OVERVIEW: The Riverstyx Foundation supports research on psychedelic drugs, hospice care, the environment and Indigenous culture.
IP TAKE: The Riverstyx Foundation makes grants in niche areas that are unlikely to receive support elsewhere. The foundation’s largest area of engagement concerns research and advocacy for the use of psychedelic drugs in treatments of medical and psychiatric conditions. Grants tend to provide early-stage or seed funding to innovative and unusual projects over a period of several years. The best way to understand if this is a good fit for your organization, is to read over the foundation’s areas of interest section. Riverstyx is not accepting proposals at this time but would probably like to hear from you if you work in one of these very specific areas.
PROFILE: Established in 2001, the Riverstyx Foundation was founded by James L. Swift and family. The vice president of the foundation is Cody Smith, a counseling associate at a private practice in psychotherapy and counseling and the grandson of George D. Smith, a former CEO of UPS. The Riverstyx Foundation’s grantmaking aims to “attend[…] to the places in society and our psychology which have been relegated to the shadows- out of fear, ignorance, and puritan influence- recognizing that which is repressed only festers and breeds pathology in its unnatural separation.” The foundation makes grants, provides seed funding and engages in advocacy across four areas of focus.
The Societal focus area addresses issues of drug policy, economic justice, criminal justice reform and end of life care.
The foundation’s Psychospiritual giving area supports research on the use of psychedelic drugs for psychiatric and spiritual purposes.
Biocultural grantmaking supports environmental causes including the practice of “green burial,” light pollution control and water conservation through the composting of human waste.
The foundation also supports Indigenous organizations, emphasizing environmental and cultural concerns.
Across these focus areas, the foundation prioritizes “early-stage projects” and groups that are unlikely to secure funding from other sources. Riverstyx also tends to make “[m]ulti-year commitments recognizing that start-up projects and organizations take time to advance beyond proof of concept to actual performance and stabilization where other donors will be inclined to invest.”
Grants for Public Health and Mental Health
Grants for public and mental health stem from the foundation’s end-of-life care and psychedelic drug research interest areas.
Support for end-of-life care focuses on “empowering mentally sound individuals with terminal prognoses to be able to take greater control over their pain and timing of their death” and a “more balanced approach that encourages avenues to reduce suffering through hospice and palliative care, providing people the opportunity to die with less suffering, and with greater dignity and peace.”
One grantee, the Coalition for Compassionate Care California, received funding to sponsor a conference on the use of psychedelic-assisted therapies in palliative care.” Other grants have supported a study of the use of psilocybin at Harvard Hospice in Massachusetts and a series of documentary films about hospice care by Gaudete Films.
Grants to support research on the use of psychedelic drugs for health and mental health focus on the uses of psilocybin, MDMA, ibogaine and ayahuasca in treatments for anxiety, PTSD, addiction, chronic headaches and inflammatory diseases. Giving aims to accommodate areas of research that are ineligible for support from governmental and other mainstream funding sources.
Grantees working in the area of psilocybin research include research programs at Johns Hopikins University, Harvard University, New York University and the University of Washington. Research on other psychedelics has gone to smaller and lesser-known organizations and projects. The Pain and Psychedelics Association received seed funding for “research, education, and outreach exploring psychedelics for physiological illnesses, including inflammation, headache, and other pain conditions.” Liden University in the Netherlands received support for research on the use of xyrem to relieve cluster headaches, and researchers at Louisiana State University received funding for a study on the use of psychedelics in the treatment of arthritis and other inflammatory diseases.
Grants for Environment and Freshwater Conservation
The Riverstyx Foundation’s conservation interests are light pollution, the practice of “green burial” and water conservation related to the adoption of “composting toilets.”
Funding for the reduction of light pollution focuses on “improving lighting quality and reducing excessive and unnecessary lights” that prevent people from seeing and connecting with night skies, disorient animals and disrupt circadian rhythms. The foundation partners with the International Dark Sky Association in this work.
The foundation also supports research and feasibility studies of “technologies that encourage the natural process of returning our bodies to soil.” Grants have supported Coeio, a California-based endeavor that makes “infinity burial products,” and REcompose, a “full-service funeral home specializing in human composting” based in Seattle.
Riverstyx’s work in the area of composting toilets focuses on water waste related to conventional toilet flushing. The foundation has supported research at the Occidental Art and Ecology Center in California that addresses “the viability of composting toilets, ultimately to legalize a technology that can safely process pathogens and return essential nutrients to the soil, helping to restore this most basic cycle of life.”
Grants for Criminal Justice Reform
The Riverstyx Foundation’s giving for criminal justice reform focuses on a “variety of efforts to both reduce the number of non-violent offenders in prison and jail through pre-arrest diversion, mediation, as well as programs that provide opportunities for education and healing while in prison.” Ongoing support has gone to Mt. Tamalpais College’s prison education program at San Quentin State Rehabilitation Center (formerly the San Quentin State Prison) in California.
Grants for Indigenous Causes
Riverstyx’s giving for Indigenous groups works to “empower[…] native communities, and the traditions which surround them.” A main emphasis of this work is Indigenous communities’ use of traditional medicines, including naturally-derived psychedelics. Grantee partners include the Indigenous Medicine Conservation Fund, the Indigenous Peyote Conservation Initiative, the Urban Indigenous Collective of New York and the Native American Church of Ashiibeto in Utah, which received support for a Diné Youth Conference.
Important Grant Details
This foundation’s grants range from $1,000 to $75,000.
Riverstyx tends to provide multi-year support and/or seed funding to organizations that are unlikely to secure funding elsewhere.
Grantmaking is global in scope, but organizations based in California receive a significant portion of the foundation’s grants.
This funder is not currently accepting grant proposals but invites organizations to stay up to date with foundation news by submitting an email address here.
See lists of past grantees by year at the foundation’s Grant List page.
Email general inquiries to the foundation at info@riverstyxfoundation.org.
PEOPLE:
Search for staff contact info and bios in PeopleFinder (paid subscribers only).
LINKS:
