No this isn't a request, a hope or a lobbying effort. It's a really interesting concept and non-profit. The mission of Fund Science is "To enable the public to fund pilot research projects."

Their goals:

* Enabling public philanthropy through tactical funding of small pilot research projects up to $50,000.
* Educating and walking the public through the research process by providing direct interaction between researchers and their donors.
* Applying open source methodology to aid program participants in the research process through simple collaboration tools.

Fund Science was started by a graduate student David Vitrant who was concerned about the lack of research and funding opportunities for young scientists (42 is the average age of scientis receiving their first major NIH grant.)

The Chronicle of Higher Ed article about Fund Science explains that Fund Science gives each research project 10 percent of its proposed budget and expects young scientists to raise the rest through the online platform Fund Science has created for the researchers to explain their work.

Making researchers explain their work to people outside of the scientific community, ah that makes my FairerScience heart so happy; especially the researcher who ran her presentations of her research by her grandmother first.

See I told you it was a really interesting idea. I'm off to check out the studies.