What is Manifest Climate Grants? 

Manifest Climate Grants is a fast grants program that awards $25K – $100K to scientists to accelerate their most ambitious bio x climate ideas.

The application is max 2 pages, you’ll get a decision within 21 days. No IP is taken.

Applications closed in September ‘23. Follow us on X (Twitter) to stay in the loop.

The next big climate tech solution could be trapped in your lab.

Right now, researchers are developing innovative solutions to tackle the climate crisis. But few make it out of the lab. Often, after the basic science is done, there’s just a little more work – prototyping, techno economic-modeling, real-world testing – to show the science has commercial potential. But almost no one funds such work!

We cannot afford potential solutions to sit idle in labs. That’s why we created Manifest Climate – to bring breakthrough climate science from the lab to the benefit of all. We’ll take the learnings and hope to increase the scale of this funding in future rounds.

Biology has the scale and speed to solve the climate crisis.

Biology is an undervalued tool that could reverse climate change.

  1. Billions of years of optimization. Life has evolved sophisticated machinery to thrive in every corner of the globe – from volcanoes, to deep sea vents, and arctic tundras. In no other field can we leverage billions of years of evolution.

  2. Atomic precision. DNA encodes the blueprint for machinery that operates with single-atom-scale precision, rivaling our most advanced nanotechnology.

  3. Scale. We’re already harnessing living machines at staggering scale – from modifying rice plants to become flood resistant, to optimizing laundry detergent to kill bacteria at lower temperatures, to engineering microbes to produce biodegradable plastics.

Today we can understand and engineer living things in greater depth than ever before. Our best chance at preserving life on Earth is to empower scientists to co-create with Nature. 

Who’s behind Manifest Climate Grants?

Manifest Grants is a 50Y initiative. Manifest Climate Round 1 is supported by 50Y, EQT Foundation, Automattic, and Wave Foundation.

We’re inspired by our friends at Impetus and Fast Grants who pioneered the ‘fast grants’ model.

50Y Manifest Grants is established as a separate non-profit entity under the fiscal sponsorship of the Open Collective Foundation.

FAQ

  • The first round of applications opened on Aug 1st and closed on September 10th at 11.59 pm (PT). For more information follow @manifestgrants on Twitter.

  • You must be a scientist (Master’s student, PhD student, Postdoc, PI, Professor):

    • Part of an academic or non-profit research organization

    • You’ve got a translational research idea that uses biology to help solve the climate crisis

    Researchers outside the US are eligible for funding.

    Researchers from other fields are encouraged to propose projects where their expertise could address climate change.

  • We are looking to fund projects with the potential to accelerate our ability to solve the climate crisis by leveraging the power of biology. We are placing an emphasis on funding high-risk, high-reward proposals that might not otherwise get funded.

    We do not fund social science approaches. Although important, this does not fit under our focus!

  • Application Part I (No identifiable information)

    To reduce bias, the first review is fully blind, meaning no name or affiliated institution is shown to the first reviewer. Please avoid using any information that can be used to identify you or your affiliated institution in this part of the application.

    • Project Title. A concise title that captures the main idea of your proposal. Limit: 100 characters.

    • Main Hypotheses and Literature Sources. Define your main research hypotheses and 1-3 sources to validate the assumptions. Limit: 1000 characters.

    • Description of potential impact. A concise overview of your project and its potential impact. If your work succeeds, how will it mitigate the climate crisis? Where appropriate, use quantitative outcomes, e.g. 200KG of CO2 captured. Limit: 600 characters.

    • Technical project plan. Describe your technical project plan including information about the techniques, tools, replicates, and appropriate controls you're planning to use. Make sure to include 1-2 potential pitfalls and how you will address them. Explain in detail how you will measure and analyze your results. Limit: 5000 characters.

    • Translational Potential. What does this grant unlock in terms of proving the feasibility of this science/tech? Give us a short roadmap of the milestones that will need to follow this experiment in order for the tech to be feasible outside of the lab scale. Make sure to include a rough timeline and a cost estimate. Limit: 600 characters.

    • Budget. Dollar amount requested and a brief itemization of the budget. Limit: 600 characters.

    • Timeline. By when do you think you can achieve your goal?

    • (Optional) 2 Figures. Do not attach your extended proposal here. No more than two figures per upload!

    Application Part II: (Available only for 2nd reviewers)

    If your application successfully moves to the 2nd review, this information will be made available to the reviewers. Feel free to reference your previous work here!

    • Google Scholar profile.

    • (Optional] Prior publications. Your top 1-3 published papers (relevant to the project). If you are an early career scientist, we recognize that you might not have prior publications relevant to this project. Don’t stress! This won’t be counted against you.

    • (Optional) Preliminary validation for this project. Have you or someone else de-risked the science? Validation can be performed by you / your research group or by someone else in the field.

    • What resources does your institution have to help you conduct this work?Provide a brief description of relevant lab facilities, equipment, and technology needed for the successful completion of the project and identify which of them are available to you at your current institution.

    • Existing funding. Please briefly list all grants and funding (private and federal) that you have received for this project. Not having previous funding is not a disadvantage.

  • Each application is reviewed by two scientists with relevant experience in the field.

    • The first review will be done by a PhD trainee/postdoc with no identifiable information shared about the applicant.

    • The second review will be done by a subject matter expert with identifiable information shared.

    All reviewers will sign an NDA to ensure the confidentiality of your research idea.

  • Applications are reviewed on the quality of project design, the potential impact on the field, translational potential, the technical project plan, and the ability of the applicant to execute the proposed research.

  • We require a Manifest Climate Grant to be used solely to expedite the proposed idea at hand. In the application form, we ask to give an itemized overview of the budget to ensure that the funding will be used in a cost-effective manner.

  • You and your organization! Apart from the open science publication requirement, Manifest Grants (nor Fifty Years or any donor) make no claims on the intellectual property of your work. In addition, all reviewers and staff have signed an NDA to guarantee the confidentiality of your proposed research.

  • Yes, all our staff and scientific reviewers have signed an NDA to ensure the confidentiality of your proposal.

  • There are no requirements for a project period. The application form asks for a timeline to help us set expectations for the project and follow up on the research.

  • No. Being an early-career scientist is not a disadvantage. We’d love for the person behind the idea to be the applicant.

  • We provide anywhere from $25K to $100K. We prefer cost-effective projects with appropriately priced budgets.

  • The following conditions apply:

    • Use of resources. You must use the grant to work on the research idea you outlined in the application.

    • Reporting. For larger grants ($50-100K), we encourage you to send us quarterly updates, summarizing your progress (up to 1 year). These can be as simple as a single-paragraph email.

    • Pre-prints. We encourage you to upload all manuscripts reporting work supported by the grant to a preprint server such as bioRxiv or arXiv upon submission to a peer-reviewed journal. We don’t want to delay the impact of the work by long publication cycles!

    • Overhead. Manifest Climate will pay at most 10% in overhead costs to the university. This will be in addition to the budget requested for the specific research. So for instance, if you requested $100K for the research proposal, we can provide a maximum of $10K in addition to overhead costs.

  • Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis. After you apply, you will receive a decision within 21 days. If you’ve not heard from us 1) check the spam folder and 2) email us at alex@50y.com.

  • Manifest Grants has been established as a non-profit entity under the fiscal sponsorship of the Open Collective Foundation (OCF). The funding will be processed through the OCF platform.

    Contact details:

    Open Collective Foundation 501(c)(3)

    440 N. Barranca Avenue, #3717

    Covina, CA 91723

    EIN number (a.k.a. Tax ID) is 81-4004928

  • Thank you! You can reach us at alex@50y.com

  • You can contact us at alex@50y.com!