What Can Science Philanthropy Do?

In “Science Philanthropy’s Implications for American Leadership in Innovation” (Issues, Spring 2025), Robert W. Conn, Peter F. Cowhey, Christopher L. Martin, and Joshua Graff Zivin present a cogent analysis of the important role of philanthropy in the US research ecosystem. It shows that philanthropy not only contributes a meaningful share of funding for basic and applied research, but also is a particularly important supporter of high-risk/high-payoff work that government or business is reluctant to fund.

Perhaps as a result of the time when the article was drafted, it could not reflect events following the presidential inauguration in January 2025. While the government in recent years has supported about half of basic and applied research, it no longer intends to do so. The workforces of important federal agencies have been slashed and research programs terminated. Important university performers of research have faced the threat that their federal funding will be eliminated, their tax-exempt status withdrawn, their endowments subject to punitive taxation, and their recovery of indirect costs limited. The Trump administration’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2026 would impose drastic further curtailment in federal support.

Although some of these actions are being challenged in the courts, considerable damage has already been inflicted. Scientists are fleeing to other countries, the foreign students who invigorate the US workforce are now reluctant to study here, and graduate programs are shrinking. Unfortunately, Congress has not shown a willingness to resist the drastic changes now underway. The ecosystem Conn et al. describe reflects a more congenial time than the one in which we now find ourselves.

The consequences of these recent changes are severe. Basic and applied research have provided the critical means by which the United States has grown its economy, enhanced security, and nurtured improvements in our quality of life. The new markets, industries, companies, and capabilities arising from research have made the United States the most secure and economically prosperous nation on earth. The destruction of our scientific infrastructure is an immense self-inflicted wound.

It is not possible for philanthropy to fill the funding gap created by the retreat of the federal government. Nonetheless, the current situation reinforces the important point that the authors make about the need for coordination among philanthropy, business, universities, and nonprofit research institutions. The aim should be to develop a strategy to maintain US scientific capacity to the extent possible until the actions of the government can be reversed. It may take many years to rebuild what has been so swiftly destroyed.

It would be appropriate for a consortium of entities to convene leaders of the various affected sectors to develop this strategy. The effort might involve the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Science Philanthropy Alliance, the American Association of Universities, the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, and perhaps the Business Roundtable or the Council on Competitiveness. The argument for improving alliances among the supporters of basic and applied research is far more important now than the authors had reason to anticipate.

Richard A. Meserve

Robert W. Conn, Peter F. Cowhey, Christopher L. Martin, and Joshua Graff Zivin rightly emphasize the benefits of cross-sector partnerships, pointing to examples of breakthroughs that come from collaborative public-private funding of science. The authors highlight the flexibility—and substantial financial support—that comes from philanthropic investment. They posit that philanthropy can incentivize—and grow—the research system to innovate in both subject matter and approach.

The call for improved synergies between government and philanthropy resonates. As president of the Science Philanthropy Alliance (which produces Science Philanthropy Indicators), I see an interest among philanthropies in partnerships that advance scientific discovery by amplifying resources and encouraging new or higher-risk activities, including de-risking ambitious technology projects before government funding is sought. As the fourteenth director of the National Science Foundation, I saw firsthand the benefits of public-private partnerships. An example is the Simons Foundation, which has long partnered with NSF to advance interdisciplinary research. Another effective forum for encouraging cross-sector partnerships is the National Academies’ Government-University-Industry-Philanthropy Research Roundtable.

The numbers presented by Conn et al. show that although philanthropy alone cannot rival the seminal support for science of the federal government, it is no small player in the research ecosystem. But exactly how big a player? The numbers are fuzzy because the data aren’t all that transparent. The authors say there is a need to expand detail around the reporting on sources of philanthropic funds, including endowments and current funds.

We underscore their recommendation for universities to expand the level of detail provided to NSF and others regarding the source of funds used for research. Our own latest analysis finds that over a 20-year period, higher education institutional support for basic research at universities doubled from $9.1 billion in 2003 to $18.2 billion in 2023, while federal support for basic research increased by only 11% from $30.6 billion in 2003 to $34 billion in 2023 (inflation-adjusted dollars). Better data are needed to understand how much of this increased institutional support is enabled by philanthropic giving. Universities can play an important role by providing more information to NSF in the Higher Education Research and Development (HERD) Survey.

NSF’s National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics provides much excellent longitudinal data on the funding of science. We encourage NCSES to collect and report more detailed data on philanthropy, building on its approach in the Nonprofit Research Activities Survey. This survey reports on expenditures by nonprofits supported by individual donors as well as foundations and other nonprofits. It also reports on internally funded research, federally funded research, and research supported by for-profit business and all other sources. As with universities, more data are needed to estimate how much of the internally funded research at nonprofit organizations is enabled by past philanthropic giving.

Philanthropy is fast becoming a key sector of the scientific research enterprise. Accurate data are needed to fully understand its impact—and potential—on the research funding landscape.

France A. Córdova

Kate E. Lowry

Robert W. Conn, Peter F. Cowhey, Christopher L. Martin, and Joshua Graff Zivin begin by reminding us that the US scientific research endeavor in academia and nonprofit organizations arose in the mid-nineteenth century, supported largely by philanthropy. Roughly a century later, driven by Vannevar Bush’s redoubtable Science, the Endless Frontier, dedicated federal support began to flow to research, researchers, and research institutions, shrinking philanthropy’s relative contribution to basic and applied research today to a modest but highly significant level of just over 20%.

With this important framing established, Conn et al. identify a number of ways that philanthropy’s apparent 20% contribution to the research enterprise is amplified by multiple unique characteristics. It is especially significant at this time of upheaval of US government mechanisms and resources for support of research that the authors deliver new depth to philanthropy’s contributions, while urging, albeit without specificity, “more avenues to inform federal decisionmakers about philanthropic efforts.”

That image brings to mind what I consider to be philanthropy’s most significant distinction, separating it from both government funding practices and academic career advancement criteria: philanthropy offers the freedom to fail. By establishing boldness and risk, exploration of untested methods, and anti-paradigmatic ideas not merely as aspirations but as reward elements, philanthropy is acknowledging that essential to the opportunity for transformational success is the freedom to fail.

For proposals submitted to the National Institutes of Health, for example, less-than-certain feasibility or misalignment with prevailing views typically spells doom. In academic tenure and promotion committees, a gap in funding or in a stream of first or last author publications in elite journals can be career-ending. These false metrics measure neither the potential impact of a research plan nor the value of a researcher. In contrast, philanthropy-based funding programs typically are grounded in trust, confidence, and respect for investigators, assured that they will be recompensed with breakthrough discoveries by a vibrant, motivated workforce supported to do work that impassions them.

An example is a philanthropy-funded program at the University of California, San Francisco, that I directed for 23 years. The Program for Breakthrough Biomedical Research invites bold, risky, potentially transformative two-page proposals that, as our request for proposals states, “NIH would laugh out of the room.” Program resources comprise only a fraction of a percent of UCSF’s research revenue, yet many consider its funding among the most valuable of our resources. Remarkable discoveries and technologies have flowed from the program. In an evaluation exercise, one awardee commented, “This grant allowed me to try out a crazy idea. Its success completely changed my research program in exciting ways.” A rejected applicant said, “Of course I was disappointed, but how liberating it was to be invited to describe an idea that I’m convinced would truly make a difference.”

What if philanthropies could effectively “inform federal decisionmakers”—and academic administrators, too—about the deep success that can arise from properly valuing researchers, in part by providing the freedom to fail?

Keith R. Yamamoto

Robert W. Conn, Peter F. Cowhey, Christopher L. Martin, and Joshua Graff Zivin offer a compelling case for the catalytic role philanthropy plays in the US research ecosystem. Their argument is timely, and the potential of cross-sector partnerships to advance both innovation and public benefit are well supported by two major neuroscience collaborations:

• During my time at The Kavli Foundation, I served as director of life sciences and brain initiatives under Conn and co-led the science team with Martin, supporting the ongoing public-private partnership of the BRAIN Initiative, which included the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, and others. This effort helped transform neuroscience by developing powerful tools, generating vast datasets, and fostering interdisciplinary collaboration, an enduring example of how sectors can work together to meet grand scientific challenges.

• In 2016, a public-private collaboration called the International Brain Initiative emerged through the joint efforts of The Kavli Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the US Department of State. This global platform was formed to foster active dialogue, information exchange, and cooperation among large-scale brain research efforts worldwide.

As the neuroscientists Rafael Yuste and Cori Bargmann observed in the early days of the International Brain Initiative effort: “The ethical questions raised by neurotechnology are international questions [that] may carry even more ethical, legal, and social weight than other technologies because the activity of our brains leads to our innermost selves.”

Their comment underscores a critical area of potential synergy between public and private efforts: the ethical and societal implications of advances in neuroscience, which is receiving increasing attention from private foundations—including the Dana Foundation, The Kavli Foundation, the Rita Allen Foundation, and the Doris Duke Foundation—as well as from public entities such as the BRAIN Initiative Neuroethics Working Group. As neuroscience enters more ethically complex terrain, including technologies that may decode mood or language, philanthropy must do more than fund the frontier. It should support multidirectional public engagement to shape the questions science asks and the values it reflects.

This shared focus offers a promising avenue for deeper cross-sector collaboration. Philanthropy is uniquely positioned to bring funders, scientists, ethicists, and communities together early, when research paths are still forming and ethical considerations can be built in—not retrofitted. By working across sectors and disciplines, and connecting labs with lived experience, philanthropy can help science advance for the benefit of all people. Philanthropy is not just fuel for innovation; it can act as a collaborative compass that helps science move forward with integrity, imagination, and public purpose.

Caroline Montojo