Our Values

There are just 126 guiding principals by which we conduct our daily operation. Rather than give you the whole list (available as a pdf file to qualified applicants), we’ll just cover some of the most important values here.

Over and above everything, we value innovation and originality. If you have a carburetor that can shave 80% off fuel consumption by traditional methods, we have little interest in it, but if it involves hypnosis or tribal arts rituals, we’d love to see your project.

Bearing in mind that our funding sources direct billions of dollars to researchers each year with absolutely no expectation of reasonable findings, your idea doesn’t have to be good in the "traditional" sense, but needs to really strike our funding committee in an interesting, abstract, so-crazy-it-just-might work sort of way.

Remember that once our committee gets it in their minds that an idea is so crazy it just might work, their influence alone can ram it down the throats of the actual funding committees in undeniable ways. We’ve seen more than a few (hundred) grants approved simply for the sake of getting our committee of their backs.

We value projects based on our four guiding principals:

G – Grant-worthy. Is your idea really worthy of a grant?

I – Innovation. Does your project represent truly original thinking, no matter how unconventional or "crazy" it may seem?

S – Singular. Has it been done before? If it hasn’t, even if it’s seeing how hamsters react in a nuclear core reactor when fed Oreos, we may be interested, because it’s never been done before. (Please note that we’ve already funded Oreo-fed hamsters in several varieties of nuclear reactors already, this was only listed as an example.)

M – Money is no object. We’ve funded research into the destruction of monetary instruments in peculiar circumstances, and even a study to see how discount pinewood furniture fares in a volcano compared to the rarest of antiques.

If you believe you have an idea, and can reasonably support a grant project in at least the vaguest academic sense, you should apply through us, assuming you meet our G-I-S-M criteria listed above.