I stumbled across Theiss Research, was (is?) a US organisation for independent scientists. They look to have been most active around 2005-2010 and seem to have received a decent amount of grant funding.
I’m posting a link to a wayback machine archive from 2016 as their current site isn’t well maintained https://web.archive.org/web/20160325153711/http://www.theissresearch.org/
@alex.lancaster, have you heard of them?
Hey Gavin, sorry for the delay on this. Interesting. I think I might have heard about them in passing, they seem familiar somehow, but I don’t know much about them. It was well before Jon even started thinking about Ronin (which was around 2011, I believe).
Turns out I was wrong to assume that a broken website indicated an inactive organisation.
Google Scholar shows regular and recent publications including a Theiss Research affiliation. And Guide Star shows their 2018 grant income was above $3MM!
I’m kind of surprised that such a well-established organisation for independent researchers has such a small web-presence and seems to be quite unknown within our circles 
Yes, it is bit surprising. My hunch is that the intention is perhaps less building a community and an organization, and more in the nature of a vehicle for the participants. A different, but no less valid approach. In that sense it may be more similar to the Fresh Pond Research Institute http://www.freshpond.org/ it’s run by Steven Orzack, who is also on the Ronin Board - Fresh Pond was partly what inspired Jon Wilkins to form Ronin itself, as I understand it.