How New Harvest Spends on Research
Thinking of making a contribution to New Harvest’s cellular agriculture research this year?
This look into how we make our funding decisions may help you make a more informed decision to give.
At the beginning of every month, we send out an update to everyone who has donated to New Harvest — in any amount — within the past year.
As a result of a donor feedback survey, in September 2017 we began sharing some year-to-date fundraising figures so donors could get a sense of our organization’s financial picture.
We also thought it would be helpful to explain how we fund research at New Harvest.
Multi-Year Projects are Funded at 6-Month Intervals
The research proposals received by New Harvest are a four-party combination of a 1) academic supervisor, 2) graduate student (the prospective New Harvest Research Fellow), 3) institution at which the research will take place, and 4) proposed project focused on advancing cellular agriculture.
Most projects are at least two years long. The exception are small seed grants for projects of less than 6 months and for amounts of less than $5000. Our first seed grant was given in November 2017, and we aim to give more of these in coming years.
In addition to being supervised by a designated supervisor at their respective university, New Harvest Research Fellows also receive guidance and academic support from New Harvest’s Research Director, Kate Krueger.
Despite the projects being at least two years long, we disburse funds to the university in six month intervals. This allows us to observe the progress of the research, engage with the supervisor and student on a regular basis, and to ensure that the supervisor/student/institution/project combination is moving forward appropriately.
Since 2015, New Harvest has supported nine multi-year projects. In total, this is represented in $939,660 of research funds that are slated to be disbursed by New Harvest by 2021.
These numbers are purely funds dedicated to grants — they do not include any staffing or overhead costs for running our Research Program. These numbers also do not include any research that New Harvest decides to fund after the time of publication.
We have always reported how much New Harvest has disbursed in research grants in the past, but we have not previously reported how much we are slated to spend in the coming months and years.
Our goal is to raise $1,000,000 in 2017. This will enable us to continue our commitments to our ongoing research projects, while also scouting for more.
Curious to learn more about our plans for 2018? Get in touch!
