Who we are
The Experiment Foundation is a 501(c)(3) organization. We work with the team at Experiment through our facilitation of Challenge Grants and patronage efforts, but we maintain separate organizational governance.
Experiment has grown into the largest science crowdfunding website in the world. Thousands of researchers come to Experiment to pursue the ideas and questions that are most meaningful to them. A peer-reviewed study found that the platform flipped science’s traditional reward model. The Experiment Foundation connects foundations, companies, and federal agencies with that enthusiasm and brainpower.
How it works
Challenge Grants
For the past several years, Experiment has facilitated Challenge Grants to spur attention and action towards various research topics, ranging from understanding the Zika virus to studying wildlife disease.
An Experiment Challenge Grant is not your average prize competition. Most competition platforms, like XPRIZE, operate on a winner-take-all (or most) model. They succeed when the problem is well-scoped and the award is appropriately sized. They can be great at drawing out unorthodox answers and solutions. But they don’t always fit. The winner-take-all prize model doesn’t do well with unknown outcomes, which is the bedrock of curiosity-driven research. Challenge Grants work when you’re looking for more and better questions.
Challenge Grants increase the reach and impact of grant-funding organizations, with every $1 of prize money attracting 3-10X from the crowd. They’re also fast — turnaround for both organizations (can be launched with less than a month's notice) and scientists (takes ~2 hours to fill out an application).
Data from two recent Challenge Grants: Conservation Technology, Wildlife Health and Disease
Science Angels
More recently, we’ve started a program for "science angels" to support projects and researchers. Science angels helps to fill the funding gap at the earliest stages of curiosity. As the economist Paula Stephan and colleagues have noted in their paper, Funding Risky Research, fast and “loose-play” funding to get new ideas off the ground quickly is a promising idea to improve the science funding ecosystem. We’re operationalizing that idea.
Work with us
If you’d like to discuss how we can help your research agenda, please reach out via the form below.