Giving Compass' Take: 

• Wellcome discusses the process in which they decide who to fund and why, emphasizing that everything must be grounded in sound science, but also that projects should be given freedom to explore "unforeseen opportunities."

• How can this be applied to funders outside the scientific community? Grantmakers should examine the spirit of collaboration and innovation detailed here.

• Here's how philanthropists can support more science research.

As it becomes more and more difficult for one research group to master all the technologies needed to answer a question, it is obvious and inevitable — and intellectually stimulating and exciting — that scientists should work together to answer difficult questions.

Clearly, funders and everyone involved in scientific research should encourage "team science" and lower the activation energy to making it happen. How can we do this?

Wellcome recognizes that research takes you to unexpected places and provides unforeseen opportunities. If your original application didn’t mention collaborating with another group to achieve something, this doesn’t matter — just go for it.

What we care about is that the best science gets done and that new things are discovered, and we’re proud that our awards are flexible enough to allow this to happen through whatever route is appropriate.

But we also recognize, of course, that some collaborations need to be more formal and may require specific funding to allow them to go ahead, and for these we have our Collaborative Awards.

Like most of our grants, the organization hosting a Collaborative Award must be based in the UK, the Republic of Ireland, or a low- or middle-income country. But we know that science is an international activity and the best collaborators may well be elsewhere in the world.

We encourage such interactions. Our communications campaign #togethersciencecan celebrates and shares stories about the importance of collaboration in science, and what this has already achieved and could achieve in future.

Read the full article about the best ways to decide what research to fund by Jim Smith at Wellcome.