Organisations that have received the standard included Morrisons supermarkets, B&Q, Dfid, University of Central Lancashire, Thames Water, Trinity Mirror, BT Group, Kyocera, Barclays Capital, Hewlett Packard, University of Manchester, Citrica, Ricoh, Diageo, O2, Tesco, Mothercare, Moss Plastics, Manchester United, Serco, Linklaters, Bolton Wanderers Football Club, British Land and Motorola.
It is funded by the Effective Health Care Research Programme Consortium, UK (via the British DFID and the International Health Group, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine) The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), Indiam the Cochrane Schizophrenia Group (via the Department of Health, UK and the University of Nottingham), and the World Health Organization's Clinical Trials in Children group.
In August 2003, the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) joined together in a collaborative research project to look at bringing together livelihoods thinking with concepts from information and communication for development, in order to improve understanding of the role and importance of information and communication in support of rural livelihoods.
With funding from more than 110 donors, including USAID, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, SDC, Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, CIDA, DFID, and the World Bank, iDE has implemented more than 275 projects worldwide.
The World Bank and the British government's aid department (DFID) come in for particularly strong criticism, though notable exceptions are also highlighted, such as Edward Clay, the then British High Commissioner to Kenya.
It is the successor of the DFID-funded Small Grants Scheme, which ended with the closure of the British Embassy in Antananarivo, Madagascar in 2005.
At the September United Nations Summit on the Millennium Development Goals in New York, AusAID, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Dfid and USAID adopted the 100 million metric as a cornerstone of their International Alliance for Reproductive, Maternal and Newborn Health.
Pattnaik has described Orissa as a "DFID colony", referring to the British Department for International Development (DFID).