St. Baldrick’s Foundation: Grants for Diseases

OVERVIEW: St. Baldrick’s is the leading all-volunteer cancer charity dedicated to funding childhood cancer research.

IP TAKE: St. Baldrick’s is an accessible funder with a wide range of opportunities for researchers of all levels studying pediatric cancers. This funder accepts letters of inquiry, but guidelines and due dates vary by grant type. Grants are generally awarded in amounts of up to $100,000 to researchers affiliated with hospitals and research universities in the U.S. and its territories.

PROFILE: The St. Baldrick’s Foundation began when Tim Kenny, John Bender, and Enda McDonnell decided to shave their heads to raise money for pediatric cancer research. The foundation itself was established in 2004 and awarded its first fellowships in 2005. Since then, St. Baldrick’s Foundation and its “shavees”—participants in its signature head-shaving events—have raised over $235 million for cancer research. The foundation’s grants fall into three main focus areas: Adolescents & Young Adults, Survivorship, and Supportive Care Research.

In the above focus areas, the St. Baldrick's Foundation currently offers the following grants and fellowships:

  • Research Grants support “year-long research projects that look to find new and better cures for childhood cancers.”

  • Robert J. Arceci Innovation Award and International Innovation Award reward “creativity, collaboration, and commitment to early- to mid-career scientists.”

  • Cooperative Research Grant is a “multi-million dollar grant to the Children's Oncology Group, distributed to 200+ institutions for clinical trials.”

  • Consortium Research Grants are awarded to “groups of researchers at multiple institutions who are collaborating on projects with great promise.”

  • St. Baldrick’s Pediatric Dream Team is dedicated to “curing the most hard-to-treat childhood cancers by bringing together the fields of genomics and immunotherapeutics.”

  • St. Baldrick's Fellows are awarded “two to three years of funding to provide new doctors with training in childhood cancer research.”

  • St. Baldrick’s Summer Fellows are awarded to “medical school or college students to work in a pediatric oncology research lab for one summer.”

  • St. Baldrick's Scholars provide “three or more years of funding given to early career professionals who are pursuing exciting research and without funding might have to leave the field.”

  • Supportive Care Research Grants fund “research to improve the management of patient symptoms during treatment, to improve family coping skills and compliance with therapy, and to help with the many issues that survivors face.”

  • St. Baldrick's International Scholars aims to “train researchers from low- and middle- income countries to prepare them to answer specific research questions related to childhood cancer in their home country.”

  • Infrastructure Grants “help institutions treat more children on clinical trials or for resources to make more research possible.”

St. Baldrick’s grants generally range from $5,000 to $100,000. The foundation's list of past grantees provides a valuable indication of how many of each type of grant are given out, and to what projects and institutions.

St. Baldrick’s accepts Letters of Inquiry through two grant cycles per year. Note that different grants are available in each cycle, so grantseekers should consult the foundation’s information for researchers for more information on deadlines and guidelines.

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