RESEARCHERS ARE BEING ASKED TO FUNDRAISE. NOBODY TAUGHT THEM HOW.

Last week, I stood at the Embassy of Japan in Washington, D.C. talking to researchers about something most of them were never really trained to do:

Raise money.

That sounds strange when you say it out loud.

We spend years teaching researchers how to understand disease, design studies, analyze data, publish papers, and defend their science. Then, increasingly, we turn around and say:

Now go explain all of that to someone who might fund you. And by the way, do it clearly, quickly, and convincingly.

That is a very different skill.

THE FUNDING LANDSCAPE IS CHANGING

For a long time, many researchers could focus almost entirely on the science while development offices, institutions, and grant systems handled the funding side. That model is under pressure.

Government funding is competitive. Institutional budgets are tight. Private philanthropy matters more. Researchers are increasingly expected to help build relationships with donors, foundations, and other private sources of capital.

The problem is that most scientists were never taught how to do that.

They know the work. They know the biology. They know the data. But knowing the science and communicating the value of the science are not the same thing.

GOOD SCIENCE CAN STILL BE HARD TO FUND

I have seen this repeatedly through the JKTG Foundation. A researcher can be doing incredibly important work and still struggle to explain it to someone outside the lab. The explanation gets too technical. The real problem gets buried.

The researcher starts with methodology instead of significance. Or the conversation assumes the funder already understands why the work matters. Usually, they do not.

That does not mean funders are unintelligent. It means they are not spending every day inside that science.

If you want someone to support your work, you have to help them understand what problem you are trying to solve, why the current approach is insufficient, what makes your idea different, and what becomes possible if the work succeeds.

That is not “selling out.” That is communication.

DEVELOPMENT PEOPLE CANNOT ALWAYS DO IT FOR YOU

Development professionals play an important role. But there is a limit to how effectively someone else can explain your science for you.

At some point, a serious funder is going to ask a serious scientific question. Why this target? Why this model? What did the preliminary work show? What happens if your hypothesis is wrong? Why should I support this project instead of another one?

The researcher needs to be able to answer. More importantly, the researcher needs to be able to answer in a way that is accurate without becoming incomprehensible.

That is where the real skill comes in.

You cannot dumb the science down. But you do have to make it understandable.

RESEARCHERS NEED TO UNDERSTAND THE PERSON ACROSS THE TABLE

One of the mistakes researchers make is assuming every funder wants the same thing.

They do not.

Some people want measurable impact. Some are motivated by a personal connection to a disease. Some want to support early-stage work that traditional funding sources will not touch. Some want to understand exactly how their contribution moves the science forward. Some care deeply about the researcher. Others care more about the problem.

The better you understand what matters to the person across the table, the better you can communicate what your work means in terms they actually care about.

Again, that is not manipulation. It is basic communication.

If I am talking to a race engineer, I explain something differently than I would to a sponsor. Same subject. Different audience.

Researchers have to learn that too.

THE SCIENCE STILL HAS TO COME FIRST

I do not want researchers becoming professional fundraisers. That is not the point. The science still has to be the priority.

But the reality is that great science does not automatically find money. And if the people doing the work cannot explain why it matters, other projects may get funded simply because they were communicated better.

That is a problem.

We should not want the best pitch to win. We should want the best work to have a fair chance to be understood.

THIS IS A SKILL THAT CAN BE LEARNED

The encouraging part is that this is teachable.

Researchers can get better at explaining their work. They can learn to lead with the problem instead of the process. They can practice talking to people outside their specialty. They can get comfortable answering direct questions about impact, uncertainty, and risk. They can stop assuming that a funder needs a 30-slide scientific presentation to understand whether the idea matters. And they can learn to have an actual conversation instead of giving a lecture.

That matters more than people realize.

WHAT I TOLD THE ROOM

My message at the Embassy was pretty simple: If private funding is going to become a larger part of how research gets done, then researchers cannot stay completely removed from the funding conversation.

They need to understand how to talk to funders directly. They need to know how to explain why the science matters. And they need to be willing to build relationships outside the walls of the lab.

The researchers who learn how to do that will have an advantage. More importantly, the science they are working on will have a better chance of getting the support it deserves.

That is the part I care about.

Because the goal is not to turn scientists into salespeople. The goal is to make sure important research does not die simply because nobody taught the researcher how to explain why it matters.