Seeking Matching Fund Members for 2014 Year End Fundraising
Later this year I will be running a SENS research charitable fundraiser in collaboration with various allies in the community. At this time I am in search of a few good people and organizations to stand with me and others in assembling a matching fund to raise additional donations from the grassroots supporters of longevity science.
I am far from the only person to recognize that the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS) is perhaps the most important early-stage research program in medicine today. SENS is so far the only coherent, well-planned vision for producing rejuvenation treatments that has managed to establish traction and growth in the research community, while gaining the support of noted researchers and philanthropists. The SENS Research Foundation exists to shepherd this research, and is the hub of an enthusiastic network of supporters and scientists.
We are Responsible for Creating Progress
If we want to see real progress towards an end to age-related disease in our lifetimes, and years from now benefit from treatments that reverse the degeneration and frailty of old age, then we must put our support behind SENS. In the world of research funding, all of the most novel and promising science is funded in its early years by philanthropy, by people of vision and modest means who step up by their thousands to show that they understand what it means to change the world one step at a time.
Who are those people? That would be us. The big organizations and high net worth folk with big checkbooks never show up until later, years after they would have been most useful, and they only turn up because they see that people like us are making noise and changing the world. Ultimately, we are responsible for seeding the future that we wish to see, guiding later large-scale investments by the light we shine on the best path forward.
Help Us to Create a Matching Fund for 2014
As always I only ask no more than I can do myself: I will be putting $15,000 on the table, and each of the other members of the matching fund will be doing the same. This year I hope to be able to do better than last year, when I, Jason Hope, and the Methuselah Foundation joined forces to raise $60,000 for rejuvenation biotechnology research.
Do you already make sizable 501(c)(3) charitable donations to the SENS Research Foundation and would like to see your efforts attract more funding? Then you should join in and help us to build this matching fund. Please do contact me if this is the case.
Do you know someone who could make a difference by joining in and can put $15,000 towards breakthrough medical science? Then ask. Do you have connections to organizations that might be interested in funding SENS research? Then think about giving me an introduction. What is the worst that can happen? There are far more terrible things in this world of ours than gaining a reputation as an advocate who sometimes asks people to fund progress in medical science.
Great initiative, Reason.
Could you tell how us with limited financial means could contribute to the fund? Apart from giving it publicity, that is.
I have a hundred euros or so, can such a small sum be poured it into the matching fund, or should I directly donate it to SENS? (already did in the past, btw)
Cheers.
@Nico: Everyone can help to persuade. I'm trying to assemble larger donations for the matching fund now, and then raise the rest later this year from folk like you who have your willingness to help.
Congratulations for being one of those with the foresight to step up already. Biotechnology is becoming much cheaper these days. A hundred people donating a hundred euros each can fund significant work if they can find out how to direct their funds to the right place.
In fact even small donations directly to SENS have an another important effect: the more people who donate even small sums, the more credible SENS becomes in the eyes of those who look at social proof as much as at the science, which includes most large funding sources one way or another. There is a big difference in credibility for an organization between having hundreds of donors and having thousands or tens of thousands of individual donors.