The Pioneer Fund, Inc.
954 Lexington Ave., Suite 211
New York, NY 10021
(212) 459-4084
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About Us In the period from the end of World War II until the Decade of
the Brain and the Human Genome Project, the social and behavioral
sciences were dominated by Blank Slate worldviews such as
behaviorism. Even in that period, the Pioneer Fund helped keep alive the
naturalist perspective by supporting vital research in:
Through our grants program,
The Pioneer Fund has changed the face of the social and behavioral sciences by
restoring the Darwinian-Galtonian perspective to the mainstream in traditional
fields such as anthropology, psychology, and sociology, as well as fostering the
newer disciplines of behavioral genetics, neuroscience, evolutionary psychology,
and sociobiology. The Pioneer Fund’s biosocial approach recognizes no fixed
boundaries between disciplines, only different questions to be asked and answered. The
research we support looks at our evolutionary past (human origins), our present
(individual and group differences), and our future (the impact of technology and
globalization on human ecology and demography).
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Pioneer PersonnelThough much smaller than the major foundations which support research in similar areas, The Pioneer Fund has managed to have high impact by keeping overhead to a minimum. We have no staff. Our affairs are conducted directly by a five-person board of directors, all of whom have donated their time and not been compensated for their work as directors. Since the Fund’s incorporation in 1937, its 22 directors, including its five founders, have been noted executives, scientists, and professionals. (This website provides biographical sketches of each of them.) |
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Operating PoliciesSince the Pioneer Fund has worked on very limited capital, the board members decided early on to run a tight ship, ensuring that as much of the available funds as possible would go directly to research. To that end, Pioneer has never had a paid staff nor had an office of our own. Our mail goes to a P. O. Box, and our telephone listing is with an answering service. We own no property (except bank accounts in our name), not even a desk or a computer. A major accounting firm performs annual audits to guarantee the integrity of our financial records.The Pioneer Fund likewise keeps our procedures simple. We make no grants to individuals but only to research institutions, mainly universities, mostly for specialized “niche” projects, which have difficulty attracting funds from government sources or from larger foundations. A few particularly important research projects, however, have received substantial ongoing funding over the years (see Grantees). The Fund keeps its paperwork to a minimum; we have no standardized forms or specifications for grant applications but require only letters from scholars with institutional support, briefly summarizing proposals and the researchers’ qualifications. Decisions are made quickly, usually in a matter of days, by consulting grantees with the relevant expertise, Board Members, and, if necessary, with external peer reviewers. Typically, the fund does not require written reports from its grantees following their research, leaving the accounting procedures to the universities, or submission of the standard IRS information.The Pioneer Fund is neutral on political and social issues and avoids grantees with social agendas to push. The only exception is that we are committed to freedom of enquiry in all matters, and generally, to an open society, broadly conceived. A recent Pioneer-funded book, The New Know-Nothings by Morton Hunt (2000, Transaction), documents recent intrusions into freedom of enquiry from both the political left and right, from which some of our grantees have suffered. |
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Qualifications of ScientistsIn considering grant proposals, the Fund has always sought excellence in the researchers. We review the scholastic background, extent of field research, published writings and citations of those writings, and reputation among peers of all applicants. Two of our grantees are among the most cited psychologists of all time (Hans J. Eysenck, Arthur R. Jensen). One won a Nobel Prize (William B. Shockley). Three are Guggenheim Fellows (Arthur R. Jensen, Ernest van den Haag, and J. Philippe Rushton). Pioneer grantees have been elected as the presidents of the American Psychological Association, the American Educational Research Association, the British Psychological Society, the Behavior Genetics Association, the Psychometric Society, the Society for Psychophysiological Research, the Society of Multivariate Experimental Psychology, and the International Society for the Study of Individual Differences. Grantees currently serve on the editorial boards of major academic journals, including three on the board of Personality and Individual Differences, and three on the editorial board of the journal Intelligence. The Galton Society of the United Kingdom has selected three Pioneer Fund grantees to give the annual Galton Lectures (Hans J. Eysenck, Thomas J. Bouchard, and Arthur R. Jensen). The collected works of grantees total over 200 scholarly books and 2,000 scholarly articles. |
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CredoThe Pioneer Fund is dedicated to furthering the scientific study of human ability and diversity. We are resolved to promoting better understanding of our similarities, our differences, our past, and our future through scientific research and dissemination of that information to the public – no matter how upsetting those findings may be to any entrenched religious or political dogmas. We believe that ignorance, fear of knowledge, and suppression of academic freedom have never served humanity well, and that we should resist any encroachments on scholarship or the chilling effect of any form of political correctness or orthodoxy. We believe that the discoveries supported by our grants constitute important contributions to the behavioral sciences. Only by continuing research on human variation will we be able to understand fully what it means to be human.
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About Us |
The Founders |
The Board
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Grantees |
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