Grant-Making Organizations

AIM Youth Mental Health is a US non-profit foundation founded in 2014 that funds scientific research and youth-led participatory action research to improve mental health outcomes for young people. The organization funds psilocybin research—including a study on how psilocybin affects genetic aging markers in young adults with stress-related disorders—alongside fellowships for postdoctoral youth mental health innovators.

The Alexander Mosley Charitable Trust is a UK philanthropic foundation established in 2011 by Max Mosley in memory of his son, providing proactive grant-making to mental health and psychedelic research causes. The Trust is a principal funder of Imperial College London's Centre for Psychedelic Research, donating over £600,000 to support landmark psilocybin studies published in the New England Journal of Medicine and Nature Medicine.

The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) is the largest non-profit funder of suicide prevention research in the United States, supporting scientific research, survivor outreach, education programs, and advocacy to reduce loss of life from suicide. AFSP has cited emerging psychedelic research—including psilocybin and ketamine studies—among promising avenues for reducing suicidal ideation, reflecting the growing overlap between suicide prevention and psychedelic-assisted therapy.

The Anne and Don Fizer Foundation is a Houston, Texas-based private charitable foundation established in memory of estate planning attorney Don E. Fizer (1942–2011) and his wife Anne, supporting philanthropy in healthcare and medical research. The foundation has contributed to psychedelic research initiatives, participating in the growing wave of private philanthropic funding for clinical studies of psychedelic-assisted therapy in the United States.

The Arizona Biomedical Research Commission (ABRC) is a state government body within the Arizona Department of Health Services that funds biomedical research, having become the first state agency in the US to direct $5 million toward randomized controlled clinical trials of psilocybin whole mushrooms for conditions including PTSD, depression, and addiction. The ABRC oversees the Arizona Psilocybin Research Advisory Council and has since expanded its psychedelic research portfolio to include an additional $5 million for ibogaine clinical trials.

Beijing Medical Award Foundation (北京医学奖励基金会) is a Beijing-based public charity established in 2002 in Xicheng District, dedicated to enhancing medical standards through professional incentives, grants, and awards recognising biomedical research achievement. The foundation provides funding and recognition supporting clinical and scientific excellence in Chinese medicine, including psychiatry and neuroscience fields.

The Brain & Behavior Research Foundation (formerly NARSAD) is the world's largest private funder of psychiatric research, having awarded over $475 million to more than 5,000 scientists—including grants specifically supporting psilocybin-assisted therapy trials, ketamine research, and other innovative treatments for depression, PTSD, and schizophrenia. In 2023 alone, the foundation funded seven grants advancing psilocybin-based research and has supported over 90 ketamine-related projects, making it a cornerstone funder of emerging psychedelic science.

The Brain and Cognition Discovery Foundation (BCDF) is a Toronto-based Canadian charitable organization affiliated with University Health Network and the University of Toronto that has funded pioneering psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy trials for treatment-resistant depression, including a landmark randomized controlled trial conducted with Braxia Scientific and Usona Institute. The foundation supports research by psychiatrists including Drs. Roger McIntyre and Joshua Rosenblat, advancing psilocybin science across bipolar depression, cognitive impairment, and other hard-to-treat conditions.

The Bronx Veterans Medical Research Foundation (BVMRF) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that administers extramural research funding for the James J. Peters VA Medical Center and VA Hudson Valley Health Care System, supporting mental health, biomedical, and rehabilitation research focused on veteran populations. In the psychedelic context, it provides the administrative research infrastructure supporting MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD and ketamine studies conducted at the Bronx VA's Center for Psychedelic Psychotherapy and Trauma Research.

The Burroughs Wellcome Fund (BWF) is an American biomedical research foundation headquartered in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, that grants over $40 million annually to support early-career scientists and fields poised for significant advancement but currently undervalued—a mandate that encompasses avant-garde psychiatric pharmacology. The Fund traces its origins to Burroughs Wellcome Co., the US pharmaceutical subsidiary whose pioneering monoaminergic pharmacology research laid groundwork foundational to today’s psychedelic medicine field.

The California HIV/AIDS Research Program (CHRP) is a state-funded grant-making program administered by the University of California Office of the President that has supported over three decades of high-risk, high-reward HIV research in California, including mental health comorbidities in people living with HIV. CHRP has funded research that intersects with psychedelic medicine, including studies on psychological distress in AIDS survivors treated with psilocybin by California-based researchers.

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) is Canada’s federal health research funding agency, disbursing over $1 billion annually across 13 virtual institutes—including the Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction, which has funded landmark psychedelic medicine trials such as ketamine for bipolar depression at Braxia Scientific and psilocybin-assisted therapy studies at multiple Canadian universities. As the primary source of government funding for psychedelic research in Canada, CIHR plays a pivotal role in building the evidence base for novel psychiatric treatments.

The Carey and Claudia Turnbull Family Foundation is a private philanthropic foundation that has been one of the earliest and most influential funders of psychedelic medicine research, supporting psilocybin studies at NYU, Yale, and Johns Hopkins—including helping establish Yale’s psychedelic psychiatry training curriculum and endowing research at the NYU Center for Psychedelic Medicine, where Carey Turnbull chairs the advisory board. Carey Turnbull also serves as President of the Heffter Research Institute and co-founded B.More and Ceruvia Lifesciences, further extending the family’s commitment to advancing psychedelic therapies for depression, addiction, and OCD.

The Chief Scientist Office (CSO) of the Scottish Government funds NHS and health research across Scotland, and has supported University of Edinburgh evaluability work on ketamine-assisted therapy and the development of the Scottish Psychedelic Research Group to build Scotland’s capacity for psychedelic-assisted therapy studies.

The Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP) is a U.S. Department of Defense biomedical research programme that allocates congressional appropriations to fund high-impact, high-risk studies addressing military and veteran health priorities. It has funded clinical trials of psychedelic-assisted treatments for PTSD and traumatic brain injury in Service Members through its Defense Medical Research and Development Program, with over $1.27 billion appropriated for FY2026.

Brazil's National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) is the country's primary public funding agency for scientific research, providing grants, scholarships, and R&D support to universities and research institutions nationwide. CNPq ranks among the top global funders of psychedelic science, having supported seminal ayahuasca clinical trials, pharmacological studies, and productivity fellowships for researchers who established Brazil as a world leader in psychedelic psychiatry.

CAPES (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior) is Brazil's federal agency for graduate education improvement, providing scholarships, postdoctoral fellowships, and institutional research grants to universities nationwide. Ranked among the top-six global funders of psychedelic research in a 2023 Scopus analysis, CAPES has financed ayahuasca neuroscience studies, clinical investigations, and postdoctoral programmes that underpin Brazil's internationally recognised psychedelic research ecosystem.

The Council on Spiritual Practices (CSP) is a US non-profit organisation founded in 1993 by Robert Jesse to support research and education on the safe and effective use of entheogens and primary religious experience. CSP was instrumental in initiating the landmark Johns Hopkins psilocybin research programme with Roland Griffiths, co-funding pivotal early studies on psilocybin's mystical-experience effects that re-established psychedelic science and shaped clinical frameworks globally.

The Council on Spiritual Practices Fund at the San Francisco Foundation is a named charitable fund administered through the San Francisco Foundation, a regional community foundation serving the Bay Area. It channels philanthropic resources in support of research and education on entheogenic substances and primary religious experience, extending the grant-making mission of the Council on Spiritual Practices through a community foundation structure.

The Czech Health Research Council (AZV ČR) is an organisational component of the Czech Ministry of Health responsible for funding applied health research, distributing over 1 billion CZK annually across approximately 90 supported projects per year. It provided the primary grant for the PSIKET001 trial — a landmark double-blind comparison of psilocybin versus ketamine for treatment-resistant depression at the National Institute of Mental Health — with a total budget of 12 million CZK.

The Etheridge Foundation is a 501(c)(3) non-profit founded by Grammy and Academy Award-winning musician Melissa Etheridge following the 2020 opioid overdose death of her son Beckett, funding scientific research into plant-medicine treatments for opioid use disorder and related mental health conditions. The Foundation has co-funded Usona Institute's 5-MeO-DMT research program and raised over $1 million at its inaugural Rock Jam gala for psychedelic medicine development.

The Fetzer Institute is a private non-profit foundation based in Kalamazoo, Michigan with $830M in assets, dedicated to building the spiritual foundation for a loving world through research at the intersection of science, spirituality, and consciousness. With annual grants exceeding $12M, the Institute supports interdisciplinary work in consciousness studies and contemplative practice that intersects with the emerging field of psychedelic medicine.

The Foundation of Hope for Research and Treatment of Mental Illness is a North Carolina non-profit that partners with UNC Chapel Hill's Department of Psychiatry to fund cutting-edge psychiatric research, with a mission to conquer mental illness through scientific investment. The Foundation's seed grants support a portfolio of mental health research at UNC Chapel Hill that includes ketamine and emerging psychedelic-assisted therapy studies alongside broader mental health initiatives.

The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research (MJFF) is a New York-based non-profit founded in 2000 by actor Michael J. Fox that has raised over $2 billion for Parkinson's disease research and treatments. MJFF has funded pioneering psychedelic research including the first psilocybin trial in a neurodegenerative disease (UCSF/Yale, for Parkinson's-related depression) and a ketamine infusion trial at Yale for treatment-resistant depression in Parkinson's patients.

Gateway for Cancer Research is a US non-profit that funds innovative cancer research including exploration of psychedelic-assisted therapies for cancer-related psychological distress and end-of-life care. The organization has actively promoted and publicized expert calls for expanded study of psilocybin and other psychedelics to address the anxiety, depression, and existential distress experienced by cancer patients.

The George Sarlo Foundation is the philanthropic vehicle of Holocaust survivor and Silicon Valley venture capitalist George Sarlo, who credits guided psychedelic experiences with resolving his childhood trauma and became one of the earliest major private donors to psychedelic science. The Foundation has contributed nearly $2 million to psychedelic research, including a $1 million pledge to MAPS for MDMA-assisted therapy development and grants to CIIS for psychedelic therapist diversity training.

The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is the pioneering Western government funder of large-scale psychedelic clinical trials, having provided approximately €5 million to the EPIsoDE study — the first government-funded Phase 2 psilocybin trial for treatment-resistant major depression — conducted at the Central Institute for Mental Health in Mannheim and Charité Berlin. Germany subsequently became the first EU country to establish a psilocybin compassionate access program for treatment-resistant depression.

The Antonio J. Gracias Family Foundation is a Chicago-based private philanthropic foundation established in 2021 that awarded a $16 million gift to Harvard University to fund interdisciplinary psychedelic research, including the Project on Psychedelics Law and Regulation (POPLAR) at Harvard Law School and the Transcendence and Transformation Initiative at the Center for the Study of World Religions. With $94.6 million in assets, the foundation identifies psychedelics as a priority research area alongside quantum science and cardiovascular medicine.

The Hartford HealthCare (HHC) Research Open Competition is an internal pilot grant program run by Hartford HealthCare — a large non-profit integrated health system in Connecticut — to fund investigator-initiated research at its affiliated institutions. Through this program, HHC supports a Phase I double-blind psilocybin microdosing trial at its Olin Neuropsychiatry Research Center in Hartford, investigating effects on cognition, mood and quality of life.

Healing Hearts, Changing Minds, Inc. (HHCM) is a Massachusetts-based nonprofit grant foundation committed to trust-based philanthropy in psychedelic-assisted therapy, founded by Robert Ansin following a transformative personal psilocybin experience. The foundation has awarded over $566,000 in grants under its 'Walking Each Other Home' fund to support psilocybin and ketamine-assisted therapy in end-of-life care, including funding for war-affected Ukrainian veterans.

The Health Research Board (HRB) is Ireland's primary statutory health research funding agency, which has awarded grants to Trinity College Dublin's Psychedelic Research Group to investigate psychedelics' immune effects in depression and the feasibility of psilocybin for cocaine-use disorder. The HRB also funds the KARMA-DEP(2) ketamine trial for treatment-resistant depression at St Patrick's University Hospital in Dublin, making it a key enabler of Ireland's emerging psychedelic medicine ecosystem.

The Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine (HJF) is a congressionally chartered non-profit founded in 1983 that manages research contracts and grants for the U.S. Department of Defense across global health, HIV, TBI, and PTSD. HJF is affiliated with clinical research investigating ketamine for sedation in severe traumatic brain injury — a condition at the intersection of military medicine and emerging ketamine-based therapies.

Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM) is France's national public health and medical research agency, funding and conducting biomedical research across university-hospital institutes throughout the country. INSERM-affiliated researchers at the Paris Brain Institute (ICM) and Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital have contributed to preclinical and clinical investigations of ketamine and psilocybin as rapid-acting antidepressants.

Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII) is Spain's national public health research agency, managing the CIBERSAM network (Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red de Salud Mental) which co-funds biomedical mental health research across Spanish universities and hospitals. Through CIBERSAM, ISCIII has co-funded preclinical and translational research on psilocybin as an antidepressant and supports researchers contributing to the European psychedelic therapy landscape.

The James S. McDonnell Foundation is a private philanthropic organization based in St. Louis, Missouri, supporting research in cognitive and behavioral sciences, complex systems science, and 21st-century science education. The foundation has funded clinical research on cognitive recovery following electroconvulsive therapy and general anesthesia.

The Juvenile Bipolar Research Foundation is a US non-profit dedicated to funding scientific research into bipolar disorder in children and adolescents. The foundation has supported clinical research on intranasal ketamine for pediatric bipolar disorder and neurobiological studies of ketamine's effects in children and adults with bipolar disorder.

The Medical Research Council (MRC) is a UK government body under UKRI that funds biomedical and clinical research across all aspects of human health. In the psychedelic field, the MRC co-funded the KARE trial — the UK's largest study of ketamine-assisted therapy for alcohol use disorder, led by the University of Exeter — and has supported additional ketamine cognition research.

Mitacs is a Canadian nonprofit research organization founded in 1999 that fosters collaboration between academia, industry, and government through internship, fellowship, and innovation programs jointly funded by federal and provincial partners. In the psychedelic field, Mitacs provided an Accelerate grant (IT32313) to Empower Psychedelics for a Health Canada-approved clinical trial examining psilocybin-assisted group therapy for first responders and veterans in partnership with MAPS Canada.

The National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression (NARSAD), now the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation (BBRF), is the United States’ largest non-governmental funder of mental health research, having awarded over $430 million across 6,200+ grants to more than 5,100 scientists worldwide since 1987. NARSAD-funded Distinguished Investigator grants supported early research into ketamine’s antidepressant mechanism at Columbia University, as well as studies of salvinorin A pharmacology and ketamine augmentation of electroconvulsive therapy for depression.

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) is the principal US federal agency for cancer research and training, one of 27 institutes within the National Institutes of Health, with an annual budget exceeding $7 billion. In the psychedelic field, NCI has supported trials exploring psilocybin-assisted therapy for cancer-related demoralization and chronic pain in survivors, as well as ketamine infusion to prevent depression in patients undergoing treatment for pancreatic and head-and-neck cancers.

NIH center that accelerates the translation of biomedical discoveries into health solutions. NCATS' Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) program funds the infrastructure at academic medical centers that supports emerging research including psychedelic-assisted therapy trials.

NIH center dedicated to researching complementary and integrative health approaches. NCCIH actively funds psilocybin studies for chronic pain, depression, and alcohol use disorder, and has formally acknowledged psilocybin's therapeutic potential—a significant milestone in the federal recognition of psychedelic medicine.

The National Center for Research Resources (NCRR) was a National Institutes of Health centre that funded biomedical research infrastructure, clinical and translational science programmes, and shared research resources until its dissolution in 2011, when its programmes were reorganised primarily into the new National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS). NCRR infrastructure and clinical research awards supported early NIH-funded investigations into glutamate-modulating medications for major depressive disorder that laid the mechanistic groundwork for understanding ketamine’s rapid antidepressant effects.

The National Council of Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET; Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas) is Argentina’s principal government agency for promoting science and technology, funding over 11,000 researchers and 10,000 doctoral students across a nationwide network of research institutes and centres. CONICET supported the NATMICRO study, a naturalistic observational investigation of the psychological and cognitive effects of self-administered psilocybin microdosing conducted in Argentina.

The National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) is the UK’s largest funder of clinical, public health, social care, and translational research, funded by the Department of Health and Social Care with an annual budget of approximately £1.5 billion. NIHR co-funded the KARE trial — the UK’s largest study of ketamine-assisted therapy for alcohol use disorder — and supported the GluEsk trial investigating glutamate biomarkers and esketamine response in treatment-resistant depression.

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) is a US National Institutes of Health institute dedicated to research on alcohol use disorder and its public health impacts, supporting approximately $500 million in research annually. NIAAA has funded studies exploring both ketamine administration for acute alcohol use disorder in the emergency department and psilocybin-assisted therapy to understand the neurobehavioral mechanisms underlying alcohol use disorder treatment.

The US federal biomedical research agency and the world's largest funder of medical research. After decades of absence, NIH began directly funding psychedelic clinical trials in 2021 through NIDA and NIMH, with growing allocations for psilocybin, MDMA, and ketamine research for addiction and mental health conditions.

The Nikean Foundation is a Canadian philanthropic organization founded in 2019 by tech entrepreneur Sanjay Singhal that made a landmark CAD $5 million gift to the University Health Network (UHN) to establish the Nikean Psychedelic Psychotherapy Research Centre, funding psilocybin-assisted therapy for end-of-life distress, MDMA for PTSD, and 5-MeO-DMT research across Canada, the US, UK, and Spain in partnership with Imperial College London, MAPS, and Usona Institute.

Norrsken Mind is a Swedish philanthropic foundation launched in 2023 by the Norrsken Foundation (co-founded by Klarna's Niklas Adalberth) that has awarded over €2.2 million in grants to support psilocybin-assisted therapy research across Europe, funding clinical trials at Karolinska Institutet and Lund University and supporting the Independent Psychedelic Evidence Assessment Working Group (IPEA-WG) to develop rigorous evidence standards for psychedelic therapies.

The Oppenheimer Family Psychosocial Oncology and Palliative Care Research Grants is a philanthropic grant fund supporting research at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute's Department of Psychosocial Oncology and Palliative Care, including Dr. Yvan Beaussant's psilocybin-assisted therapy studies for demoralization and existential distress in hospice patients. The program co-funds trials alongside the Heffter Research Institute, Usona Institute, and Nikean Foundation.

Pancreatic Cancer North America is an IRS-registered 501(c)(3) non-profit dedicated to fighting the world's toughest cancer through research funding, patient support, and awareness initiatives, which has funded a psilocybin-assisted therapy study at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute examining psilocybin's potential to relieve opioid-refractory pain and psychological distress in patients with advanced pancreatic cancer.

The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) is a Washington, DC–based independent non-profit (501(c)(1)) created by the 2010 Affordable Care Act to fund comparative effectiveness research. PCORI awarded $12.6 million to Yale University researchers to directly compare IV racemic ketamine versus intranasal esketamine (Spravato) for treatment-resistant depression, and separately funded the ELEKT-D ketamine vs. ECT effectiveness trial conducted through the Cleveland Clinic Foundation.

Private Philanthropic Funds is a ClinicalTrials.gov funder category representing anonymous private philanthropic donors, appearing as a collaborator on Johns Hopkins University research including the Phase 1 safety study for at-home administration of microdose psilocybin (NCT06450210). The Psychedelic Science Funders Collaborative (psfc.co) is the leading coordinating body for such private philanthropists dedicated to advancing psychedelic therapy research.

The Rett Syndrome Research Trust (RSRT) is a US-based nonprofit dedicated to curing Rett syndrome (RTT) that funded, held the IND for, and oversaw a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled crossover trial of oral ketamine in girls aged 6-12 with RTT; the study confirmed safety and tolerability and demonstrated EEG evidence of NMDA receptor target engagement, supporting further trials with longer duration or higher doses.

RiverStyx Foundation is a US-based family foundation co-directed by T. Cody Swift and Miriam Volat that has been a pioneering early funder of psychedelic research since 2008, committing over $9 million to psilocybin and MDMA trials at Johns Hopkins, NYU, Harvard, and the University of Washington; it also supports drug policy reform and Indigenous medicine conservation, and has board representation at the Heffter Research Institute.

The Royal University Hospital Foundation is the charitable fundraising arm of Royal University Hospital in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, which has invested over $194 million into research, education, and patient care at Saskatchewan's largest academic hospital; the Foundation has supported psychiatry research including ECT and ketamine anesthesia comparative trials and Dr. Evyn Peters' groundbreaking work using intranasal racemic ketamine for hospitalized patients with treatment-resistant depression.

The Quebec Network on Suicide, Mood Disorders and Associated Disorders (RQSHA) is a publicly-funded interdisciplinary research network supported by the Fonds de recherche du Québec that brings together researchers from across Quebec to study suicide, mood disorders, and substance use; it has funded several ketamine trials including the 'Montreal Model' study integrating psychedelic-informed ketamine therapy with psychological support for severe treatment-resistant depression, and research on music as an intervention to improve ketamine tolerability in depression treatment.

The Schulman Research Award is a Canadian research award that has provided funding for clinical anesthesia and psychiatry research; in the psychedelic-adjacent field, it supported a randomized study at the University of Saskatchewan comparing ketamine-based versus propofol-based anesthesia for electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) in patients with treatment-resistant major depressive disorder, which found that ketamine-based anesthesia resulted in superior treatment outcomes on the Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale.

The Swiss National Science Foundation (Schweizerischer Nationalfonds, SNF) is Switzerland's principal public funder of scientific research across all academic disciplines; in the psychedelic field, it has funded multiple clinical trials including psilocybin studies for alcohol use disorder and major depressive disorder, contributing to Switzerland's position as the world's second-largest hub for psychedelic clinical research with over 35 trials and a historic connection to Albert Hofmann's discovery of LSD and isolation of psilocybin at Basel.

The Special Operations Care Fund (SOC-F) is a US non-profit organization based in Atlanta, Georgia, that provides direct support to active and retired members of the Special Operations Forces community and their families. It is the sponsor of the Trifecta Research Study — conducted with Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research — which investigates hormone replacement therapy, magnetic e-resonance therapy (MeRT), ibogaine, and 5-MeO-DMT in combination for the treatment of PTSD and TBI-related cognitive impairment in SOF veterans.

The research and development arm of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, funding and conducting clinical trials to advance veteran health. Has allocated significant resources to studying MDMA- and psilocybin-assisted therapies for PTSD and other mental health conditions affecting veterans.