Building our future (credit US Navy)

A couple week’s ago, I wrote a guest blog post for Global Astronomy Month that included the quote:

We are working to create a new world order where scientists find people in the general population … to make their science possible not through donations of funding, but through donations of thoughtfulness. We ask you to come click through images, mark craters, and help us be part of mapping our solar system and the universe beyond. (We will gladly take your money, but would rather have your mind.)

When I wrote that I imagined a world where NASA and NSF funding continued to pay our team scientists and programmers, and we transform your actions into new knowledge.

This new form of collaboration has radically lowered the cost of doing science.

But, it looks like it isn’t low enough. As you know, we are struggling to sort our future in the face of a Federal reorganization of how science, citizen science, and science education are funded in the US.

The problem is, NASA and many other governmental agencies are facing radical cuts to their science education funding. From NASA to NOAA to even the FDA, a massive reorganization is taking place, where the money is getting locked up in at the Department of Education, the National Science Foundation, and the Smithsonian. No longer are they looking to have scientists, science educators, and hybrids like me all working together to transform new science into new education. In order to try and save money, education is getting centralized far away from where science is innovated.

At CosmoQuest we are looking at very real funding delays and cuts as the programs we rely on to fund the education, programming and communications parts of our staff is reorganized and zeroed.

This started last year. One of the grant proposals we rely on is the NASA ROSES EPOESS solicitation. It was suspended last year, leading to programs like Astronomy Picture of the Day and my own education research program to not be able to seek renewal funding. We have all found ways to make do – reducing budgets and doing more ourselves (often without pay) instead of hiring students as we normally would. We were all counting on that grant call to go back out this year; my team is involved in 5 different grant proposals. With an end-of-May due date, the earliest we could really expect to transform these proposals (not all of which will be funded) into awards is January 2014, and the earliest I can transform that funding into salary is March 2014.

Earlier today we received official notice that this call is being re-evaluated: “Amended April 24, 2013. This Amendment puts the EPOESS program on hold pending review … The final disposition of the EPOESS program will be made public in early June by Amendment to ROSES-2013. If solicited, the proposal due date will be no less than 90 days from the date of Amendment.”  This makes May 2014 the earliest we could get a grant funded, and August 2014 the earliest that we could transform that money into salary. (Reference: see bullet 1)

A couple of weeks ago we heard from an NSF program officer that it was also unlikely, due to sequestration, that there could be funding available for us to seek an EAGER grant from the NSF to allow us to quick start science programs. The next major deadline for science funding is in November.

We are now looking at non-governmental grants, fundraisers, and corporate sponsors. So many of you emailed me that you somewhat overwhelmed my inbox. I plan to have everyone responded to by the end of Friday. Thank you for your help! It is making a difference. Just knowing how many of you want to help is truly making a difference.

I hate constantly nagging for money. I am someone that switches the channel on NPR during their fundraising week (I also donate randomly). While I’m not going to take that donate link out of the side bar, I do want to find ways for you to at least get Xtreme amusement from our fundraising. Here is what we are looking at for fundraising:

•  June 15-16: The CosmoQuest Web-a-thon. Join me and Nicole Gugliucci (a.k.a. the Noisy Astronomer) and a slew of guests as we go for a length of time to be determined by your donations! Minimum 24 hours … but if money keeps coming in (at levels still to be determined) we will go up to 36 hours straight! Mayhem, silliness, and SCIENCE! are expected.
• An organization (that I’m not sure I can announce yet) is planning a shiny charity event at an awesome time in an awesome place that will donate it’s proceeds to CosmoQuest. (email brainstorm AT starstryder DOT com if you want to do similar)
• in-progress: We will be launching a crowd-funding project (pending university approvals) to fund the creation of a new science program … or two ? We have two great projects we want to do. During the fundraiser(s?) Nicole and I will personally do daily YouTube updates of glory and silly that are **only for donors of any amount**. While largely related to astronomy, there may be the occasional horse wearing gloves.
• We’ve had more than one developer start feeling out the possibility of developing apps that would run a “Special version” that was astronomy themed and donate the revenue of buying that version to us (email brainstorm AT starstryder DOT com if you want to help!) and also 1 developer who may be developing CosmoQuest’s “do fun amusing things that aren’t science” apps that would then pay for CosmoQuest science.

We are also looking to apply to an NSF program with a July deadline that I think we have fair odds of getting, and one of our programers will be developing some apps outside of CosmoQuest that will then pay his salary.

We are going to build our future. We are going to find ways – silly, serious, and perhaps seemingly insane – to fund our future. And once we’re done funding our future, we’re going to keep going, and we’re going to try to grow our future and find ways to contract some of the amazing people who will lose their jobs in the current cuts and find ways to keep them doing amazing things to communicate science to you.

Build with us? Will you work with us to make a more scientific future?