s a leader at the 3M Company for more than half a century, William L. McKnight was famously adept at recognizing potential.

Far afield from product development or corporate staffing, however, McKnight also appreciated the great potential that brain research holds for long-term benefits to humanity. In the 1970s, helping prevent memory loss emerged as a goal central to McKnight's personal philanthropy. To learn more about the subject, the directors of The McKnight Foundation—which was established by McKnight himself in 1953—turned to Fred Plum, a distinguished neurologist in New York City, and the late Julius Axelrod, a Nobel laureate and one of the great neuroscientists of the 20th century.

With their invaluable insights in hand, The McKnight Foundation first established its support for neuroscience research in 1976. In 1986, the Foundation created The McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience (EFN) as an independent entity, funded solely by The McKnight Foundation. Its primary goal is to translate discoveries into advances in the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of neurological diseases and disorders.

Axelrod's seminal position—that the Foundation's most effective investment would be to allow excellent scientists the freedom to pursue their own ideas—still guides the Foundation's neuroscience program. Today, the program strives to provide opportunities both for young scientists early in their careers and for more established scientists pursuing new research directions. Both avenues of funding have opened new doors for innovative research and investigative intersections.

ver time, the EFN has helped fund research for some of the best and the brightest leaders in the field. In the 1980s, the bold ideas of the program's grantees helped guide a research movement that replaced previous physiological reporting with more experimental, molecular-level investigations. In the 1990s, the EFN's researchers began to apply fundamental knowledge gained so far toward a renewed focus on the broad functioning of entire neurological systems.

Demonstrating impacts far beyond dollars granted, the EFN is a model of strategic funding. During the 1980s and 1990s, the program provided less than 1% of all funding for neuroscience research in the United States. Nonetheless, its influence on individual careers, research trends, and scientific progress has been catalytic. Several factors have helped maintain the program's vitality over three decades.

Pay attention at the front end

n array of funding sources supports various aspects of neuroscience research. Above all, effective funders must first determine where their support might be of greatest use. For the EFN, that has meant strategically targeting funds to fill key coverage gaps in other funding. To that end, McKnight supports promising exploratory studies to compile the preliminary data that will appeal to larger grantmaking coffers. When the gamble pays off, as it often has, McKnight awardees are able both to gather data and to leverage a diversity of valuable longtime support.

Whenever grantmaking involves risk, starting with the best raw materials is essential—which includes paying keen attention to everything from applicants' academic credentials to creative hypotheses and past achievements. In the case of the EFN, it seems that excellence does indeed breed excellence. The program's selection committees comprise some of the world's most highly regarded scientists, and they in turn actively recruit future leaders from across the scientific spectrum.

Another proactive option to control risk has been to hunt for opportunities for investment in everything from very specific work or scientists, to entire branches of neuroscience research.

The selection committees recognize the power of capitalizing quickly on pioneering discoveries. For that reason, the EFN supports both young scientists with high creativity and low research funds; and more established scientists who may otherwise feel shoehorned into channels of research prescribed by existing grant support. As the EFN has occasionally established new awards, a priority has crystallized to channel resources toward opportunities around appropriate technological and brain research developments.

Opportunities can pop up in unexpected places. The program's general approach is pointedly broad, balancing support between neural development and other areas of neuroscience. But the EFN was founded with an understanding that important developments sometimes emerge from even more unlikely sources. Consequently, McKnight's habit of funding scientific diversity in research has nurtured a fruitful variety of approaches, methods, and assessments—and areas previously regarded as remote from the field have since revealed connections as critical as they are surprising.

Maintain continuity

stablishing clear program ideals to identify individual grantees and opportunities surely has helped lead to success for the EFN's researchers. Sometimes, however, support for one scientist can burst open entirely new channels of research that merit attention. In those cases, it has been important for the EFN to focus as much on research areas as on the work of individuals.

To maintain momentum in promising directions, the EFN has sometimes opted to fund a scientist's professional colleagues or "descendents" to investigate newly discovered tunnels of knowledge more fully than he or she could do alone. The goal is to dig deep where opportunities exist to fully understand normal brain processes, allowing eventually for an increased understanding of diseased processes.

Technological breakthroughs in one scientific field have often borne fruit in another. So, in addition to lessons gleaned from digging deep, the program has sought to maintain its integral core by incorporating innovations from outside the field. To that end, the EFN has taken steps through the years to engage people who are not necessarily neuroscientists themselves.

Keep minds and options open

fter the EFN's selection committee endorses a neuroscience grantee for funding, the program's governance steps away from the process. Beyond the application stage and subsequent reporting of findings, the EFN imposes no restrictions on scientists. The program inherently acknowledges that each awardee knows how best to use the funds provided, from payment of salaries to support for capital expenses like equipment or supplies—or even to change direction if research suggests an unexpectedly promising new path. Program administration and funds management are handled by The McKnight Foundation's professional staff, leaving the EFN selection committees and boards similarly unencumbered by bureaucracy.

The program purposefully concentrates resources toward fundamental research, trusting that over time supported research will ease humanity's experience of brain disorders on a large scale. What happens between now and then, however, unfolds dynamically on a daily basis. The EFN's leaders have learned over time to expect any and all kinds of results from funded research: illuminating failures, inspiring successes, and breathtaking surprises.

Build a community

art of The McKnight Foundation's mission is to "unite" the communities it serves. This ideal also prevails in the Endowment Fund for Neuroscience. Through the EFN's annual conference, the program's current and past grantees are brought together to share ideas formally and informally. Each conference balances presentations by both newer and senior researchers. Through the years, the conference has helped build a community of peers unified through their excellence, potential, and commitment to the field.

Transparence and balance in the program's governance has further helped to strengthen the community of committed McKnight-funded neuroscientists. The EFN endorses an open selection process for all awards; a nationwide balance of directors, committee members, and awardees; and strict conflict of interest rules. Regular turnover for objectivity is kept in alignment with stable continuity through firmly established governance term limits and rotation schedules for selection committees.

Progress and potential

ast year, the EFN supported the research of 74 active researchers; since 1976 the Foundation has funded the innovative work of more than 330 scientists, including four Nobel laureates.

Currently, the EFN supports three ongoing awards:

• McKnight Scholar Awards supports young scientists as they first emerge as independent investigators, balancing the best in basic research with an emphasis on those areas of greatest clinical importance.
• McKnight Technological Innovations in Neuroscience Awards push the field forward at the interface between neuroscience and other scientific disciplines, catalyzing the invention and development of new ways of approaching brain function.
• McKnight Neuroscience of Brain Disorders Awards applies research to the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of brain disorders, especially those that affect cognition and memory in old age.

As suggested by William L. McKnight's initial philanthropic vision, the ever-increasing contributions of EFN researchers continue to bear evidence of extraordinary potential.

Related links

The McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience website