Meeting the moment: how scientific philanthropies are expanding their reach
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Pranay Shah (presenter on left) of the UK Advanced Research and Invention Agency gives a talk alongside Jean-Paul Chretien (right), programme director of Renaissance Philanthropy’s Big if True Science Accelerator.Credit: Renaissance Philanthropy
At the start of 2025, federal funding cuts rippled through the US research ecosystem. At the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in Princeton, New Jersey, chief science officer Alonzo Plough watched as scientists turned in droves to the foundation and other philanthropic funders. According to Plough, “it felt like I was back in my old public-health director role of emergency response”: the foundation was racing to provide stop-gap funding for databases and research projects.
According to data from the US National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, roughly US$937 billion was spent on US research and development in 2023. The Science Philanthropy Alliance, a non-partisan coalition of funders working to increase private research funding, estimates that philanthropic funding contributed $27 billion to university and non-profit research organizations in 2024, about 21% of the total funding of these institutions. Of that, $18.3 billion came from non-profit sources, whereas $8.8 billion was paid through legacy philanthropy in the form of annual endowment payouts. By contrast, the federal government spent $63.6 billion on research at academic institutions in 2024.
Nature Spotlight: Philanthropy and awards