[Tex/LaTex] Footnote without a marker

Question

I would like to have a footnote about the funding source of my work in the first page without marker.

I tried below approaches:

1. \footnotetext{text goes here}
   This creates a footnote but with '0' as marker. However, the marker reference does not
   appear within the normal text where I placed this command.

2. Used \def\blfootnote{\xdef\@thefnmark{}\@footnotetext} definition provided at http://help-csli.stanford.edu/tex/latex-footnotes.shtml#unnumber. I placed this definition in the main tex file just after package declaration.
   But, this gives the below error.

      ! Use of \@ doesn't match its definition.
      \blfootnote ->\xdef \@thefnmark{}\@f
                                          ootnotetext
   

Answer 1

As Stephen mentioned in his answer, if you're using your definition in your .tex file, you need to enclose it inside \makeatletter, \makeatother. Another option not involving the use of the special character @ (thus not requiring \makeatletter, \makeatother) would be to locally redefine \thefootnote (taking care of correcting the footnote counter):

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lipsum}

\newcommand\blfootnote[1]{%
  \begingroup
  \renewcommand\thefootnote{}\footnote{#1}%
  \addtocounter{footnote}{-1}%
  \endgroup
}

\begin{document}

Some text\blfootnote{A footnote without marker} and some more text\footnote{A standard footnote}

\end{document}