ScienceOnline2013 begins next week, and quite a lot of individuals and organizations are contributing to make it another welcoming and robust gathering. We’ll continue to call attention to their support and thank them for the many ways they’re helping out.
Today, though, I want to pause to announce two important grants to ScienceOnline.
In July of last year, Burroughs Wellcome Fund, a generous supporter of each and every one of the ScienceOnline conferences, awarded us a grant of $35,000 to support the planning and creation of a not-for-profit organization. Those funds, along with pro bono legal support from Smith Moore Leatherwood LLP, provided the resources we needed to make ScienceOnline an official North Carolina corporation with IRS 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status.
The Burroughs Wellcome Fund is an independent private foundation dedicated to advancing the biomedical sciences by supporting research and other scientific and educational activities.
We are grateful for the Fund’s support and encouragement. Indeed, that support sparked an important momentum in our mission to create a structure dedicated to sustaining the global ScienceOnline community.
Then, in November 2012, ScienceOnline received an award (Grant GBMF3417) from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to support our work convening scientists, journalists, and students to improve scientific literacy. Total funding is $93,000.
The grant from the Moore Foundation supports our programs – ScienceOnline2013, ScienceOnlineTEEN and another 2013 event to be announced soon – and outreach efforts, as well as additional steps to building the organization itself. We are grateful for the Moore Foundation’s confidence in ScienceOnline.
As a cofounder of ScienceOnline and the organization’s first executive director, I am proud of our community and all that it stands for and promises to be. Through the conversations and connections and collaborations that you give to our shared belief in science, I am sure that ScienceOnline can continue to grow and attract support from more leading institutions and foundations and agencies and donors.
