Forging Partnership: CRDF in the FSU and the World

The founding legislation\footnote{\textbf{Public Law 102-511} ``Freedom Support Act,'' \textit{Section 511}, \textbf{October 24, 1992}} for CRDF clearly intended the organization to combine public and private purposes, and that it could and should receive funding from both public and private sources. It also gave CRDF specific formal Purposes that included building international partnerships for supporting high-quality research, helping weapons scientists find another line of work, and helping American industry and foreign scientists to work together for mutual benefit and economic progress. CRDF was expected to ``promote and support joint research and development projects for peaceful purposes between scientists and engineers in the United States and independent states of the former Soviet Union on subjects of mutual interest.'' CRDF has operated as a private foundation funding international research collaborations through peer-reviewed competitions, making more than 2,000 awards in ten years. It has carried out this work with resources provided largely by the U.S. government – to facilitate non-proliferation, and to advance U.S. scientific, technical and human health objectives as well as U.S. foreign policy generally -- but also from private sources, to advance primarily humanitarian and educational goals. CRDF's experience melding public and private support for international scientific cooperation has yielded a unique set of procedures and programs that it seeks now to apply in new geographic arenas.