Non-profit foundations that fund research are frequently seen as harbouring huge endowments and dishing out nearly unlimited resources. But the numbers tell a different tale. Although the ten biggest grant-giving scientific foundations have endowments totalling over $65 billion, their yearly grant total is a mere fraction of that — about $3 billion. The figures pale even further when set against the amount governments spend on science and technology. A single US agency, the National Institutes of Health, boasts an annual budget of more than $28 billion, directed primarily at research. Foundations do, however, hugely influence the kind of science that gets done, where it takes place and how it is conducted. Because they target research that governments might be avoiding at the time — especially projects seen as too interdisciplinary to gain the support needed, or as premature, politically risky or simply unpopular — foundations can also have a profound effect on individual careers.
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机译：资助研究的非营利基金会经常被视为拥有庞大的捐赠基金，并投入了几乎无限的资源。但是数字却是另外一个故事。尽管十个最大的赠款科学基金会的捐赠总额超过650亿美元，但它们的年度赠款总额只是其中的一小部分，约为30亿美元。与政府在科学和技术上的支出相比，这些数字甚至更加苍白。美国的一个独立机构，美国国立卫生研究院（National Institutes of Health），其年度预算超过280亿美元，主要用于研究。但是，基金会确实会极大地影响所完成的科学的类型，发生的地点以及实施的方式。因为它们的目标是当时政府可能会回避的研究，特别是那些被认为过于跨学科而无法获得所需支持的项目，或者是过早的，具有政治风险或根本不受欢迎的项目，因此，基金会也可能对个人职业产生深远影响。
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