Initiatives
Our programs and funds in development are informed by our three decades of experience in designing, implementing, and scaling ambitious initiatives across philanthropy and government. These initiatives leverage our playbook of strategies for field-transforming innovation.
The Advanced Research for Climate Emergencies (ARC) initiative is a philanthropic fund focused on combating catastrophic climate risks through translational R&D. It backs expert-led programs to research new options to predict, prevent, and mitigate tipping point risks like ice sheet collapse, Arctic destabilization, and runaway methane emissions. ARC proactively bridges critical gaps left by government inaction, ensuring that humanity has well-understood, viable options ready to address climate emergencies when they inevitably arise.
The Advanced Research for Climate Emergencies (ARC) initiative is a philanthropic fund focused on combating catastrophic climate risks through translational R&D. It backs expert-led programs to research new options to predict, prevent, and mitigate tipping point risks like ice sheet collapse, Arctic destabilization, and runaway methane emissions. ARC proactively bridges critical gaps left by government inaction, ensuring that humanity has well-understood, viable options ready to address climate emergencies when they inevitably arise.
The AI for Math Fund seeks to advance the pace and impact of math discovery by supporting projects that are important for the field, but no one academic or industry lab has the incentive to do them. The fund will support projects that (1) are less likely to happen in a business as usual scenario; and (2) have the potential to advance the field as a whole. These include: developing open-source, production-quality tools; increasing the size, diversity and quality of datasets required for training AI models; and increasing the ease-of-use of tools so that they are adopted by mathematicians.
The Public Benefit Innovation Fund is a philanthropic venture fund and R&D lab which is supported by Renaissance Philanthropy. PBIF provides seed funding and technical support for researchers, nonprofits, academic labs, startups, and technologists working to improve social service delivery.
The Talent Mobility Fund increases the use of existing but underused immigration pathways through a multi-track expert-led grants program. While legal barriers often limit the ability of talent to move to opportunity, there is a wide range of pathways in the U.S. and globally like the O-1, EU student visa, and Japan’s Specified Skilled Worker visa, which are underutilized relative to their potential.
BiTS supports the development and launch of more coordinated research programs. The program recruits early to mid-career research talent with big-if-true ideas that are neither a fit for venture nor for academia, helps them develop into program leaders with actionable research visions, and matches them to a host institution like ARIA, ARPA-E, ARPA-H, DARPA, or a similar non-governmental organizations like Convergent Research.
The UK Horizons Programme seeks to supercharge the UK’s R&D ecosystem by building networks of innovators, expanding the diversity of science translation mechanisms in the UK, strengthening the UK’s philanthropic ecosystem, and building research translation strategies.