Methuselah Foundation Expands the Year End SENS Rejuvenation Research Donation Match
I'm happy to say that Methuselah Foundation is joining the presently ongoing year-end matching of donations to the SENS Research Foundation. All donations are tax-deductible and will go towards expanding the SENS rejuvenation research programs presently taking place in laboratories around the world: building the foundation biotechnologies capable of repairing the accumulated low-level cellular and molecular damage that causes aging and age-related disease.
Methuselah Foundation joins philanthropist Jason Hope and Fight Aging! in this matching fund, each contributing $15,000 to match the next $15,000 contributed to SENS research before the end of 2013. Thus your donations will be matched 3:1!
- Matching fund from Fight Aging!: $15,000
- Matching fund from Jason Hope: $15,000
- Matching fund from Methuselah Foundation: $15,000
- Your donations, matched 3 to 1: $15,000
- The total: $60,000
Methuselah Foundation is of course the precursor organization to the SENS Research Foundation, founded by David Gobel and Aubrey de Grey based on their shared interest in materially changing the course of aging research, to shift the scientific community from merely investigating aging to actually doing something about it. The Methuselah Foundation staff and volunteers contributed greatly to the shift in culture and goals that occurred within the aging research field over the past decade. Further, SENS research and fundraising first started under the Methuselah Foundation umbrella, alongside the Mprize for longevity science - a research prize that continues today to encourage researchers to demonstrate better and more effective means of extending healthy life through rejuvenation in laboratory mice.
Now that SENS has its own dedicated organization, the Methuselah Foundation focuses on accelerating goals in the tissue engineering of organs made from a patient's own cells: the Foundation funds breakthrough startups such as Organovo, and runs the New Organ initiative - a crowdfunding approach to generating a research prize to motivate faster development of replacement organs created to order. You'll be hearing more on that later this week, as there's a big launch presently ongoing at the World Stem Cell Summit.
There is only one roadblock standing between us and rapid progress towards the biotechnologies of rejuvenation outlined in the SENS research plans: that obstacle is money. The researchers are ready and interested, the research is planned and clear, the goals obvious - it just needs more funding than presently flows into this field. Aging research is the poor cousin of the medical life sciences, and rejuvenation research is the poor cousin of aging research: at the large scale research funding always goes towards the priorities of the past decade or two, not the forward-looking work that will form the basis for the future of medicine.
This is where you and I come in. We can see what needs to be done, and we can kickstart the necessary research projects through the SENS Research Foundation. Rarely is there such an obvious opportunity to do good in the world: to help eliminate the suffering, pain, and frailty of old age, and greatly extend healthy life.
So donate! Help make the world a better place for all of us.
I should add that those of you who have already bravely jumped in over the past couple of days will still be getting matched 3:1.
I will just mail them a check and email you a copy. Does that work for you?
@JohnD: SENS Research Foundation are handling the matching assignment - so no need to notify me. Checks are absolutely fine, just get them sent off soon to beat the mail rush at the end of the year.
For the time being, as far as I know, donations are not tax deductible for citizens outside the USA.
Typically, to make donations from French citizens tax deductible (66% deduction, up to a maximum of 20% of taxable revenues), they have to go through a French Not for profit organization with a general interest object, the organization being opened to all.
When this is the case, SENS will get (even more) more donations from France.
I am ready to organize the creation of such a Not for Profit Organization in France if necessary.
@Cornuejols: You should certainly contact the SENS Research Foundation to talk to them about that.
I believe the Foundation has a channel for tax deductible donations in the UK, but I don't know how that might interact with French or EU tax laws.