Dollars toward Federal R&D and STEM Education funding could soon go much further thanks to government partnerships with philanthropies born of the rise of AI. In The Third Wave of American Philanthropy, writer Nan Ransohoff laid out how hundreds of billions of dollars in new philanthropic capital, derived from the AI boom, could potentially become available for investment.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, one of the largest philanthropic foundations in the United States, recently committed to increasing its annual payout to $9 billion. Ransohoff describes how just three funding sources from the OpenAI Foundation, the Anthropic founders, and Anthropic employees could translate into an estimated $37 billion of intended annual spending increases in the philanthropy sector.
This third wave of philanthropic giving could create significant opportunities for maximizing the mileage of federal investments in scientific research and technological progress, and the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is a good test case.
The Trump administration recently dismissed all 22 members of the National Science Board from their positions, but before they were let go, the members of the presidentially appointed governing body of the NSF were steadily working to advance a set of reforms to modernize and improve the functionality of the $9 billion grant-making agency. Dubbed “next gen NSF,” the initiative was launched to mark the agency’s 75th anniversary, and this year the National Science Board planned to advance seven priorities.
Creating a Non-Profit Foundation for the NSF
One priority stands out, given the expected charity tsunami that the third-wave of American philanthropy could bring about: creating a non-profit foundation to make it easier for non-federal entities, including industry and philanthropy, to partner with NSF and make taxpayer dollars go further.
Co-investments with industry, philanthropy, and other government agencies are not new for the NSF. The agency recently launched the TechAccess: AI Ready America initiative in partnership with the U.S. Departments of Labor, Agriculture, and the Small Business Administration to support AI preparation coordination hubs across the country.
In response to workforce needs for the CHIPS & Science Act, NSF partnered with Micron and GlobalFoundries to invest in semiconductor workforce development, and NSF partnered with major philanthropies, including the Ford Foundation, the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, Pivotal Ventures, Siegel Family Endowment, and the Schmidt Sciences.
The NSF does a lot more than many in the science and technology community realize. The agency is the primary funder of basic science and engineering. The NSF plays a key role in STEM education and workforce development, ranging from research on what works to supporting informal science education at museums, botanical gardens, and libraries, workforce training at community colleges, STEM education in high schools, and beyond.
What’s more is that the “science” part of the bipartisan CHIPS & Science Act expanded the agency’s mission by creating the first new arm at the agency in 30-years called the Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (TIP) Directorate.
TIP expanded the agency’s capability to translate research and STEM education funding into a multi-prong strategy – supporting regional innovation, tech-based economic development, helping research translate into inventions and innovations that benefit people, and connecting talent development to technology development.
Every part of the NSF could be enhanced with a non-profit foundation, but, as its name may imply, the TIP directorate is especially well-positioned to help the agency broker partnerships with “third-wave philanthropies.”
NSF’s TIP directorate recently funded the Federation of American Scientists to convene 32 senior leaders from 27 philanthropic organizations alongside NSF leaders and representatives from all of its directorates to identify meaningful opportunities to partner with philanthropy on co-investment, shared infrastructure, and joint experimentation.
The idea of a non-profit affiliate for NSF isn’t all that far-fetched. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, NASA, the National Institutes of Health, the National Park Service, and other federal agencies work with non-profit arms to augment what’s possible with public dollars.
Philanthropic funding can’t replace federal investments, but it could significantly increase the speed and scale of federal R&D to solve societal problems. The possible third wave of philanthropy brought about by AI could be yet another reason to prioritize the creation of a non-profit foundation for the NSF and, potentially, for other agencies at the federal, state, and local levels.