Primer

People, Not Projects: Funding Researchers Instead of Research Plans

David Hilmer Rex · July 2026 · Updated October 2026 · 8 min read

Summary

Most competitive research funding is awarded to projects: a specific plan, proposed in advance, judged on its merits, and expected to be carried out roughly as written. People-not-projects funding inverts this. It selects a researcher, gives them substantial resources for a long and renewable period, and lets them decide what to work on and when to change direction. The canonical example is the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, whose stated approach is to fund "people, not projects." The best evidence, a matched comparison of HHMI investigators with comparably accomplished project-funded peers, finds that people-based funding produces both more highly cited work and more failures, consistent with longer horizons and a higher tolerance for risk. People funding is one instrument in a wider system: it works alongside project grants and basic funding, and it cannot by itself undo the problems that come with a project-dominated system, such as precarious careers and concentrated power. This primer sets out what the mechanism is, the problem it responds to, the evidence, its design dimensions, the main instruments including the Danish ones, and its limits.

The idea ↑

The difference is in the unit of selection. In project funding, the unit is the plan: a proposal describes a hypothesis, a method, a timeline, and expected outcomes, and reviewers assess whether that plan is worth funding. In people funding, the unit is the person: a funder selects a researcher, commits resources to them for a period of years, and leaves the choice of what to pursue largely to the researcher. The grant follows the person.

The bet behind people funding is that the most valuable research is often the research nobody could have specified in advance. If discovery is genuinely uncertain, then selecting plans rewards the plans that look most feasible on paper, which are rarely the most consequential. Selecting talented people and giving them freedom and time, the argument goes, lets the science follow where it leads. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute has made this its signature: it appoints investigators, on the principle of backing "people, not projects."¹

In July 2026 the idea gained formal endorsement from the US executive branch. The OSTP report Science: A New Golden Age lists support for individual scientists among its core recommendations, next to diversified funding and agency metascience units.²

The problem with project grants ↑

Project funding is the dominant model in public science, and its documented pathologies are the main reason people funding is proposed alongside it.³

A project proposal asks a researcher to specify in advance what they expect to find, which sits awkwardly with the nature of discovery. To be fundable, a proposal usually needs preliminary data showing the idea already works, so the money often arrives after the risky part is done. Reviewers reward feasibility and penalise uncertainty, which pushes proposals toward the incremental and the safe. Cycles are short, commonly three to five years, and the pressure to produce publishable results before the next application discourages long, exploratory, or tool-building work whose payoff lies further out. Application burden is high and success rates are low, so a large share of researcher time goes to writing and reviewing proposals, time taken away from research itself. And once a project is funded, the researcher is expected to do what they proposed, which discourages pivoting when the science changes underneath them.

People funding is a direct response to each of these: no plan to lock into, a long horizon that tolerates slow-maturing work, and enough security that the researcher is not perpetually writing the next application.

The pathologies also reach beyond the single grant. When most money comes as short projects, careers depend on a chain of fixed-term contracts, permanent posts come late, and power gathers with the principal investigators who hold the grants. Person awards to already established researchers can ease this for the few who win them while deepening concentration for everyone else. The largest public form of people funding is basic funding to universities, which pays for permanent posts.

The evidence: HHMI versus NIH ↑

The cleanest evidence on people funding comes from a comparison of the two dominant American models for life-sciences funding: the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which funds people on long, forgiving terms, and the National Institutes of Health, whose R01 grant funds projects on shorter, renewal-dependent terms.

Azoulay, Graff Zivin and Manso (2011) compared HHMI investigators with a matched control group of similarly accomplished NIH-funded scientists, using the timing of HHMI appointment in a difference-in-differences design.⁴ After appointment, HHMI investigators produced more papers in the top percentiles of the citation distribution, and more work that introduced new keywords and new directions, a marker of novelty. They also produced more papers that went on to be poorly cited or ignored. The pattern is higher variance in both directions: more hits and more misses. That is the signature of exploration. Researchers freed from short-cycle, renewal-dependent funding took more risks, and the portfolio of outcomes reflects it.

The authors attribute the difference to the combination of a long horizon with a review process that tolerates early failure and rewards long-run success, though the design cannot fully separate HHMI's incentive structure from its extra resources and its selection of investigators. HHMI review is retrospective and lenient about early setbacks, which is precisely the incentive structure that theory predicts will motivate exploration rather than exploitation.⁵ A long grant with a harsh mid-term review would not produce the same behaviour.

Two caveats matter. HHMI selects people who are already exceptional, so the results speak to what freedom does for strong researchers; whether people funding would work for everyone remains open. And the evidence base beyond this comparison is thin: people funding is intuitively attractive and rests on one strong study, with no large body of replicated findings yet.

Design dimensions ↑

People funding takes many forms. The instruments that use it differ along several dimensions, and the differences change what the mechanism actually does.

• Basis of selection. Proven track record versus demonstrated potential. Programmes aimed at established researchers select on accomplishment; programmes aimed at early-career researchers must bet on promise, which is harder to judge and higher variance.
• Duration and renewal. Five to seven years is common, often renewable; HHMI uses long, renewable appointments (currently seven years). The review at renewal is the key lever: a retrospective, failure-tolerant review sustains risk-taking, while a prospective, milestone-based review recreates the pressures of project funding.
• Size. The award has to be generous enough to free the person from chasing other grants. Below that threshold, people funding becomes a supplement to other grants, and the behavioural effect weakens.
• Degree of freedom. Full discretion over what to work on, or freedom within a broad theme. More constraint moves the instrument back toward projects.
• Portability. Whether the funding follows the person across institutions, which strengthens the researcher's hand and the "people" logic.
• Portfolio position. How many people are funded this way, and how concentrated the awards are. People funding is powerful as part of a diverse portfolio and risky as a monoculture.

The main instruments ↑

The Danish and Nordic instruments ↑

Denmark runs some of the largest people-based research grants in Europe, and it is not a coincidence that they come from the enterprise foundations. People funding needs exactly what those foundations are structurally built to supply: long horizons and insulation from annual budget cycles.⁶

The Novo Nordisk Foundation Laureate Research Grants target established biomedical researchers, to recruit them to or retain them in Denmark, with up to DKK 60 million over up to seven years, aimed at the person and their long-term programme. The Villum Investigator programme, launched in 2017, awards leading researchers in the technical and natural sciences substantial multi-year grants, up to DKK 30 million over six years (2026 call), with wide latitude over direction; Investigators must re-apply in open competition to continue. On the public side, the Sapere Aude research leader grants of the Independent Research Fund Denmark (Danmarks Frie Forskningsfond) back individuals judged to be exceptional early-career talents, a smaller and more selection-on-potential version of the same logic.

These instruments are the exception in Danish competitive funding. A 2026 mapping by the Danish Centre for Research Analysis (CFA) of 18,214 grants from 2018 to 2024 found that the project grant dominates and imposes structural bindings, and 75% of surveyed researchers said current formats constrain how they would ideally work.⁷ Forskerforum reports that 79% would shift their research interests given two years of unconstrained funding.⁸ One outside option has also narrowed: from 29 October 2026 Wellcome Discovery Awards accept lead applicants only from the UK and eligible low- and middle-income countries, so Danish institutions can no longer lead them.⁹

The connection to the enterprise foundation model is the important point for anyone thinking about the Danish system. A funder that must justify its spending on a short political cycle finds it hard to commit to a person for a decade with no specified deliverable. A self-owning foundation with patient, insulated capital can. Denmark's unusual capacity to run people funding at scale rests on its unusual ownership structure for research money. The same concentration raises questions of accountability and of who sets the research agenda.

Critiques and open questions ↑

The Matthew effect. Because people funding selects on the person, and past success is the most legible signal, it tends to concentrate resources on already-established researchers. This can entrench advantage and make the mechanism poorly suited to early-career or unconventional researchers, precisely the groups whose potential is hardest to read from a track record.

Selection is genuinely hard. Predicting which people will do transformative work is difficult, and a programme that selects on past accomplishment may simply be rewarding yesterday's success, which is a weak guide to tomorrow's. The HHMI evidence tells us what freedom does for people who were selected well; it does not tell us how to select well.

Equity and concentration. Large person-based awards can narrow the distribution of who gets funded and reinforce existing hierarchies of institution, field, and background. A system weighted heavily toward people funding risks elite capture.

Accountability. With no specified deliverables, people funding is harder to justify to funders, boards, and the public, and harder to evaluate. The freedom that makes it work is also what makes it politically and administratively demanding to sustain.

It is one instrument in a system. The strongest case for people funding is as one component of a diverse funding portfolio, sitting alongside project grants, fast grants, prizes, and mission-oriented mechanisms, each suited to different kinds of work. A research system that funded only people would concentrate risk in selection and lose the coverage that a plurality of mechanisms provides. The value of people funding lies in what it adds to the mix.

Cite as: Rex, David Hilmer (2026). People, Not Projects: Funding Researchers Instead of Research Plans. https://davidhilmerrex.nu/metascience/people-not-projects.html