GiveBetter x USA

Institute for Progress

Science, clinical-trial, immigration and infrastructure policy

Research time: ~19 min on GPT-6.1 Sol
  • Research — reviewed programs, finances and impact evidence.
  • Source audit — checked claims, assumptions and calculations.
  • Modeling — estimated costs, QALYs and uncertainty.

Updated: 2026-09-30

Donate

Summary

What do they do? Institute for Progress researches and helps implement U.S. innovation policy across science, biotechnology, immigration, infrastructure and emerging technology. It publishes reform proposals, convenes experts and supplies technical assistance to policymakers; NSF independently confirms an agency partnership. Donations support its researchers, expert convenings and practical assistance on policy design and implementation.

Why we’re interested in this organization:

  • A formal NSF partnership and concrete clinical-trial proposals establish substantive work beyond general advocacy.

  • Public original IRS returns support three years of spending and a functional cost breakdown, while current publications establish continued operations.

  • Institutional reforms could benefit large future patient populations and produce valuable scientific, immigration and infrastructure gains beyond the pathway priced here.

Our main reservations:

  • The health-and-income estimate depends on hypothetical causal scale and incidence; no study identifies the combined organization-specific return.

  • A $10.5M July 2026 general-support grant and incomplete current financial information make marginal funding additionality uncertain.

  • Policy overlap is not causal attribution, and faster first-in-human trials can yield no patient benefit or harm if implementation weakens reliable evidence.

What do you get for your dollar? $33K per DALY in USA. DALY is our one-year comparison unit. QALY-based health gains and income-welfare equivalents retain their original assumptions; they are not measured clinical DALYs. Annual-cost health-and-income welfare comparison; causal effects are judgment-based scenarios, not measured donation returns.

Policy analysis and implementation support could let additional skilled workers stay and earn more, as well as improve clinical development. The income cohort and causal share are hypotheses, not observed placements.

1. What do they do?

IFP is a Washington-based nonprofit think tank rather than a clinical care provider. Its current organizational page identifies five research areas and lists Alec Stapp as CEO. Co-founder Caleb Watney moved to Coefficient Giving’s public-policy leadership in 2026 and remains an external IFP board member. This review evaluates an ordinary donation to the operating charity, EIN 87-2449729, rather than a newly invented restricted clinical-trial fund.

What money buys. Researchers develop technically specific proposals, brief policymakers, convene specialists and assist implementation. For example, IFP’s Clinical Trial Abundance series addresses recruitment, monitoring, participant compensation and regulatory information. It is a collaborative project supported by Renaissance Philanthropy, with contributors beyond IFP; the whole agenda cannot be assigned exclusively to one organization. Its September 2026 biotechnology analysis argues for clearer, proportionate first-in-human requirements using Australia as a comparison.

Why this could help. Removing a consequential bottleneck could allow more useful studies, stop ineffective development sooner, or bring effective treatment to patients earlier. The chain is donation → additional policy capacity → a changed institutional decision → changed research or development → effective care actually received → incremental patient health. Each arrow can fail. Research production and policy access establish capacity, but do not establish the final health effect.

The organization also pursues talent retention, science-funding improvements and easier construction. Those pathways could dominate total value. We discuss them as unpriced benefits and risks because this review did not establish a donor-attributable bridge to household income or U.S. healthy life-years.

2. Monitoring and information sharing

Evidence of implementation capacity. NSF’s September 2023 announcement independently confirms an agreement for IFP and its Metascience Working Group to design and execute experiments on research-funding mechanisms. The agency identifies tests of high-risk/high-reward funding and analyses of funding outputs. This is stronger evidence of a defined agency role than counting publications. The page is now archived; it does not establish that the agreement continues in 2026, that experiments succeeded, or that breakthroughs resulted.

Policy overlap, with attribution limits. The 2024 clinical agenda included publishing redacted complete response letters. FDA independently announced publication of more than 200 such letters in July 2025. This establishes a concrete institutional change consistent with a proposal. It does not establish that IFP caused it, that the recommendation was unique, or that the change improved patient outcomes.

The FDA Expedited IND pilot tests rolling review and qualified research institutions to accelerate first-in-human trial initiation while retaining FDA oversight. We found no reviewed evidence assigning its creation to IFP. An earlier Phase I start is distinct from an earlier final approval, dissemination and effective treatment. IFP’s September 2026 analysis engages with an existing initiative; its publication date cannot establish responsibility for the initiative’s earlier adoption.

What we would track. A credible evaluation would record the proposed text or operational change; IFP’s specific assistance and timing; implementers’ independent assessment of contribution; adoption and actual use; enrollment and trial completion; reliable evidence produced; and treatment use relative to a counterfactual. It should also track failed projects, participant harms and lost evidential quality. An agency announcement is an intermediate outcome, not a QALY measurement.

Our evidence confidence is higher for finances and identified activities than for effectiveness, causal contribution and marginal donor return. No reviewed public evaluation supplied an independently estimated donation-to-QALY effect. This is a statement about the evidence reviewed, not proof that useful impact has never occurred.

3. Qualitative assessment

The case for support. A specialist policy team can improve decisions affecting much larger research and infrastructure systems. The NSF agreement supports a plausible route into implementation. IFP’s July 2026 metascience proposal explicitly argues for experiments and administrative-data analysis before scaling funding reforms. That willingness to test mechanisms is attractive, although a proposed experiment is not a demonstrated successful intervention.

There is an additional infrastructure case. Giving Green’s grantee spotlight describes intended funding for permitting and transmission policy research, coalition-building and technical drafting. It credits IFP with contributions to protecting tax credits and convening a permitting coalition. These are the evaluator’s assessments, not independently estimated marginal climate or health outcomes. Although the page title says 2026, the substantive text says last updated November 2025, so it cannot settle funding room after July 2026. We add no climate QALYs.

The main concerns. Policy change depends on governments, other advocates, industry and implementation capacity. IFP may contribute substantially while a particular extra gift adds little; conversely, timely specialist support might matter at a narrow policy window. Neither outcome follows from organizational prominence. IFP and 1Day Sooner participate in overlapping clinical-reform ecosystems, so their modeled benefits must not be added as independent versions of the same win.

Faster evidence production can be beneficial when it preserves participant safety and identifies effective treatments. Reforms that weaken evidence, concentrate access among affluent patients, or improve commercial throughput without net clinical benefit can be neutral or harmful. Infrastructure and technology choices also have distributional and externality effects. The health scenario below does not capture the full portfolio’s downside.

Funding and governance. Coefficient Giving’s fund listing records $10.5M in July 2026 general support. Its public-policy head is an IFP co-founder and external board member. That connection should be disclosed when using funder endorsement as evidence; it does not establish improper grantmaking. IFP’s 2024 Schedule O reports annual conflict-policy review and board approval of compensation, but does not verify the procedures for the later grant. We would request updated decision and recusal processes alongside the next unfunded work package.

Our judgment is that IFP is a substantive, plausible institutional-reform opportunity with unusually weak measurability at the donor-to-health endpoint. Beta denotes a fuller review, not a GiveWell endorsement or measured effectiveness finding.

4. What do you get for your dollar?

Our central health-and-income estimate is $33K per DALY, using one modeled equivalent year. The previous health-only review was $8.8M; the original alpha comparison was $360K. These are different model versions, not measurements showing that impact changed by those ratios. Income-equivalent years are wellbeing comparisons, not observed QALYs or DALYs.

Correcting the cost boundary. We charge the latest inspected annual charity expense, $3,597,698, once. The previous review also multiplied the denominator by an arbitrary new-donation additionality factor based partly on grant receipts. That mixes annual-work cost-effectiveness with a marginal-gift model. We remove that factor from the annual-cost central case; implementation probabilities and the organization's contribution still apply. Receiving a grant does not prove the year's work has low value. The old funding haircut remains a sensitivity, and current room for more funding still needs a costed work package. This is not a promise that any gift size scales linearly.

Income pathway: retaining internationally trained talent. IFP works on immigration rules and guidance as well as clinical trials. Its STEM workforce analysis describes sizeable talent pools and practical retention obstacles. The cited annual doctorate flow, postdoc stock and visa approvals overlap; we do not sum them as new beneficiaries. Our central hypothesis is one additional useful reform affecting 5,000 people who otherwise would leave or never enter, with five years of real disposable income $20,000 higher than a $40,000 outside option. These are judgment inputs, not 5,000 documented IFP successes or a measured wage increase.

The income comparison must be against work in another country, not zero earnings. The Clemens visa-lottery study supports the possibility of location-related earnings gains, but its single-firm setting does not identify our $20,000 gain. We define that gain after tax, housing, relocation and private visa costs, not a nominal U.S. salary premium. A 25% implementation probability and 10% IFP causal contribution leave 2.5% of the conditional benefit credited. We subtract an illustrative income loss of $1,000/year for 500 existing workers at a $75,000 baseline; this is a downside allowance, not a measured displacement effect. Benefits begin after three years and each annual flow is discounted at 3%.

Only gains occurring while people are U.S. residents enter this edition. Switching visa categories while staying and earning the same amount is not a gain. We do not add patents, GDP, clinical-trial savings, security or downstream innovation on top of this worker-income channel. Public-service costs and origin-country losses could change the wider assessment; an actual cohort study and a costed policy package are the next evidence priorities.

Health component. The earlier review's clinical chain is retained except for the mismatched donor haircut: 100,000 potential recipients × 0.10 annual QALY gain × three months of acceleration × 25% useful-reform probability × 7.9% approval likelihood × 50% conditional incremental usefulness × organizational contribution × U.S. share, discounted for 10.5 years at 3%. The BIO historical approval benchmark informs approval and delay, not the other judgment inputs. The FDA pilot is intermediate evidence, not measured earlier treatment. The 0.1 gain is conditional on a useful product, so approval and usefulness are not already folded into it. One candidate-equivalent is a narrow health pathway, not the organization's entire portfolio. Clinical failures, participant harms, care uptake and collaboration still matter.

Combined arithmetic. The health component is 1.63 U.S. QALYs; signed income benefit is 109.03 U.S. income-equivalent healthy years. Using Coefficient Giving's comparison, income welfare is 0.5 × affected people × ln(1 + real income gain/baseline income) × the explicit causal/local/non-overlap shares, summed over individually discounted benefit years. Divide $3,597,698 by 110.66 combined years to get $33K. The report, research list and shortlist all use that same calculation.

How much confidence? Every organization-specific cohort, probability, gain and incidence assumption here is a transparent hypothesis. Primary sources identify the workstreams and economic mechanisms, not this central return. Our joint low/high cases give Conservative joint case: $44.2M. Not a confidence limit. Favorable joint case: $700. Not a confidence limit. Zero implementation gives zero benefit, and net harms can eliminate a positive price. The range is not a statistical confidence interval. Inspect the exact vectors below rather than treating a precise-looking price as verified.

Costs, coverage and next evidence. Retain full annual charity cost once for portfolio comparator; do not allocate a fictional cheap immigration team. Five benefit years are not five funded years. If work requires several annual budgets, charge them. Visa, agency, sponsor and migration costs must be netted from income or added to cost; central gain asserts net worker costs but lacks measured government/employer incremental costs. Annual-work headline removes donor funding haircut; prior factors preserved only as unknown marginal-funding sensitivity. Annual scale and causal reform probability are judgments requiring workstream evidence. Only workers who otherwise leave/never enter count; people merely changing visa class while staying do not. Alternative Canada/UK earnings can sharply reduce income gain. No new donation credit for historic USCIS reforms. Direct migrant income excludes innovations, patents, GDP and clinical benefits. Income gains among the same persons can coexist with health gains only if no QALY valuation already incorporates income. Do not add IFP clinical-trial savings also assigned to 1Day. Five years of household gains do not automatically require five annual charity budgets, nor prove that one year's work is sufficient; the three-budget stress case tests that mismatch. Other organizational channels remain unquantified rather than assumed worthless or counted as a generic growth multiplier. Before a major funding decision, ask for current project budgets, specific counterfactual effects and recipient-level outcomes. The strongest model is the one that replaces these priors with evidence, not the one with the smallest headline price.

Model, assumptions and sensitivity

Latest original 2024 annual charitable-entity expense, charged once as an annual-work comparator, not a current marginal gift offer. Income resource savings net modeled implementation/production costs; unmeasured external health-system and public costs remain limitations.

90% of conditional patient benefit attributed to U.S. residents; not a measured geography share. Income uses only net gains during U.S. residence or U.S. consumer/owner incidence; geography adjustments in native savings and recipient cohorts are not applied twice.

patients*annualQalyGain*earlierYears*reformProbability*approvalProbability*incrementalBenefitProbability*organizationAttribution*fundingAdditionality*usShare/(1+discountRate)^delayYears; dollars per DALY = annual cost / discounted U.S. QALYs; annual-cost fundingAdditionality=1; combined price=annualCostUSD/(U.S. health QALYs + sum .5*people*ln(1+gain/baseline)*causalShare*editionShare*independentShare*sum annual discount weights).

patients
100000 people (judgment). One candidate-equivalent reaching this many recipients if useful treatment is delivered. Retained conditional scale prior, not an observed beneficiary count or a verified number of affected candidates.
annualQalyGain
0.10 QALYs/person-year (judgment). Annual incremental health gain conditional on useful treatment. This does not already average ineffective approved products; the separate incremental-benefit probability does that.
earlierYears
0.25 years (judgment). Effective-care or generation acceleration relative to the counterfactual, not time saved on an administrative step. Revised timing judgment; no measured org-specific lead.
reformProbability
0.25 fraction (judgment). Probability of an additional useful operational policy change from the modeled work. Does not credit a new gift with already enacted reforms; judgment, not measured causal probability.
approvalProbability
0.079 fraction (judgment). Historical Phase-I-to-approval likelihood of 7.9% in BIO/Informa/QLS 2011–2020. Used as an analogical prior, not an organization-specific rate; disease and modality mix can differ. [bio-2011-2020]
incrementalBenefitProbability
0.5 fraction (judgment). Probability of useful additional care conditional on approval, distinct from regulatory approval and from the conditional magnitude of benefit. Judgment, not a measured share.
organizationAttribution
0.1 fraction (judgment). Incremental organizational contribution within a collaborative policy ecosystem, conditional on useful reform. Judgment; overlapping advocates are not separate independent wins.
fundingAdditionality
1 fraction (judgment). Annual-work comparator: no extra donor haircut on full annual expense. Prior factor remains sensitivity, not a measured marginal offer.
usShare
0.9 fraction (judgment). Residence share of modeled health beneficiaries, not headquarters or spending share. Judgment; no global benefit is relabeled as U.S. benefit.
delayYears
10.5 years (judgment). Time to realization, not duration of the benefit. Clinical central uses the BIO historical 10.5-year Phase-I-to-approval average as a proxy; energy uses an explicit ten-year construction/rollout judgment. [bio-2011-2020]
discountRate
0.03 fraction (judgment). 3% annual discount convention; judgment, not an observed organizational performance parameter.
costUSD
3597698 USD/year (observed). Latest inspected original 2024 charity expense, used as an annual accounting comparator; not a current marginal funding offer. [irs2024]
Annual-cost versus marginal-gift boundary
1 fundingAdditionality factor (judgment). Full annual expenses estimate annual-work contribution, not return from an extra donation. Unknown marginal funding capacity remains a reservation; old haircuts retained only as sensitivities.
Income pathway central
"[{\"editionShare\":1,\"independentShare\":1,\"discountRate\":0.03,\"people\":5000,\"annualIncomeBeforeUSD\":40000,\"annualIncomeGainUSD\":20000,\"years\":5,\"delayYears\":3,\"causalFactors\":{\"implementationProbability\":0.25,\"organizationAttribution\":0.1,\"fundingAdditionality\":1},\"causalShare\":0.025},{\"editionShare\":1,\"independentShare\":1,\"discountRate\":0.03,\"people\":500,\"annualIncomeBeforeUSD\":75000,\"annualIncomeGainUSD\":-1000,\"years\":5,\"delayYears\":3,\"causalFactors\":{\"implementationProbability\":0.25,\"organizationAttribution\":0.1,\"fundingAdditionality\":1},\"causalShare\":0.025}]" people, real USD, years and conditional causal factors (judgment). All numerical scenario values below are explicit hypotheses, not empirically measured IFP effects. Central cohort 5,000 is a finite policy-scale prior below cited talent pools, not an observed supported cohort. $40K counterfactual and $20K real annual gain represent disposable purchasing-power income after tax, higher housing and migration costs, and outside-option earnings; they must be elicited from an actual affected cohort. Native savings: null [income-cg] [income-evidence-1] [income-evidence-2] [income-evidence-3] [income-evidence-4]
Income pathway low
"[{\"editionShare\":1,\"independentShare\":1,\"discountRate\":0.03,\"people\":500,\"annualIncomeBeforeUSD\":60000,\"annualIncomeGainUSD\":5000,\"years\":2,\"delayYears\":5,\"causalFactors\":{\"implementationProbability\":0.1,\"organizationAttribution\":0.03,\"fundingAdditionality\":1},\"causalShare\":0.003},{\"editionShare\":1,\"independentShare\":1,\"discountRate\":0.03,\"people\":500,\"annualIncomeBeforeUSD\":60000,\"annualIncomeGainUSD\":-1000,\"years\":2,\"delayYears\":5,\"causalFactors\":{\"implementationProbability\":0.1,\"organizationAttribution\":0.03,\"fundingAdditionality\":1},\"causalShare\":0.003}]" people, real USD, years and conditional causal factors (judgment). All numerical scenario values below are explicit hypotheses, not empirically measured IFP effects. Central cohort 5,000 is a finite policy-scale prior below cited talent pools, not an observed supported cohort. $40K counterfactual and $20K real annual gain represent disposable purchasing-power income after tax, higher housing and migration costs, and outside-option earnings; they must be elicited from an actual affected cohort. Native savings: null [income-cg] [income-evidence-1] [income-evidence-2] [income-evidence-3] [income-evidence-4]
Income pathway high
"[{\"editionShare\":1,\"independentShare\":1,\"discountRate\":0.03,\"people\":14000,\"annualIncomeBeforeUSD\":30000,\"annualIncomeGainUSD\":40000,\"years\":10,\"delayYears\":1,\"causalFactors\":{\"implementationProbability\":0.5,\"organizationAttribution\":0.2,\"fundingAdditionality\":1},\"causalShare\":0.1},{\"editionShare\":1,\"independentShare\":1,\"discountRate\":0.03,\"people\":2000,\"annualIncomeBeforeUSD\":75000,\"annualIncomeGainUSD\":-2000,\"years\":10,\"delayYears\":1,\"causalFactors\":{\"implementationProbability\":0.5,\"organizationAttribution\":0.2,\"fundingAdditionality\":1},\"causalShare\":0.1}]" people, real USD, years and conditional causal factors (judgment). All numerical scenario values below are explicit hypotheses, not empirically measured IFP effects. Central cohort 5,000 is a finite policy-scale prior below cited talent pools, not an observed supported cohort. $40K counterfactual and $20K real annual gain represent disposable purchasing-power income after tax, higher housing and migration costs, and outside-option earnings; they must be elicited from an actual affected cohort. Native savings: null [income-cg] [income-evidence-1] [income-evidence-2] [income-evidence-3] [income-evidence-4]

Initial estimate — diagnostic comparison, superseded: Cost: $3.1M; USA health QALYs: 8.44; all-population health QALYs: 9.38. 100000*.1*.5*.25*.1*.15*.5*.9 = 8.44 U.S. QALYs.

No additional useful clinical progress: Cost: $3.6M; USA health QALYs: 0.00; all-population health QALYs: 0.00. Existing funding or other organizations produce the same outcome.

Weaker evidence or harmful implementation: Cost: $3.6M; USA health QALYs: -9.00; all-population health QALYs: -10.00. Illustrative negative outcome, not an empirical harm estimate.

Previous health-only review, superseded diagnostic: Cost: $3.6M; USA health QALYs: 0.41; all-population health QALYs: 0.45. {"patients":100000,"annualQalyGain":0.1,"earlierYears":0.25,"reformProbability":0.25,"approvalProbability":0.079,"incrementalBenefitProbability":0.5,"organizationAttribution":0.1,"fundingAdditionality":0.25,"usShare":0.9,"delayYears":10.5,"discountRate":0.03,"costUSD":3597698}

Combined health and income central hypothesis: Cost: $3.6M; USA health QALYs: 1.63; all-population health QALYs: 1.81. Income-equivalent healthy years: 109.03. Annual-cost comparison; fundingAdditionality=1. Health vector: {"patients":100000,"annualQalyGain":0.1,"earlierYears":0.25,"reformProbability":0.25,"approvalProbability":0.079,"incrementalBenefitProbability":0.5,"organizationAttribution":0.1,"fundingAdditionality":1,"usShare":0.9,"delayYears":10.5,"discountRate":0.03,"costUSD":3597698}. Income paths are explicit hypotheses, discounted separately; not confidence limits. Second cohort explicitly subtracts illustrative local wage/competition losses using signed log income. Numbers are stress assumptions; housing pressure, public-service costs, origin-country brain drain and family disruption remain unmeasured. For a USA estimate origin-country welfare is outside geography but should be disclosed.

Conservative joint hypothesis: Cost: $3.6M; USA health QALYs: 0.00; all-population health QALYs: 0.00. Income-equivalent healthy years: 0.08. Annual-cost comparison; fundingAdditionality=1. Health vector: {"patients":10000,"annualQalyGain":0.05,"earlierYears":0.08333333333333333,"reformProbability":0.1,"approvalProbability":0.05,"incrementalBenefitProbability":0.25,"organizationAttribution":0.03,"fundingAdditionality":1,"usShare":0.8,"delayYears":15,"discountRate":0.03,"costUSD":3597698}. Income paths are explicit hypotheses, discounted separately; not confidence limits. Second cohort explicitly subtracts illustrative local wage/competition losses using signed log income. Numbers are stress assumptions; housing pressure, public-service costs, origin-country brain drain and family disruption remain unmeasured. For a USA estimate origin-country welfare is outside geography but should be disclosed.

Favorable joint hypothesis: Cost: $3.6M; USA health QALYs: 327.52; all-population health QALYs: 363.91. Income-equivalent healthy years: 5036.28. Annual-cost comparison; fundingAdditionality=1. Health vector: {"patients":500000,"annualQalyGain":0.15,"earlierYears":0.5,"reformProbability":0.5,"approvalProbability":0.15,"incrementalBenefitProbability":0.75,"organizationAttribution":0.2,"fundingAdditionality":1,"usShare":0.9,"delayYears":5,"discountRate":0.03,"costUSD":3597698}. Income paths are explicit hypotheses, discounted separately; not confidence limits. Second cohort explicitly subtracts illustrative local wage/competition losses using signed log income. Numbers are stress assumptions; housing pressure, public-service costs, origin-country brain drain and family disruption remain unmeasured. For a USA estimate origin-country welfare is outside geography but should be disclosed.

Three annual budgets for the same effects: Cost: $10.8M; USA health QALYs: 1.63; all-population health QALYs: 1.81. Income-equivalent healthy years: 109.03. Same health and income denominator but three years of charity expense, not three repeated copies of the benefits.

No independent economic benefit: Cost: $3.6M; USA health QALYs: 1.63; all-population health QALYs: 1.81. Income-equivalent healthy years: 0.00. Same health model with zero independent economic effect; tests failure, not a claim that omitted evidence proves zero value.

Prior marginal-funding haircut applied as sensitivity: Cost: $3.6M; USA health QALYs: 0.41; all-population health QALYs: 0.45. Income-equivalent healthy years: 27.26. Legacy funding factor 0.25 on both components; not the annual-cost central estimate or verified marginal gift return.

Counterfactual: Other advocates and regulators may enact the same reform; existing funders may support the same work and many affected drug candidates fail.

Attribution: Annual-work causal contribution and implementation probability apply once to each pathway. FundingAdditionality=1 for the annual-cost central comparison; old marginal-funding factors remain sensitivities only. Do not credit future gifts with past achievements or count collaborative wins twice.

Central/low/high are transparent joint hypotheses, not posterior estimates or confidence intervals. Distinct conditionals are logically meaningful but no source identifies their product. Show undiscounted conditional benefits and total causal share so compounded skepticism is visible. Do not multiply portfolio scale by an invented count. No universal GDP-to-income conversion. Second cohort explicitly subtracts illustrative local wage/competition losses using signed log income. Numbers are stress assumptions; housing pressure, public-service costs, origin-country brain drain and family disruption remain unmeasured. For a USA estimate origin-country welfare is outside geography but should be disclosed.

Sensitivity

  • Conservative joint case: $44.2M. Not a confidence limit.
  • Favorable joint case: $700. Not a confidence limit.
  • No income: $2.2M.
  • Three annual budgets: $98K.
  • Legacy donor haircut: $130K. Not a measured marginal gift offer.

Unresolved inputs

  • 2026 operating budget, cash forecast, grant duration/payment schedule and remaining unrestricted funds
  • Clinical-policy workstream allocation and costed unfunded additional package
  • Independent IFP and marginal donor contribution to operational reform
  • Effective-care timing, affected treatments, incremental efficacy, patient uptake and U.S. residence
  • External development, regulator and treatment resource costs
  • Empirically estimated immigration income, climate and scientific-productivity effects net of displacement and overlap
  • Measured net disposable-income gains, incidence, causal scale and public-resource costs to replace income hypotheses

Health and income breakdown

For the modeled $3.6M: 1.63 health QALYs + 109.03 income-equivalent healthy years in USA: $33K per DALY. Income equivalents are welfare comparisons, not observed QALYs or DALYs.

Method and caveats.

5. Funding and previous grants

Three years of actual spending. Original IRS returns report 2022 expenses of $1,201,769, 2023 expenses of $3,079,238, and 2024 expenses of $3,597,698. These are calendar-year totals, not current budgets. Their mean is $2,626,235. We replace the earlier startup-year series; 2021 is not used to depress the comparison. Spending rose 16.8% from 2023 to 2024.

Spending breakdown. The 2024 return allocates $2,868,554 to programs (79.7%), $538,935 to management/general (15.0%) and $190,209 to fundraising (5.3%). Compensation, other wages, pensions, benefits and payroll taxes total $2,341,538 (65.1% of expense). These are functional and personnel categories, not a clinical-policy team budget. The supplemental return itemizes $453,725 of other consultants and $37,254 of technology/web consultants. The operating mix is consistent with a labor-intensive research organization, but overhead ratios do not demonstrate effectiveness.

Reserves are not cash runway. At year-end 2024, the return reports $3,658,868 net assets, including $2,726,376 with donor restrictions and $932,492 without restrictions, and $2.6M pledges/grants receivable. It also reports $102,969 non-interest-bearing cash and $779,305 other investments. Total assets were $3,943,124 and liabilities $284,256. These accrual figures do not show how much unrestricted cash is available today. Dividing total net assets by expenses would overstate usable runway; even an unrestricted-net-assets ratio is not a cash forecast.

Room for more funding. Coefficient Giving lists July 2026 general support of $10.5M. Its duration, payment schedule, remaining balance and allocation are unverified, so it cannot be treated as one year’s expenditure or immediate available cash. The 2024 deficit likewise cannot establish a September 2026 gap after later grants. Giving Green describes a separate planned infrastructure grant, but its spotlight does not disclose a current remaining funding need.

For a large donation, request the 2026 operating budget; restricted and unrestricted cash forecast; receivable collection and grant-payment schedules; committed funding by workstream; and a costed additional project with hiring/implementation constraints and explicit actions if the gift is not made. Existing support may finance growth or leave a narrow unfunded opportunity, but neither has been verified. The individual giving page is a donation route, not evidence that the next dollar buys the modeled effect.

Annual expenses

Organization-level spending, including programs, administration and fundraising. The research list averages three comparable, consecutive full fiscal years when available.

  • FY 2022: $1.2M; Institute for Progress, 12-month period, Original IRS Form 990 total expenses. Source
  • FY 2023: $3.1M; Institute for Progress, 12-month period, Original IRS Form 990 total expenses. Source
  • FY 2024: $3.6M; Institute for Progress, 12-month period, Original IRS Form 990 total expenses. Source

6. Sources

  1. About Institute for Progress. Institute for Progress. Published: not stated; retrieved: 2026-09-30.
  2. The Case for Clinical Trial Abundance. Institute for Progress. Published: 2024-12-18; retrieved: 2026-09-30.
  3. Why Biotech Companies Go to Australia to Test New Drugs. Institute for Progress. Published: 2026-09-04; retrieved: 2026-09-30.
  4. Expedited IND Pilot Program. FDA. Published: not stated; retrieved: 2026-09-30.
  5. Abundance and Growth fund grants. Coefficient Giving. Published: not stated; retrieved: 2026-09-30.
  6. IRS-derived filing index and financial extracts. IRS via ProPublica. Published: not stated; retrieved: 2026-09-30.
  7. Individual giving page. Institute for Progress. Published: not stated; retrieved: 2026-09-30.
  8. 2022 Form 990 — original IRS return. IRS via ProPublica. Published: 2023-11-15; retrieved: 2026-09-30.
  9. 2023 Form 990 — original IRS return. IRS via ProPublica. Published: 2024-11-15; retrieved: 2026-09-30.
  10. 2024 Form 990 — original IRS return. IRS via ProPublica. Published: 2025-11-07; retrieved: 2026-09-30.
  11. 2024 Form 990 Schedule O. IRS via ProPublica. Published: 2025-11-07; retrieved: 2026-09-30.
  12. NSF partners with IFP to test research funding mechanisms. National Science Foundation. Published: 2023-09-28; retrieved: 2026-09-30.
  13. FDA publishes complete response letters. FDA. Published: 2025-07-10; retrieved: 2026-09-30.
  14. Science Agencies Need Metascience Units. Institute for Progress. Published: 2026-07-23; retrieved: 2026-09-30.
  15. Caleb Watney — Managing Director, Public Policy. Coefficient Giving. Published: not stated; retrieved: 2026-09-30.
  16. Institute for Progress: Grantee Spotlight (2026); substantive text updated November 2025. Giving Green. Published: not stated; retrieved: 2026-09-30.
  17. BIO/Informa/QLS Clinical Development Success Rates and Contributing Factors 2011–2020. BIO / Informa / QLS. Published: not stated; retrieved: 2026-09-30.
  18. Expedited IND pilot launch and initial 8–10 sponsor/QRI pairs. FDA. Published: 2026-09-15; retrieved: 2026-09-30.
  19. Cost-effectiveness: health and log-income comparison. Coefficient Giving. Published: not stated; retrieved: 2026-09-30.
  20. IFP authors detailed O-1A eligibility guidance for STEM researchers; updated January 2025. ifp.org. Published: not stated; retrieved: 2026-09-30.
  21. IFP cites roughly 14,000 international PhD graduates, 35,000 international STEM postdocs, and 4,560 STEM O-1A approvals in FY23. ifp.org. Published: not stated; retrieved: 2026-09-30.
  22. June 2010 primary study follows randomized U.S. www.cgdev.org. Published: not stated; retrieved: 2026-09-30.
  23. Caiumi/Peri 2024 estimate positive less-educated native wage effects and no significant college-native effect in historical aggregate immigration; this is not evidence every specialist migration reform has no losers.. www.nber.org. Published: not stated; retrieved: 2026-09-30.