Since its inception in 2010, HDBuzz has existed with the financial support of non-profit organizations within the Huntington’s disease (HD) space. In our 14 years of service, we have never directly asked the HD community for donations. However, recently during a tenuous time in the existence of HDBuzz, we lost the support of one of our largest and longest standing backers. This seriously jeopardized the existence of HDBuzz. We want to ensure that this never happens again. So that HDBuzz will continue to exist and report science in plain language for the global HD community, we’re asking for your help.

Where does HDBuzz get funding?

To date, HDBuzz has been funded by a consortium of HD community organizations. Our founding partners are the Huntington’s Disease Association of England and Wales, the Huntington Society of Canada, and the Huntington’s Disease Society of America. The Griffin Foundation, a non-profit educational foundation, is a major funding partner. More recently, we’ve received vital financial and stewardship support from the Michael Berman Family Foundation and the Hereditary Disease Foundation (HDF). Currently, we are housed as a project within the HDF until we can get our footing.

These organizations have funded and supported HDBuzz as a service to the entire HD community, but have never received special access to its content, which is freely available to all. They have never had any editorial control over our content, nor have they ever asked for it.

Critically, HDBuzz has never accepted funding or support from drug companies. HDBuzz loves drug companies – we’re hoping they help us cure HD! But taking money from any organization dedicated to a particular therapy could give the impression of bias in our reporting, which we diligently aim to avoid.

Why is HDBuzz’s funding model changing?

In 2024, HDBuzz operations transferred from the UK to the US. This made sense considering the leadership of HDBuzz was no longer located in the UK, but rather in North America.

While this transition was happening, we lost financial sponsorship, stewardship, and support from one of our largest and longest standing donors within the HD nonprofit space. It became clear that solely relying on donations from other HD nonprofits was a finicky model with the potential to jeopardize the existence of HDBuzz.

“Particularly as we advance toward disease modifying drugs, we hope that our services will enable HD families to make educated decisions about their lives, treatment, and care. ”

We realized that we need to explore other models that are more sustainable and are a better reflection of the value that we bring to the HD community. This will allow us to maintain HDBuzz long into the future.

However, our mission remains the same – to report science in an unbiased, easy-to-understand way so that the HD community can better understand HD, research, and clinical trials. Particularly as we advance toward disease modifying drugs, we hope that our services will enable HD families to make educated decisions about their lives, treatment, and care.

Our ask

To build a long-lasting, sustainable model, we are now directly asking our readers to consider contributing to the mission of HDBuzz. With enough generosity, this will allow us to be completely independent from other organizations in the HD space.

Please consider making a donation if you value the services that HDBuzz provides. We want HDBuzz to be sustainable so that we can continue to report unbiased science to the HD community. With your support, we can ensure the continuity of our services. Nothing is expected, but everything is appreciated and sustains what we do at HDBuzz. Please consider giving what you’re able.

What will my donation be used for?

HDBuzz will never be behind a paywall. If you don’t donate, you will still have access to HDBuzz’s content. We strongly believe that science should be accessible to everyone in every way. We do our best to make complicated science easy to understand, and will always provide that without required fees.

We will continue to operate under a creative commons attribution license, offering our content freely for syndication to reach as many people as possible. We strongly encourage you to share our content with anyone who you feel may benefit from it.

Donations will be used to maintain our website, to update our website, to translate our articles into various languages, for travel to conferences so that we can live tweet research, for travel to meetings so that we can present and directly interface with the HD community, and for the time our writers and editors spend reading, writing, developing content, putting together presentations, and presenting to the HD community.

Additionally, we want to expand our content, add writers, increase the number of countries we serve, and interact directly with the HD community in more ways. We are excited to continue the work that we already do and expand that!

“Please consider making a donation if you value the services that HDBuzz provides. ”

Thank you!

We are deeply committed to the HD community and deeply ingrained within it. We have spent the early (and late!) hours of our lives toiling away in labs learning as much as we can about HD. Trying to understand it. Trying to find a treatment for it. We are HD family members, researchers, scientists, supporters, and friends.

We hope that the content you find on HDBuzz brings you information, education, comfort, and hope. Both in dark times, and in sunnier ones. Our goal is to be the conduit through which anyone can access the information HD researchers have. We strongly feel that the job of a scientist isn’t done until the people that need that information most - HD families - also have that information.

It is the honor of everyone who contributes to HDBuzz to report on the stellar HD science being carried out in labs around the world to advance us toward an HD-free future. We profoundly appreciate that the HD community trusts us for relaying the research, the truth behind the science, and what that means for HD families.

To contribute to the mission of HDBuzz, please click the donation button below. Even a $20 monthly donation will go a long way in helping us ensure that HDBuzz is sustainable and will allow us to expand. Thank you for being our new partners in this endeavor!