When it comes to funding for science, the conventional wisdom has traditionally gone something like this: Government agencies support large-scale research along well-established scientific avenues, while smaller but nimbler philanthropic funding nurtures early-stage research and riskier moonshots.
But a recent, larger-than-ever analysis aimed at generating a better understanding of science philanthropy suggests that this narrative is probably not accurate any longer, if it ever was. In a new study made possible by, of all things, electronic tax forms, a team of researchers at Northeastern University in Boston have found that philanthropic funding for science may be much more substantial than previously thought. In fact, adding up to about $30 billion a year, it may actually be on a par with major segments of government funding.
We took a look at the research paper, “Mapping Philanthropic Support of Science,” currently in preprint, and talked to its lead author to get an overview of the team’s most important findings and what they might mean for science philanthropy. Beyond the quantity of dollars, the study also illuminated other notable patterns within science philanthropy that may provide useful insights to everyone involved — funders, grantseekers, even policymakers.
To arrive at their conclusions, the research team analyzed more than 3.6 million machine-readable IRS 990 tax forms for the decade between 2010 and 2019 from nearly 700,000 nonprofit organizations. They focused on information about more than 10 million grants made by foundations and other nonprofits, ultimately identifying about 70,000 funders of science. In the later years of the decade, philanthropic funding was reaching about $30 billion per year — exceeding annual National Science Foundation (NSF) funding, and rivaling that of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). We’ve known for a while that the relative quantity of federal science funding has been declining next to that of private funding, including corporate support for applied science. But this study indicates that philanthropy’s vital role as a source for science dollars — including for basic research — is difficult to understate.
While the details of federal funding are publicly available, philanthropic giving — coming from thousands upon thousands of funders — has not been so easily quantified, said Louis Shekhtman, lead author of the paper. But Shekhtman said the trove of computer-crunchable data within IRS tax forms may provide much more fine-grained data about philanthropic giving for science — and for any other major philanthropic cause, for that matter.
“What we’re seeing is that the way philanthropists fund science is not the way that governments fund science, and not the way scientists generally think of how science is funded,” Shekhtman said.
For example, one of the team’s key findings had to do with where the money goes. Most U.S. funders — including major science philanthropies like the Gates Foundation and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation — steer a disproportionate share of their science grantmaking to destinations in their home states. The Gates Foundation, for example, gives 10 times more money to science institutions in Washington state than would be expected based on a random geographic model, according to the study.
It’s both unsurprising and understandable that funders tend to place extra emphasis on their home communities. “We all understand why you’re supporting, say, a local art museum or another local institution instead of the one far away,” Shekhtman said. “But science is national, international, large collaborations. We definitely want to raise the question: Is this [regional bias] the best way to fund science? There’s plusses and minuses of that, but that’s the way it’s currently done.” It’s a question worth asking.
Another main finding from the study was the relative stability — one could say entrenchment — of science philanthropy. Compared to government grants that typically come with a time limit, philanthropic funders tend to support the same researchers year after year after year. This has both potentially favorable and unfavorable implications.
On one hand, some valuable scientific research simply takes many years, and requires steady, dependable funding sources. Science program officers in philanthropy frequently talk about their long partnerships with particular institutions and even particular scientists, citing their strategy of investing in the person, not the research. And that has proven successful: Philanthropy-backed scientists have made major breakthroughs and received Nobel Prizes. On the other hand, it’s equally possible that a longtime funding relationship might crowd out someone else’s more deserving research and soak up funding that might be better applied elsewhere. There isn’t a single answer to the question, but again, it’s a question that funders need to ask.
The study had a few important limitations. For example, not every philanthropic giver used the electronic tax forms that the researchers scraped, so those grants simply weren’t counted. The Northeastern team also didn’t include grants from every government agency that could be said to fund science, such as the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy. So the dollar sums are not comprehensive and probably can never be totaled up exactly.
Shekhtman is the first to acknowledge that the study is hardly the last word in the effort to fully understand the size and nature of science philanthropy. It’s more of a starting point — an effort to more accurately quantify the total level of giving and where it’s going. With a clearer, more accurate picture, Shekhtman said, everyone involved can make better decisions to run the system more productively, including funders, policymakers, and of course, scientists themselves.
Though this study focused specifically on science philanthropy, it underscores just how much we still don’t know about nonprofit funding at large. Whether it’s due to deliberate opacity, or more often simply because there are so many philanthropic funders out there (and relatively few transparency and disclosure requirements), it’s hard even for those of us watching the field to get an accurate, up-to-date quantitative sense of where grant dollars are flowing in science and elsewhere.
With that in mind, the Northeastern team’s study may be a starting point, but it can ask and answer the questions philanthropy should ask itself about support for science — and help researchers seek grants more efficiently. For example, Shekhtman said, scientists accustomed to the traditional grant writing and peer review process used by government agencies might do well to engage more directly with philanthropy, building relationships with individual givers or foundation program officers. With closer connections, researchers could more effectively convey the importance of work that might otherwise be unclear to non-experts in the field.
“There’s so much money going around here, let’s first understand how it’s moving,” Shekhtman said. “I think it’s hard to answer questions about what’s a better policy or what’s worse until we have the data.”
