attending because they’ve paid, we’ve misunderstood each other and we’d rather step back from the partnership.

Leaders in Health is a genuinely not-for-profit summit, but we are not a registered UK charity. That means Gift Aid doesn’t apply and we can’t issue a charitable donation receipt. There are, however, routes that often make a patron gift tax-efficient:

•      For organisations (most patrons). Patronage is typically accounted for as marketing, sponsorship or business-development spend, given the visible brand recognition, content association and networking benefits the Summit provides in return. Most UK companies treat such spend as an allowable business expense. Your finance or tax advisor will confirm based on your own circumstances.

•      For individuals contributing in a business capacity. If your patronage is made through your consultancy, practice or company rather than personally, the same sponsorship-expense treatment usually applies.

•      For personal (non-business) gifts. Purely personal UK patronage is not tax-deductible, since we are not a charity.

•      International patrons. Tax treatment will depend on the rules in your own jurisdiction — please check with your local advisor.

We are happy to provide an invoice describing the contribution as a sponsorship or brand-partnership fee, which keeps the bookkeeping straightforward on your side. Nothing in this FAQ is tax advice; please confirm with your own accountant.

Editorial independence is the whole point of the Summit, so we protect it deliberately. Content is curated by the Summit Chairs, Dr Jack Kreindler and Dr Vernon Bainton, and overseen by an independent Oversight Committee. No single patron, including the Title Patron, can dictate the agenda or veto sessions.

What patrons do get, and increasingly so at higher tiers, is input into the themes we explore and the people we invite, alongside the recognition benefits described in the deck. The Title tier is limited to two partners per year, precisely so the voice of the Summit is never captured by a single brand.

Patronage is annual. Each Summit requires its own cycle of support and the patron benefits (listing, recognition, invitations, Rising Star funding) are tied to that year. Most patrons renew, and an early signal of intent for the following year helps us plan and helps protect your tier.

At LiH Summit Patron level and above, yes. You can indicate a preference — for example, funding a particular Rising Star cohort, underwriting a session theme, backing the production/broadcast element, or supporting the post-event content programme. We work with you to place the funds meaningfully while keeping editorial decisions with the curation team.

Yes. Anonymous patronage is welcomed at every tier. We record the contribution internally but will not publish your name or logo if you prefer the support to be discreet.

For Principle and Title Patron tiers, we can split the contribution across two or more instalments through the year. Just let us know when you first make contact so we can structure the invoice accordingly.

Your patron seat can be re-assigned to a named nominee, subject to curation. Your patronage stands regardless of who ends up attending, since the contribution funds the wider programme, the Rising Stars and the post-Summit content, not a particular seat at the Summit.