The Case for Crazy Philanthropy

Summary

An unprecedented amount of private philanthropy is flowing into science and medicine these days. Multiple private foundations such as the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Wellcome Trust, Novo Nordisk Foundation, and Gates Foundation, each with over $20 billion endowments, focus mostly or solely on science, and there are more philanthropists than can be listed who are willing to donate hundreds of millions of dollars in one fell swoop. But over the past several decades, philanthropy has become much more bureaucratic: if you want a grant from one of these well-endowed foundations, you have to be willing to navigate a large bureaucracy while specifying all of the legible ways in which your activity will have provable impact. As a result, most of the current R&D philanthropy funds the usual suspects at traditional institutions. Look at some of the most prominent examples from recent years: Roy Vagelos, the former CEO of Merck, has given a total of $900 million to Columbia University, the most recent tranche of which was to launch the Roy and Diana Vagelos Institute for Basic Biomedical Research. In 2023, hedge fund CEO Ken Griffin gave $300 million to Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, which was renamed after Griffin. In 2015, Nike founder Phil Knight gave $500 million to Oregon Health and Science University to support cancer research and, in 2021, he gave the second of two $500 million donations to the University of Oregon, to support the Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact. There are many more examples of philanthropists who want to promote science and who simply write enormous checks to existing universities. In the past, however, large bureaucratic foundations didn’t even exist, and philanthropy was based on the whims of eccentric individuals with wealth to burn—sometimes at a great loss, but often to extraordinary benefit, including funding the creation of new fields. Such opportunities have not been exhausted. Katalin Karikó, the scientist who wo...