Thank You for Your Support

Please give only what you feel you can easily afford at our BPF Donation Page$10 or more is a typical online annual donation for individual donors to small nonprofits. Alternatively you may find it convenient to give using Amazon Smile, where Amazon donates 0.5% of the price of your eligible purchases to the charitable nonprofit of your choice (these donations go to the BPF General Fund). You may also donate in Bitcoin using the addresses indicated below.

The Brain Preservation Foundation was incorporated in Delaware on August 27, 2010. We hold Section 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status as a not-for-profit scientific research organization. Your contributions are fully tax deductible. You can donate publicly or privately, as you prefer.

  • Uploading has the potential to change the way we understand ourselves and our place in the universe. The breathtaking pace of technology has brought us to the point today where all the technology necessary for uploading is now feasible. If the progression of technology continues and animal experiments demonstrate the feasibility of uploading then this should be viewed as life extension technology. Brain preservation and later destructive uploading will preserve continuity of consciousness. The rational choice is to spend whatever resources are necessary to understand, develop, and apply this technology to those who choose to use it.

    Michael Cerullo
    Michael Cerullo M.D., Psychiatrist, Cincinnati Inst. for Cognitive Science

Donation Options (in the Dropdown Menu, Under Program, on Our Donation Page):

1. General Fund If you donate to the BPF General Fund, directors will place your donation in the category of greatest current need.
2. Evaluation Fund Your donation to the BPF Evaluation Fund helps us evaluate competitor submissions.
3. Technology Prize Your donation to our Technology Prize increases the size of the award.
4. Operating Fund Your donation to the Operating Fund allows us to selectively advertise, do competitor support, and fundraise.
5. Endowment Your donation here is a way to provide permanent operating support to BPF as an organization, via endowment interest. Endowment principal may not be spent as long as BPF is a legal entity. To make a major gift to the BPF endowment, please contact John Smart or Kenneth Hayworth.

Donor List

BPF is committed to transparency where possible in our large donations, while also respecting privacy requests. All donors of $1,000 or more to any of BPF’s Prizes, Funds, or Endowment are listed below, identifying the donor when allowed, ranked by donation size, and with details on donation type and year.

Saar Wilf $100,000 – Prize (2010)
Ken Hayworth $1,000 – Prize (2011)
John Smart $5,000 – Prize (2011)
Daniel Crevier $5,000 – Evaluation Fund (2012)
Robin Hanson $5,000 – Evaluation Fund (2012)
Anonymous $5,000 – Evaluation Fund (2012)
Ken Hayworth $2,500 – General Fund (2012)
Anonymous $2,000 – General Fund (2012)
Anonymous $1,000 – Evaluation Fund (2012)
Benjamin Hoffman $1,000 – Evaluation Fund (2012)
Edgar W. Swank $1,000 – General Fund (2012)
Art Shaposhnikov $5,000 – Evaluation Fund (2013)
Michael Cerullo $1,000 – General Fund (2014)
Adam Grant $1,000 – Endowment (2015)
Ramana Kumar $1,000 – General Fund (2018)
Anonymous $1,000,000 – Prize (2020)
David Rickard $5,000 – General Fund (2022)

Donor Statements

For all donations of $1,000 or above, donors are encouraged to share an optional short statement (typically 500 words or less) of their thoughts on brain preservation, BPF’s mission or vision, or other insights, strategies, or feedback, to be listed below chronologically. We are very grateful to receive such statements, and to share them publicly here when they are courteous and relevant.

Uploading has the potential to change the way we understand ourselves and our place in the universe. The breathtaking pace of technology has brought us to the point today where all the technology necessary for uploading is now feasible. If the progression of technology continues and animal experiments demonstrate the feasibility of uploading then this should be viewed as life extension technology. Brain preservation and later destructive uploading will preserve continuity of consciousness. The rational choice is to spend whatever resources are necessary to understand, develop, and apply this technology to those who choose to use it. ~ Michael Cerullo

If we had powerful enough computers, we could probably perform uploads right now. Existing brain preservation technologies seem to allow for it, with only modest improvements. Our ticket to the future may be at hand: let’s find out! — Daniel Crevier, Ph.D. (MIT) ~ Daniel Crevier

Understanding the effectiveness of different methods of brain preservation has an extremely high value-of-information. I hope this helps us understand whether it is possible for the mind to survive known brain preservation techniques. ~ Benjamin Hoffman

My motive for this donation is completely selfish. At age 71, I’m likely to need my brain preserved pretty soon. In case preservation tech isn’t ready in time, I rely on cryonics to do what can be done at the time. As President of the American Cryonics Society, I hope we can work together with BPF. I’m ready to be “uploaded” into virtual reality, which may be indistinguishable from Heaven. Once there, I’m probably not coming back. “How you gonna keep ’em down on the farm…?” ~ Edgar W. Swank

From Overcoming Bias, by Robin Hanson:

The biggest single charity donation I’ve made so far is ~$100. But now I’m donating $5000 to an exceptionally worthy cause. And I suggest you donate too. Here’s my cause:

People who “die” today could live again in the future, perhaps forever, as brain emulations (= uploads, ems), if enough info were saved today about their brains. (And of course if civilization doesn’t die, if someone in the future cares enough to bother, if you are your brain activity, etc.)

This is probably enough brain info: the spatial shape and location of each brain cell, including the long skinny parts that stick out to touch other cells, and two dozen chemical densities (at the skinny part scale) to help identify cell and connection types. Actually, it is probably enough to just get 95% of the connections right, and a half dozen chemical densities.

These brain research techniques have now reached two key milestones:

1.     They’ve found new ways to “fix” brain samples by filling them with plastic, ways that seem impressively reliable, resilient, and long lasting, and which work on large brain volumes (e.g., here). Such plastination techniques seem close to being able to save enough info in entire brains for centuries, without needing continual care. Just dumping a plastic brain in a box in a closet might work fine.

2.     Today, for a few tens of thousands of dollars, less than the price charged for one cryonics customer, it is feasible to have independent lab(s) take random samples from whole mouse or human brains preserved via either cryonics or plastination, and do high (5nm) resolution 3D scans to map out thousands of neighboring cells, their connections, and connection strengths, to test if either of these approaches clearly preserve such key brain info.

An anonymous donor has actually funded a $100K Brain Preservation Prize, paid to the first team(s) to pass this test on a human brain, with a quarter of the prize going to those that first pass the test on a mouse brain. Cryonics and plastination teams have already submitted whole mouse brains to be tested. The only hitch is that the prize organization needs money (~25-50K$) to actually do the tests!

This is the exceptionally worthy cause to which I am donating $5K, and to which I encourage others to donate.  (More info here; donate here.) We seem close to having a feasible plastination technique, where for a few 10K$ or less one could fill a brain with plastic, saving its key brain info for future revival in an easily stored form. We may only lack donations of a similar amount to actually test that it does actually save this key brain info. (And if the first approach fails, perhaps to test a few revisions.)

When a child asks “will I die?” to their parents, they usually get one of two responses. In one, they are told they will go to Heaven. However earnestly told, it’s untrue and it instills belief without evidence as a virtue. In another, they are told that they will die and the clock is ticking down to their inevitable fate.

Now that we have proven high-quality brain preservation, both of these answers are failing our kids and failing humanity in general. They deserve to be told that they have a choice. A choice to take their chances with whatever tale someone has spun up, to stop existing, or to have a real hope to go to an afterlife that they can help build.

It’s a goal that does not require faith in medical miracles that will bring a corpse back to life and reverse aging. We can already scan and preserve a brain, mapping every neuron in fine detail. Brain emulation work has started and will get faster and more expansive with advances in algorithms and hardware.

There is no cause more worthy of support. ~ David Rickard

Recurring Pledges – Contributing a $1,000 Donation 

One particularly excellent way individual donors can help BPF is to make recurring monthly donations up to a $1,000 Goal. When your goal is reached, if willing, we will then list your name and a donor statement above. The more effort we put into BPF’s mission now, the faster we can advance brain preservation science and technologies, and determine whether they can presently be validated.

You might donate $100 a month for 10 months, $84 a month for 12 months, $42 a month for 24 months, $28 a month for 36 months, or whatever best fits your finances. These can be set up as recurring donations to our General Fund. If you start a recurring donation toward a $1000 Goal, please email us to let us know if we can add your name to our public list of current recurring donors below. Thank you for your pledge!

Recurring Donors

Ramana Kumar
Tyler Kleinschmidt
Lance Jackson
David Rickard

BPF Fundraising Campaigns to Date
Evaluation Fund I – $25,000 Goal (Jun 2012 – Jan 2013) Campaign Goal Reached: 2 January 2013 ($25,259).

Thank you to everyone for getting us to our first fundraising goal!

What We Used this Money For:

In June 2012, BPF received our first competitor-submitted brain, a chemopreserved mouse brain from Shawn Mikula of the Denk Lab in Germany. This brain and its protocol could win the small animal portion of our Technology Prize. We also received our first cryopreserved brain samples in late 2012. BPF needs to raise a minimum of $25K to evaluate these submissions via electron microscopy. This money goes to renting microscope time, making special tools and other necessary procedures. We anticipate additional brain sample and whole brain submissions as competitors continue their efforts to win the prize.

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