130,500 causes · $320M raised · 4.7 since 2009
Named research sponsorship
You cannot sell a cure. You can sell a year of somebody's work.
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Research is expensive in ways donors have no reference for, and the components are unusually well suited to sponsorship because science is already costed that way internally.
The ladder
- Consumables and reagents — a week or a month of a lab's supplies, which is a real and startling figure
- Sequencing runs, assays or imaging time, priced per sample
- A summer studentship — how researchers enter a field, and cheap
- A conference presentation for an early-career researcher, which is how work gets known
- A specific instrument, with its actual price and what it does
- A pilot grant, which funds the preliminary data larger funders require
- A year of a technician or research nurse, without whom nothing runs
- A year of a postdoctoral fellowship, the category's headline unit
- A tissue bank, registry or cohort follow-up, which is infrastructure nobody funds and everybody uses
Explain the pilot grant, because it is the best argument you have
Large funders generally require preliminary data before awarding a major grant. Producing that data costs money that the major grant would have paid for — a circularity that stops promising ideas before they start.
A pilot grant breaks it. Relatively small sums generate the data that unlocks substantially larger public funding, which means a donor's contribution can be the reason a project exists at all.
Publish what the foundation's own pilot grants have gone on to attract, where you have those figures. That is a verifiable historical fact rather than a promise about the future, and it is the strongest thing in this catalogue.
The infrastructure nobody funds
Tissue banks, registries, longitudinal cohorts and data curation are used by every project and glamorous to none. They are chronically underfunded precisely because they are shared, and a foundation that funds them is doing something unusually valuable.
It is also an honest and interesting story: "we pay for the thing every researcher needs and no grant wants to cover".
What a named sponsor receives
- Yes: the naming, for an agreed term, in an agreed form
- Yes: a meeting with the researcher and a written update on the work
- Yes: a lab visit, acknowledgement in materials and in publications where the institution's conventions allow
- No: influence over what is studied, how, or what is published
- No: access to unpublished data or participant information
- No: any expectation of a result
- No: a say in peer review or grant selection
Say the independence point in the sponsorship agreement rather than assuming it. A donor who believes their money buys direction is a difficult conversation for a researcher, and the researcher should never be the one having it.
Agree the naming terms in advance
- How long the name attaches — a year, the project's duration, or in perpetuity
- What happens if the project ends, the researcher leaves or the equipment is replaced
- Whether the name appears in publications, and what the institution's conventions permit
- Whether it is a person's name, a family's or a company's, and whether that raises any conflict
- And what happens if the sponsor later becomes someone the institution cannot be associated with
That last clause is worth including as standard now. Institutions have had difficult experiences with named gifts and a morals or reconsideration clause agreed at the outset is easier than a renegotiation under public attention.
Memorial naming
Much research sponsorship is given in somebody's memory, and that changes the care required rather than the mechanics.
- Agree the exact wording with the family, and let them see it before it appears
- Be explicit about duration, because "permanent" attached to a fellowship that runs three years causes real distress
- Tell the family what the funded work produced, in language they can read
- Never publish a diagnosis or medical detail the family has not chosen to share
- And check before using the name in a new context later
Report on what was funded
A sponsor who funded a fellowship should hear who took it, what they worked on, what happened, and what came next — including where it did not work.
Reporting a negative result honestly is the single strongest thing a research foundation can do for donor trust, because it demonstrates that the reporting is real.
General information, not legal or medical advice. Claims about research outcomes, treatments and trials are regulated in ways general fundraising copy is not, and patient privacy carries obligations beyond ordinary consent — your own counsel and your research leadership should read anything public before it is published.
Frequently asked questions
What is the strongest argument in the catalogue?
The pilot grant. Large funders require preliminary data before a major award, and producing it costs money the major grant would have paid for — a circularity that stops promising ideas. Relatively small sums break it and unlock substantially larger public funding.
What should we fund that nobody else will?
Infrastructure — tissue banks, registries, longitudinal cohorts, data curation. Used by every project, glamorous to none, and chronically underfunded precisely because they are shared.
What must a sponsor never receive?
Influence over what is studied, how, or what is published; access to unpublished data or participant information; any expectation of a result; or a say in peer review. Put it in the agreement, so the researcher is never the one having that conversation.
What terms should a naming agreement include?
Duration, what happens if the project ends or the researcher leaves, publication conventions — and a reconsideration clause, which is easier agreed at the outset than renegotiated under public attention.
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