From mekline at mit.edu Fri Jul 10 10:52:02 2026 From: mekline at mit.edu (Melissa Kline) Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2026 10:52:02 -0400 Subject: [lookit-research] Children Helping Science - Our next steps, and how you can help keep the platform alive Message-ID: (apologies to anyone receiving this email multiple times!) *This email in short:* - The new Children Helping Science organization! - How you can help to keep the CHS platform available to the community - A five minute survey for professors & heads of labs For over six years, Children Helping Science has operated as a completely free resource to the developmental research community, enabling over 250 labs to conduct studies from a database of over 17,000 families, and producing a growing record of publications . Today, we are happy to announce that CHS has officially created a footprint outside of MIT, the first step toward establishing a long-term nonprofit home. We will continue to work together with MIT as the scientific home of CHS and institutional partner for sensitive data; this change is about where CHS operates administratively and financially. The reason for this change is that two things are simultaneously true: First, CHS is rapidly growing, with new research teams joining the platform every week. And second, we can?t continue operating without asking the researchers who use the platform to start directly contributing to its costs. Given the massive shift in federal funding, we know we?ll need to work hard to make CHS financially sustainable. Operating outside of MIT will substantially reduce our costs and let us work more flexibly, and we have bridge funding through early 2027. But we?ll need financial support from both new funding partners and from labs writing CHS into their funding proposals in order to keep operating into the future. *CHS?s new cost structure* - To keep CHS running, we need to put a dollar amount on how much using CHS is worth, so that researchers who have (or are applying for) funding can contribute directly to maintaining this shared resource. - Thanks to current grant funding, CHS will be free to all researchers until the end of 2026. - Starting in 2027, recruiting participants and hosting studies on CHS will require a lab license. License options will be available for both individual studies and multi-study memberships. (See FAQ for more details.) *Are there free or reduced price options for CHS in 2027?* We understand that some labs are not in a position to write CHS into grant applications, and we are actively fundraising to help these labs in 2027. In addition, we have options that can help you extend resources such as partial-year memberships and credits for the new participants that you bring to CHS. We are committed to working with each team to make sure the whole research community can continue to use CHS for a long time into the future. If you?re concerned about your ability to afford CHS?s new pricing model, please reach out. The goal of asking labs to contribute is to ensure CHS can continue to be a resource to as many researchers as possible in the future. With many large funders pulling back, it is possible that CHS could have to wind down services for all researchers if we don?t develop a more sustainable model. *What we need right now:* - Starting today, *please include funding for the CHS platform in all of your grant applications that propose to use it*. Our standard pricing will range from $1,604 for a single external study ad to $10,206 per year for an active lab hosting multiple studies on the platform. There is no need for subaward or contractor paperwork - you can include this as a line item in your budget just as you would do for other recruitment or data collection costs. - Within the next two weeks (by July 24), lab heads are asked to please *fill out this five-minute survey *. This will help us understand your needs, find opportunities for group fundraising, and begin planning for the future of CHS. Graduate students, postdocs, and others, we?d deeply appreciate your help making sure PIs see this! Details and FAQ about the timeline, pricing models, and additional options are available at this page , and I am available for 1-1 meetings to discuss any aspect of this - please feel free to send me an email at melissa at childrenhelpingscience.org. Thank you so much for reading, and for your continuing support of Children Helping Science, - Melissa -- Melissa Kline Struhl Executive Director, Children Helping Science Research Scientist, MIT Brain & Cognitive Sciences mekline at mit.edu https://childrenhelpingscience.com/ http://www.melissaklinestruhl.com/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: