Enhancing Philanthropy's Support of Biomedical Scientists

During an interval of 15 years, the Lucille P. Markey Charitable Trust spent over $500 million on four programs in the basic biomedical sciences that support the education and research of graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, junior faculty, and senior researchers. The Markey Trust asked the NRC to evaluate these programs with two questions in mind: "Were these funds well spent?" and "What can others in the biomedical and philanthropic communities learn from the programs of the Markey Trust, both as an approach to funding biomedical research and as a model of philanthropy?". One of five resulting reports, this volume contains the proceedings of a workshop held in June 2005 to investigate methods used to evaluate funding of the biomedical scientists by philanthropic and public funders. In addition to the Markey Trust, representatives from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the American Heart Association, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and six other funders of biomedical scientists presented information on evaluation methodologies and outcomes.