A record of the organizations our founder, James Evans, has supported personally, and why.
Every grant listed here was made by James Evans personally, both before and after End Suffering's incorporation in September 2024; the organization was established to carry that work forward on a formal footing. Newer grants are added as they are made; older entries are kept for transparency.
The University of Colorado Department of Psychiatry is launching a center for pharmaceutical development, where new compounds for treating a range of psychiatric disorders will be designed and tested. We've supported this work.
journalofcontroversialideas.org
The most important ideas usually aren't the most palatable, and fear of social backlash can deter academics from working on them in public. The Foundation for Freedom of Thought and Discussion helps bridge that gap by publishing the Journal of Controversial Ideas, an academic journal where peer-reviewed work on sensitive topics can get the discussion they might not otherwise. We've been glad to support FFTD's mission of promoting intellectual diversity and free, open discourse.
Today's AI research seeks to develop models capable of human-like reasoning; this has driven interest into investigating the relations between their internal behavior and the brain's. These investigations have revealed many such relations, but haven't brought insight into the most fundamental property of human brains: subjective experience. We still don't understand what it consists in to see red, to feel pain, to taste sweetness.
The Qualia Research Institute seeks to answer this question by combining contemporary neuroscience with introspective investigation into the subjective nature of consciousness. Their work is still in its early stages, but we believe the QRI can contribute to our understanding of this foundational aspect of reality, and we've been glad to support it.
When a machine malfunctions, we hit it; when a program does, we restart it. These work, because they shake the system out of whatever internal deadlocks it built up.
Minds also get deadlocked by maladaptive cognitive patterns, as in depression and anxiety. Traditional treatments for these often fail to shake the mind out of them, and in such cases researchers are increasingly turning to psychedelics: by combining a sustained burst of neuroplasticity with powerful emotional effects, they've gotten many minds unstuck where mainline treatments have failed.
MAPS has been at the forefront of this research. In 2023, the FDA approved MDMA-assisted therapy for phase 3 trials, and with the highest single-trial success rate of any PTSD treatment, we hope that full approval will follow. Psilocybin research, focused on depression and anxiety, has seen similarly promising results.
Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE) is a team "dedicated to finding and promoting the most effective ways to help animals". ACE provides strategic recommendations to animal advocates that seek to maximize their impact, focusing on ways to cause meaningful change at scale, like corporate outreach and welfare law reform.
We've supported ACE's mission to ensure that animal advocacy resources are directed toward their most effective uses. The 2014 gift was made to ACE's Recommended Charity Fund.
Those who can speak can voice their pains and advocate for themselves. The voiceless don't get that luxury. This includes all non-human animals, who must bear their suffering wordlessly. Even when we speak for animals, it's only ever for those we find useful or charming: dogs, cats, honey bees, whales.
Animal Ethics works to change this, bringing about "a world where all sentient beings are given moral consideration". They research the impacts of human behavior on animals, provide evidence-based recommendations for reducing animal suffering, and advocate for the inclusion of animal welfare in high-level decision-making processes. We've supported their work.
