New Option for Funding Research

This year has been really hard with lots of schools cutting back admissions, admits being turned away, or candidates losing funding. I have a lot of friends who got screwed over in 2025.

I wanted to share a website called Catalyze that allows researchers to share their proposals and directly raise funding online from the public rather than just through private applications to agencies or foundations.

How it works:

• AI-Assisted Intake: You don't have to rewrite your work. You can upload an existing grant proposal, and the AI parses it to automatically draft a structured project page for you. However, this is optional - you can still write the proposal out yourself
• Personalized Project Pages: Even if you don't want to fundraise, now you have a personalized page that illustrates what you're working on, why you're working on it, and what makes it special. This is useful for sharing with friends, funders, or peers at conference.
• Direct Crowdfunding: Individuals or organizations can back your research milestones directly via bank, credit card, or donor advised fund (accounts the rich use to pre-donate their money to optimize tax write-offs)
• Funding Pools over RFPs: Instead of responding to a traditional RFP with a new custom proposal, you can "apply" to curated funding pools by simply sharing your existing project listing.
• Portfolios for Passive Funding: Donors can fund your work via thematic portfolios so that you passively get funds for working on research affecting major cause areas e.g. decarbonization or oncology.
• Privacy: You can choose to keep your project private and share only with select individuals or go fully public for the benefit of the community. You can also use this as a free data room where you can share confidentially

URL: www.catalyzernd.com