(Illustration by Peter Grant)
In March 2025, American president Donald Trump wrote a public letter To Michael Kratsios, his new director of the Board of Scientific and Technological Politics of the White House, describing a vision to “inaugurate the golden age of American innovation”. The letter asks: “How can we guarantee that scientific progress and technological innovation feed economic growth and improve the lives of all Americans?”
As a former director of the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and the President of the University, and current president of the non -profit philanthropic council. Alliance of scientific philanthropyI spent a large part of my career on this issue. The ambition is worthy. However, he arrives at a time of deep uncertainty for scientific companies in the United States.
The philanthropy response to the new radical reality
For decades, American federal investments in universities and research institutions have fueled scientific discoveries, attracted scientists from around the world and cemented America’s position at the cutting edge of fields such as technology, engineering and medicine. However, the vision of the current administration of continuous scientific and technological domination is uncomfortably at ease in parallel with proposals aimed at considerably reducing the funding of the institutions that support it. The country’s national research infrastructure – which includes major telescopes and observatories, assessed longitudinal data sets and scientific stations of Antarctica – can be seriously underfalling in a few months.
The American research community is not only experiencing a financing gap, but a wholesale reimagination of federal government relations with scientific research. This change has placed scientific philanthropy in a role that can be both influential and more complex than ever.
To be clear, philanthropy cannot replace the scale, scope or mandate of the financing of government sciences. Changes proposed to the American federal budget 2026 would mean $ 30.5 billion in cuts Through four of the country’s main scientific agencies: the NSF, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Oceanic and Atmospheric National Administration. This is added to the deep cuts to other federal agencies, universities and research institutions. In comparison, philanthropy has provided About $ 16.7 billion for science in 2022. And this number could soon be in a hurry: Proposed legislation At the Congress would impose a tax on several levels on large endowments of foundations – up to 10% for foundations with assets of more than $ 5 billion – potentially reducing the amount of available resources for charitable donations.
But while much less a force in terms of total dollars, philanthropy has unique forces. It can act agilled, funding high -risk research that federal agencies cannot. He can collaborate through disciplines and sectors to build infrastructure, finance pilot projects and set up new scientific discovery models. And it can adopt a long vision – research focused on curiosity without any clear result in view, the type that has laid the foundations for the global positioning system, MESSAs by RNA messenger, the assembly of CRISPR genes and artificial intelligence. With these forces in mind, scientific philanthropy can better respond to the evolution of the research environment by focusing on three main areas: investing in young scientists; Support the continuity, preservation and integrity of data; and collaborating between the sectors.
1. Invest in the next generation of scientists
First, a dynamic scientific future requires deliberate and supported investments in the next generation. Federal programs such as NSF graduate research scholarships support thousands of young scientists in universities and research institutes and pave the way for scientific breakthroughs. The cuts to these programs will exacerbate the steep hedges that the scientists at the start of their careers face, including limited subsidies, short -term contracts and pressures to produce immediately applicable results.
Funding for the bridge for pause research, scholarships for under-represented scientists and supporting new institutional partnerships can help to mitigate these obstacles. An example is the Quick response bridge financing programA partnership between Spencer Foundation, Kapoor Foundation, William T. Grant Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. It provides targeted support for researchers affected by federal disturbances, prioritization of researchers at the start of their career and covering costs such as data analysis and community engagement to help them support the momentum during uncertain moments. The PREBYS Foundation too recently announced a new subsidy package focused on the support of early scientists and mid-career in the San Diego region of California.
2. Ensure data continuity, preservation and integrity
Scientific progress depends on long -term access to reliable data, including environmental records, census data and genomic databases. But the researchers note that, in some cases, access to data sets accessible to the public from agencies such as the Ministry of Health and Social Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and NIH have been quietly limited or deleted. Many of these data sets are essential for cancer research, infectious diseases and health disparities, and keeping them online is not enough. Ensuring the integrity of scientific data requires appropriate management, including regular updates, transparent collection and maintenance processes, standardized formats and strong technological infrastructure.
Philanthropy can help. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, for example, issues rapid response grants to organizations working to protect or archive public and environmental health data sets and to finance the development of state and regional alternatives with federal data sets that have been eliminated. Other donors invest in open source benchmarks that would allow continuous collection and access of data in the absence of databases managed by the federal government. The preservation of the data infrastructure is not the most flashy cause, but it is vital; When the data is lost or disturbed, the consistency and reliability of the entire research ecosystem begins to erode.
3. Collaborate for greater alignment and an impact
Many scientific breakthroughs do not occur in isolation, but thanks to collaboration – when individuals with diversified expertise, institutional history and lived experiences meet. The role of philanthropy as a manager is now more important than ever. Donors can bring together university, government and non -profit partners to understand urgent needs and coordinate responses such as collaborative financing efforts or communication campaigns to educate the public about the importance of investing in science.
In addition to convening your own partners for events in person and virtual to share strategies and coordinate response efforts, the science Philanthropy Alliance participates in a certain number of inter-sector collaboration initiatives. One of them is the American science and technology visionWho brings together industry, academics, non-profit and government leaders to develop federal investment recommendations in science and technology in the United States. These are not only networking opportunities; These are platforms to share information, identify priorities and take collective measures.
A moment of possibility
It is easy to see the current moment as a rarity, and in many ways, it is. But it can also be a pivot point. Bringing an “golden age of American innovation” requires that philanthropy and the scientific field be honest as to what innovation requires: a long -term investment in infrastructure and people in the country. Scientific philanthropy cannot replace the financing of the government, but by supporting researchers at the start of their career, by investing in data infrastructure and by promoting collaboration, donors can approach this moment not as a temporary emergency, but as a generational opportunity to open the way to scientific breakthroughs of the future.
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Read more stories by France Córdova.