Donor-funded science is rising in Brazil ― upending a long tradition

Wealthy philanthropies in Brazil are starting to put their money into science — a trend that could help to protect research funding if voters in next month’s elections choose a president who doesn’t prioritize the sciences.

Brazil does not have a strong history of charitable support for research. But the past decade has seen the founding of the nation’s first non-profit organization dedicated to funding scientific research: the Serrapilheira Institute. The organization has now distributed more than US$25 million to early-career researchers, and other philanthropic science funders have sprung up in its wake. Moreover, in 2023, Brazil’s leading university, the University of São Paulo, launched a research centre to study and foster science philanthropy.

This movement is building against a backdrop of turbulent times for Brazilian science. Former president Jair Bolsonaro slashed science funding during his tenure from 2019–23. Polls ahead of Brazil’s presidential election on 4 October show that Bolsonaro’s son, Flávio Bolsonaro, is running neck and neck with Brazil’s current president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

In the United States, “philanthropy has been able to provide a little bit of bridge support” to science, says Kate Lowry, strategy director at the Science Philanthropy Alliance, a New York City-based coalition of heavyweight funders that includes the Gates Foundation in Seattle, Washington, and Wellcome in London. “The same could be true in Brazil.”

Scientists in Brazil who have received philanthropic funding say that it provides a welcome degree of flexibility. For example, biologist Paulo Teixeira, at the Luiz de Queiroz College of Agriculture in Piracicaba, received public funding to build a growth chamber to study the immune system of plants, but his initial proposal didn’t explicitly include the cost of connecting the new building to the electrical grid. So, he used funding from the Serrapilheira Institute to buy a utility pole and make that connection, salvaging his project. “I don’t know what I would’ve done without that money,” he says.

Overcoming hurdles

Historically, scientists at leading public universities in Brazil have been critical of researchers who accept private donations, arguing that science should be fully funded by the government. Big donors, for their part, don’t usually have science on their radar, says philanthropist José Luiz Egydio Setúbal, the head of a foundation focused on child and adolescent health. “In a country with so much inequality and with a wide range of social problems, people don’t see science as a priority,” he says.

How philanthropy can nurture your research

But in 2017, one couple — documentarian João Moreira Salles and podcaster Branca Vianna — decided that Brazil needed a philanthropic organization devoted to basic research. The family founded the Serrapilheira Institute, which funds research by early-career scientists in the natural sciences, computer science and mathematics.

The organization has since become a case study for how it is possible to support science with philanthropy in Brazil despite regulatory hurdles and a tax system that doesn’t incentivize donations. Other initiatives in the country include Pioneer Science, an organization based in Rio de Janeiro that funds research in fields such as neuroscience and the physics and mathematics of biology, and the Pensi Institute in São Paulo, which supports research on child and adolescent health as well as in the social sciences and philanthropy.

Learning from mistakes

Now, some of those donors hope to bring more organizations into the fold. A handful of philanthropic institutions in Brazil, encouraged by philanthropy researchers at the University of São Paulo, are in the early stages of forming a local association inspired by the Science Philanthropy Alliance in the United States.