The corporation is bound by a tripartite agreement between the University of Hawaii at Manoa, in the United States, the National Research Council (NRC) in Canada and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in France. CFHT also has partnerships with the National Astronomical Observatory of China (NAOC), the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA) in Taiwan, the National Laboratory of Astrophysics (LNA) in Brazil and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI) in Korea. The contributions from these associate partners help fund CFHT's future instrumentation.