California · Nonprofit
THE PUBPEER FOUNDATION
THE PUBPEER FOUNDATION (California) receives grants from 1 organization whose IRS filings report $150,000 to it, the largest being FIDELITY INVESTMENTS CHARITABLE GIFT FUND ($150,000). 1 of them have funded it in more than one year, and 100% of the money arrives through donor-advised or pass-through sponsors rather than from an institution directly.
- Revenue FY2025
- $373k
- Funders on record
- 1
- Grants received
- $150k
- Net assets
- $547k
What The Pubpeer Foundation does
Mission
The Foundation is dedicated to enhancing the quality of scientific research by fostering innovative platforms for community engagement and interaction. At the heart of our mission is PubPeer, our flagship initiative, aimed at centralizing and disseminating high-quality, valuable commentary on published research. By facilitating a unique convergence of direct user feedback and expert analyses, we strive to create a comprehensive ecosystem that elevates the standards of scientific discourse and contributes to the advancement of knowledge. Our commitment is to empower the scientific community to share, scrutinize, and build upon research findings, ensuring integrity, transparency, and excellence in the pursuit of scientific truth.
As stated on its FY2025 Form 990.
Program
In FY2025, we advanced our mission by expanding and rebuilding our dashboard service, improving user satisfaction, and increasing adoption by key stakeholders in scientific publishing. We also continued to grow the PubPeer platform, contributed to international policy conversations on academic integrity, and invested in the technical capacity needed to support the platforms future.PubPeer.com continued to grow as a central platform for post-publication peer review, with total comment volume reaching 80,360, up from 70,611 in FY2024 and more than tripling since 2020. We completed a full rewrite of our dashboard alerting service, addressing long-standing feature requests and usability concerns. This upgrade led to renewed subscriptions from publishers who had previously left the service due to limitations in the earlier version. We also signed new contracts with international publishers, an international association of publishers, and academic institutions. In parallel, we participated in high-level policy discussions on the future of academic publishing.Our primary focus in 2025 was the complete overhaul of the dashboard alerting service. The new version offers improved…
$82,754 spent100% of program spending
The program described on its FY2025 Form 990. Program spending in total: $82,754.
The organization over time
Each line starts at 100 in 2017, so what you read is the shape rather than the size: 150 means half as much again as 2017, 50 means half. The number beside each label in the key is where it ended. The shaded band is where the middle 50% of its peers' revenue would sit, given their growth.
Balance sheet
Total assets and total liabilities at each year end, in dollars. The largest one-year move in total assets was 2024 to 2025, from $317k to $547k (+72%).
How it's funded, over time
Each bar is one year's revenue split into where it came from, and every bar is the same height — these are shares, not amounts, so a year that raised twice as much looks the same size. Hover a bar for the split.
27% of THE PUBPEER FOUNDATION’s revenue is contributions — about as donation-reliant as the typical peer (83% for the typical peer).
Surplus & reserves
Operating surplus or deficit each year, and months of liquidity in hand. 2 of the last 9 reported years ran a deficit.
reserve
Leadership and staff
The officers, directors, trustees and key employees listed on each return. Joined and no longer listed compare each filing with the year before, matching people by surname and first initial; a year after a gap, or a roster under three people, has no comparison.
Who funds it, year by year
2019 → 2020: the base held at 1 funder, grant income fell $100k → $50k.
1 of 1 of your funders are donor-advised or pass-through sponsors (tagged DAF) — 100% of grant dollars received. That money is really individual donors directing a sponsor; the institutions to cultivate are the non-DAF funders.
From the IRS filings of THE PUBPEER FOUNDATION’s funders (the co-funder graph). Association, not causation. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
Where its funders are
100% of THE PUBPEER FOUNDATION's grant income arrives through donor-advised or pass-through sponsors, whose addresses record where the money is held rather than where the donor is. Too little is directly attributable to place on a map.
Funder states come from each funder’s own filing. $150k arriving through sponsors registered in 1 state is excluded from the map and the split above: a sponsor holds money on a donor’s behalf, so its registered address would place those dollars somewhere no donor need ever have been. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
Against its field
THE PUBPEER FOUNDATION runs a healthier operating margin than three-quarters of the 8,464 health nonprofits its size.
this organization peer median middle 50% of peers· 8,464 health nonprofits $100k–$1M, FY2025
Organizations like THE PUBPEER FOUNDATION
Organizations whose mission and program text most resemble this one, by semantic similarity over every organization in the US filings — the closest peers, and often the clearest route to shared or prospective funders.
In California
Nationally
Read directly from this organization’s own Form 990, as neutral context.
Where the money goes
59% of spending goes to programs.
Governance
Public support
100%
Share of support from the public (Schedule A) — the basis for its public-charity status.
Footprint & structure
Files a return copy in 1 state
Screen this organization
A dated, signed PDF of the compliance screen for THE PUBPEER FOUNDATION: IRS status (Business Master File, Publication 78, auto-revocation), the OFAC sanctions lists, the Internal Revenue Bulletin, and California registration, with the Rev. Proc. 2018-32 §8.01 reliance elements stated element by element. Generated from the current files at the moment you download it.
Screens are triage, not determinations; a source that cannot be read reports not screened, never clear. Screen this nonprofit · How the screen works · on the API as GET /api/screening/{ein}?format=pdf
Questions and answers
- Who funds THE PUBPEER FOUNDATION?
- THE PUBPEER FOUNDATION (California) receives grants from 1 organization whose IRS filings report $150,000 to it, the largest being FIDELITY INVESTMENTS CHARITABLE GIFT FUND ($150,000). 1 of them have funded it in more than one year, and 100% of the money arrives through donor-advised or pass-through sponsors rather than from an institution directly.
- How many funders does THE PUBPEER FOUNDATION have?
- IRS filings report 1 organization giving $150,000 in grants to THE PUBPEER FOUNDATION, 1 of which have funded it in more than one year.
- Who is the largest funder of THE PUBPEER FOUNDATION?
- FIDELITY INVESTMENTS CHARITABLE GIFT FUND is the largest funder on record, with $150,000 in grants. The full list of funders is on this page.
- How can an organization like THE PUBPEER FOUNDATION find more funders?
- Start with the funders already giving here, then look at the foundations that back similar organizations in California. The funding by cause and by state pages list the largest funders for a given area and how to approach them.
Play a game about who funds Pubpeer →
These figures are read directly from IRS Form 990 / 990-PF e-file XML: this organization’s own return for FY2025 (financials across 2017–2025), and the filings of 1 funders that report grants to it. “On record” means captured in the filings we have parsed — a funder that does not e-file, or whose grant detail is not itemized, will not appear. Filings run roughly 12–24 months behind. Trends on this page end at FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving; later years are shown and marked, and move no figure. Data on this page was exported October 22, 2026. What this page cannot tell you · view filing