Description
In the United States, 60% of all scientific research is funded through government agencies such as the National Health Institute (NIH). However, the pot of money that these agencies have available is limited, and competition is fierce. On top of that, writing an application for funding (called a 'grant') can be time-consuming, with it taking one or two years just to generate background data and another nine months or more for a 'yes' or 'no' decision to be made.
And after all this time and effort?
Less than 10% of these grant applications are actually funded.
Scientists depend on grants to support not only their work, but themselves and their families. Once they reach a certain level that is fairly early in their careers, they are responsible for finding and applying for this funding on their own. With the grant application process being so competitive and funds being so limited, researchers have no choice but to propose ideas that are almost guaranteed to be successful in favor of ideas that might be riskier but more innovative, and even then, there is a constant cloud hanging over of whether they will receive funding or not. With researchers spending an estimated 40% of their time either planning, preparing or writing grant applications, there is sometimes little time for actual research to get done.
Donors Cure is trying to tackle this problem by providing researchers an alternate mechanism to fund biomedical research. As a donor, you can browse through projects from researchers at accredited universities and recognized institutions across the United States and give any amount to the ones that mean something to you or simply catch your eye. In return, you'll get to interact and engage with the researchers you support and be directly involved and connected to them as they try to find the cure.
