Service Helps Health Donors Identify Research to Support

FasterCures — a project of the Milken Institute, in Santa Monica, Calif., that seeks to accelerate the discovery of new treatments for debilitating diseases — has created a new service to help donors interested in medical research figure out the best way to spend their money.

The Philanthropy Advisory Service features reports that explain the impact of a disease, describe research supported by both companies and nonprofit groups, and identify the projects that are not getting sufficient money. The site also offers organization reports that profile health charities, detailing their approach to medical research, the projects they support, and fund-raising practices.

Scientific advisory boards and organizational review boards vet the reports before they are published.

The idea for the service grew out of donors’ frustration at the difficulty of finding information about the effectiveness of health organizations, says Melissa Stevens, project director at the Philanthropy Advisory Service.

“If they were investing their for-profit dollars, there’s a multitude of different resources that they can tap into to understand how they should invest their money, but there wasn’t that equivalent on the nonprofit side,” she says.

More Reports Expected

So far, the service features reports about research on Alzheimer’s disease, malaria, multiple sclerosis, and tuberculosis. FasterCures plans to eventually add reports on additional diseases.

The reports are available free to people who register on the service’s Web site.