even though IRE accepted the Lilly Endowment, created by the founders of Eli Lilly and Company, a pharmaceutical company. The initial gathering of funds, IRE hoped, would finance 250 journalists and editors to the first national conference of IRE. After a lot of successes and failures in seeking funds, IRE funds attained to more than USD 18,000, but far from the funds needed to financially support financially the journalists and editors of the first conference. The first national conference also had journalists criticizing IRE for taking grants from foundations such as Lilly, and from publications, because these publications were sometimes restricting funds to their own investigative journalists. Consequently, the members of IRE passed a resolution to take funds only from foundations that "which owe their existence to journalistic enterprise", and educational and research foundations. The first national conference of IRE was held between June 18–20, 1976, in Indianapolis. More than 300 people attended, including approximately 200 paying participants from 35 states, 30 speakers and 40 students. Workshop topics included the state of the art of investigative journalism, how to manage an investigation, how to work as a team, how to report specific topics such as crime, and how to deal with legal and ethical issues in investigative reporting. The members of IRE also voted to seek funds to establish a resource center at Ohio State University by July 1, 1977. Members also voted for a resolution that called for journalists, editors, and news agencies to end their associations with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), or other law enforcement agencies to maintain "American journalistic independence". The members also voted to establish an ethics committee "responsible for raising in a continuing way the ethical questions which confront journalists" and to be "responsible for examining the assumptions that underlie" investigative journalism. The members also voted to establish a committee of broadcast journalists to advise the board of directors of IRE about problems specific to broadcast investigations. The location of IRE's headquarters Paul Williams' death in 1976 caused the first dilemma of IRE. Williams had connections to Ohio State University, being a professor there, and had established a working relationship between IRE and the university. The executive committee then decided to find another university for their resource center. In 1978, two proposals came to the IRE board of directors: one from Boston University, and one from the University