EFTA00727245.pdf

Jeff, The Smolin typo will be fixed this morning. I actually caught it myself earlier, but somehow, my webmaster missed it. This is all excellent. The science site will really start to rock once we start posting real interviews up with the people on the our mutually respective lists. I am continuing hard work with the philanthrophic site today, and will send you a further draft of suggested and properly worded proposals. Again, that needs to be so carefully worded, so that funds are well leveraged to actually push some speculative and interesting fruitful ideas. Again, your foundation site will not just be postings, but serious researchers will be able to apply and submit their ideas on these topics, which you (or properly vetted specialized grant committees) can review at your/their leisure. Below is the basic outline of the approach that I have been thinking about (these are my draft words below again, still in progress, and as you can see below, I have put some thought into this), which makes it a little different from what is currently out there (occasionally one sees solicitations which explicity call for really novel ideas and approaches that wouldn't normally get funded. The FQXSi initiative of the Templeton Foundation is an example, but suffers from that all too often most grants/prizes from a private foundation go to a small cabal of associates of a couple of influential advisors (FQXI is an example). I hope you find my thought helpful, well-intended, and constructive. AGAIN, this is YOUR stuff, but I am going to suggest constructive ideas: The Jeffrey Epstein Foundation is designed and structured to capture the ideas and innovation from both vetted traditional and non- traditional grantees, and provide the templates, some limited coaching, and financial support to bring these ideas to fruition and implementation. EFTA00727245 It is vital to understand that the Jeffrey Epstein Foundation is not a "piggy bank," but a facilitator between properly vetted grants and sponsorship funds. It does not exist to simply fund the creation of new projects that come into existence ad infinitum, rather it seeks to fund projects that are based on sound organizational principles, practices and strategies that can use resources efficiently to drive real and lasting social change and advance significantly the frontiers of knowledge in fundamental areas, and are sustainable. Intended grant recipients are people that are or could be doing important and innovative work towards solving specific issues in problem areas, but who are stymied by lack of proper governmental funding and support. Particularly targeted are projects from non- traditional applicants that do not have ready access to currently available funding routes such as government grant programs or venture capital. The Jeffrey Epstein Foundation will also serve as an innovative forum for discussion of ideas/projects between the general public, the scientific community, entrepreneurs, and philanthropists with the aim of fostering collaborative enterprises. Grantees are researchers, laboratories, or institutions, which are dedicated to advancing the frontiers of knowledge. The central challenge is getting to the scale where the support, synergy, and participation in such projects propagates, and becomes irreversibly self-multiplying across schools, universities, neighborhoods, and regions. At its best, the Jeffrey Epstein Foundation will enable grantees to confidently and systematically assess, analyze and improve their own work. It provides them with a perspective from which they can explore and conceptualize the general principles that underlie their own work, and later spread these insights throughout the citizen EFTA00727246 sector, in a way that alters the community for the better. Grant Construction Grant applicants will identify their program type and target area in their initial application. However, the program type of "Revolutionary Thinking" is included specifically to capture that unorthodox idea that fits no anticipated category. The Grants awarded for this program type will be helping to develop truly extraordinary ideas. Grants will be available at three set levels ($10,000, $25,000, $50,000, $100,000) for proposed programs. This grant money may be used as the sole funding for a program, as a matching fund for other grant programs, or may be supplemented with matching grant funding from other sources as long as there are no conflicting requirements between the two programs in the areas of intellectual property. Follow-on programs, or multi-year grants aimed at building large, self-sustaining programs after an initial successful program will be encouraged, and the size of the follow-on grant programs will be limited only by the interest and enthusiasm of the Grant recipients, the appropriate Grant Committee, and the Sponsor community. Seed Grant The Jeffrey Epstein Foundation Grant Program will publish on the Jeffrey Epstein Foundation Web Portal an initial set of "expert ideas" for programs, projects or technology development that reflects the current needs of the scientific community. These seed grant ideas would include an expected funding level for that type of program. These ideas and examples will serve both as a set of seed ideas that applicants could seek to take on directly, and also as a series of "anchors" to help define the scope of what is expected at each grant level. The set of Seed Grants will be reviewed and EFTA00727247 updated quarterly by the Jeffrey Epstein Foundation Grant Committee to reflect new ideas, evolution of strategic goals, and increasing understanding of the applicant community. Donor Ideas Individual philanthropists may have specific ideas or grants that they would like to fund directly. As part of the Seed Grants, there will be a forum on the Jeffrey Epstein Foundation Web Portal for donor directed ideas which may be applied for by applicants. Individuals or Foundations, who want to contribute will be encouraged to support of a "featured" grant, so that collective donations will cumulatively create fuller financial support. Grant Proposal Process The Jeffrey Epstein Foundation recognizes that structuring a grant program to cast as wide a net as possible, to capture the ideas and innovation from non-traditional sources has many potential pitfalls. Traditional grant applicants are science researchers with formal administrative procedures in place for identifying sources of funding then writing, submitting, and managing grants. Traditional applicants for venture capital are expected to develop business plans with projected return on investment. Both of these processes generally require a significant investment of time on the part of the applicant, and a significant prior knowledge and training on how to structure proposals with well-defined rules for construction and submission. The non-traditional grant applicant will likely have no training on the traditional processes, and no support structure in place to support them during the significant investment of time to write a proposal. The Jeffrey Epstein Foundation will provide limited guidance to the non-traditional applicant on how to put together an acceptable proposal with minimal overhead, and in some cases will fund the grant proposal process. In structuring a grant program to pull in these types of amateur EFTA00727248 proposals from all over the world to address ideas outside of the mainstream, one could quickly generate a crippling review burden. Not only will the proposals need to be read and evaluated, but the applicants are likely require significant direction and education in how to structure an executable plan to achieve their goal. A program such as this could quickly become swamped with a large volume of proposals of low quality ideas, and the overhead involved with evaluating the proposals could expand until a majority of available money was being spent evaluating and managing proposals rather than being awarded in grants. To address these potential issues, a non-traditional approach to grant giving will be undertaken. The Jeffrey Epstein Foundation Grant Program will be awarded after a multistage grant application described in the next section, which includes only invited proposals with targeted focus areas as part of the process. To keep the program nimble and prevent direct lobbying, the Grant Reviewers in each of the target areas will not be identified to the general public, but drawn from key experts within the relevant key communities. In each phase, each reviewer will download proposals to review, and electronically submit the reviews of each proposal without knowledge of any other reviewer's ranking of the idea. Final decisions about invitation to enter subsequent phases of the program, or final award of grants will be made by the appropriate Grant Committee with the aggregated reviewer rankings. Application for Grants Eligibility The Jeffrey Epstein Foundation Program is open to all individuals with a world changing idea. It is not intended to fund salaries within existing organizations for on-going work. A Grant Committee would consider funding an individual already associated with an existing EFTA00727249 organization as long as the project proposed is original in scope and the individual is its original source, and the effort directed towards an entirely new program for that organization. Phase 1 The first stage of the application process is a 250 word abstract of the idea which will be accepted and reviewed on a rolling basis. Any group or individual may only submit an idea through the Jeffrey Epstein Foundation Web Portal. The goal of this first stage is to ensure that the grant applicant is able state clearly in 250 words of less the "what, why and who" of their idea, and to allow rapid review and evaluation of the proposed idea. The exercise of distilling the idea to its very essence, and stating both the problem and the potential solution in a manner that is both succinct and inspiring to the Grant Reviewers is an essential skill for a grant recipient. This level of application does not require any specialized training, nor does it take a burdensome amount of time to produce, lowering the bar for the non-traditional applicant. The application will include: 1. Tide of the Project; 2. Identification of the Key Target area and program type being proposed; 3. Name and contact information of the individual or group proposing the idea; 4. Location of the proposed project; 5. A 250 word abstract describing the problem to be addressed, and the idea including the positive benefits and impact of the idea; 6. A 150 word description of why the project is innovative. EFTA00727250  The idea abstracts will be reviewed and ranked by the Jeffrey Epstein Foundation based on the impact and quality of the idea only, not on the assessed ability of the group to achieve the idea (guidelines for this review are in Appendix Because of the compact abstract form, the overhead of reviewing will be minimized. The Jeffrey Epstein Foundation Grant Reviewers must, however, have significant scientific and entrepreneurial expertise, as it is critical to avoid screening out truly creative and revolutionary ideas. Phase 2 Groups submitting high-ranking abstracts will be invited to submit a Phase 2 proposal to evaluate the depth, quality, maturity and achievability of the idea and to further define the scope and budget. On-line website based resources will be provided to guide the applicant through the process of working through and identifying the details of how the idea would be achieved, and calculating how much it would cost. The Jeffrey Epstein Foundation Web Portal would step the applicant through what the reviewers are looking for in an application and what to think about in order to plan properly. There are many such websites for proposal development with widely varying degrees of sophistication in both the coaching and interface, and examples of such are included in the reference section. An example of the types of guidance questions is presented below: Background of the group must include addressing the following: -1. How and when was the group created (if applicable)? -1. What other related activities has the group or individual carried out? -1. What has the group or individual achieved in related areas and what difficulties have been faced? -1. What other plans or projects is the group or individual carrying out EFTA00727251  or intending to carry out? -1. Who will have group/individual responsibilities including roles of Director, Project Coordinator and Treasurer? -1. How will project related decisions be made? Proposal -1. What is the pressing need that this program will address? -1. How will this group or individual address this need? -1. What is the time frame, and what resources are needed? -1. What materials and resources will you use from the location (including volunteer labor and in-kind donations)? -1. What will be your contribution of materials and resources? -1. In addition to financial support, what, if any, resources are you requesting from the GlobalSolverTM Foundation I Ocean Grant Program? -1. What type of product will be produced? -1. How will you monitor, evaluate and share your results? -1. What (if any) is the educational component of the project? Budget -1. What costs are you requesting from the Jeffrey Epstein Foundation Grant Program? EFTA00727252 -1. Special equipment and other needs; -1. List additional or supplementary funds being provided by other institutions, foundations and individual donors if any; -1. Does the group have a bank account? If so, include location and account number. Upon receipt, Phase 2 proposals would be reviewed and ranked with awarding of funding occurring on a quarterly basis (Evaluation criteria are detailed in Appendix __). Highly ranked, mature proposals with strong support and background, a compelling idea, and an identified source of funding from a targeted donor or the Committee's discretionary fund may be recommended for direct funding at the end of Phase 2 review. Rollout and launch may start with allowing only individuals or teams who are associated with an accredited educational or research institution, or non-profit environmental foundation, to apply for a Jeffrey Epstein Foundation Grant. This is to allow for the nurturing and development of a more open-ended Grant Program. To discourage "prank" submissions, or "idea shot-gunning," submissions from single groups will be limited to three per quarter, and a nominal, but sliding scale application fee will be charged for each submission (the fee will be scaled to a level appropriate for each country of origin to ensure that it does not serve as a barrier to ideas, and can be waived for schools). EFTA00727253 EFTA00727254