Funding the Center

The Robert Packard Center for ALS Research at Johns Hopkins is a science-based nonprofit whose research and administrative funding is entirely donor based. Although we’re housed within Johns Hopkins, all of the financial support that we offer our scientist grantees is raised outside of that institution.

ALS Research Funding

Our history is tied to our funding: In 1995, the Baltimore Orioles boosted existing ALS research at Hopkins through their Cal Ripken/Lou Gehrig Fund for Neuromuscular Research. That blossomed in 1999 into the Center for ALS Research, thanks to core financial support from two foundations, The Emily Davie and Joseph S. Kornfeld Foundation and the then-named Robert Packard Foundation for ALS Research.

The Emily Davie and Joseph S. Kornfeld Foundation funds medical research, fellowships in bioethics and palliative care, as well as literacy programs for children in the New York City public schools.

The Robert Packard Foundation – now the William H. Adams Foundation for ALS Research – is a nonprofit organization dedicated to ALS research and ALS funding for the development of new treatments and a cure. The foundation, based in San Francisco, finances research institutions that have embraced aggressive, collaborative approaches to finding therapies for the disease. Founded by ALS patient Robert Packard, the foundation received massive financial support from Packard’s family, friends and former colleagues. Today, the foundation, now headed by west-coast philanthropist William H. Adams, continues to help the Packard Center for ALS Research at Johns Hopkins.

Additional ALS funding and support comes from private donors, philanthropic foundations and industry sources. The Center translates these gifts into grants for its researchers.