Short answers, pulled from the story.
IFRI was founded in 1979 by Thierry de Montbrial, with the support of Prime Minister Raymond Barre and Foreign Affairs Ministers Louis de Guiringaud and Jean François-Poncet. It was built on the existing Centre d'Etudes de Politique Etrangère, which dated to 1935.
Thierry de Montbrial founded IFRI in 1979. He was inspired by the American model of research institutions and had previously been tasked by Minister Michel Jobert in 1973 to set up the Centre d'Analyse et de Prévision at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
In 2011, for the fourth consecutive year, IFRI was the only French-based institution ranked among the top 50 most influential think tanks worldwide outside the United States. It placed 3rd in Western Europe in the Global Go-To Think Tanks study, which assessed more than 6,480 institutes across 169 countries.
IFRI's budget stood at roughly 6.5 million Euros in 2011. About 70 percent of that comes from private sources, with the remainder from state subsidies and contracts. The institute is independent from administrative and financial regulatory authorities and has no affiliation with any political party.
IFRI's two main publications are Ramsès, an annual report on global trends published since 1981 with a circulation of around 10,000 copies, and Politique Etrangère, a quarterly magazine founded in 1936. In 2012, IFRI also published 12 books and 130 Notes d'Ifri, half of which appeared in foreign languages including English, German, and Russian.
Past guest speakers at IFRI conferences have included Vladimir Putin, Hu Jintao, Nicolas Sarkozy, Dmitri Medvedev, Hamid Karzai, Pervez Musharraf, Paul Kagamé, and José Manuel Barroso, among others. IFRI organizes about 40 conferences each year in Paris.