12 companies invest $180k to keep Letters to a Pre-Scientist free for students

The founding chief executive officer of Letters to a Pre-Scientist (LPS), Lucy Madden, recently shared on Linkedin that 12 companies put $180k behind the program this school year, more than doubling support from the prior school year. Madden added that about 75–100% of their corporate partners return each year, stating that this “has become a powerful, predictable growth engine for our work.”

In the comments section, Double the Donation described that level of retention as “legendary,” noting that most nonprofits struggle with the “one-and-done” sponsorship trap. So how has LPS achieved this level of renewal?

Madden points to part of the answer. “I didn’t start LPS thinking about corporate partnerships… I am motivated by creating something awesome for the students. But if you want your mission to actually happen, sustainable revenue matters – a lot,” she wrote in the post.

What differentiates these partnerships is that they go beyond funding. Employees from firms like Bristol Myers Squibb, Amgen Foundation, Certara, Wildlands Engineering, The Whiting-Turner Contracting Company, and MRIGlobal also participate directly as pen pals. That dual role turns corporate support into both capital and labor, embedding the program into employee engagement strategies rather than treating it as philanthropy alone.

Data shared with us by Madden suggests that the benefits extend to volunteers themselves. Across all STEM pen pals—not only those participating through corporate partnerships—82% said engaging with their pre-scientist reignited enthusiasm for their work, 94% reported that writing letters improved their ability to communicate their work to people outside their field, and 81% said participating in the program benefited their career. Perhaps most striking, 94% said they would volunteer with LPS again. In a March 2026 newsletter update, Madden noted that the program is growing from 2,500 students to 4,500, making these partnerships operationally strategic.

Those outcomes may help explain why LPS has avoided the “one-and-done” sponsorship trap. If employees themselves derive professional and personal benefits from participation, companies may view supporting the program not only as philanthropy, but also as an investment in their workforce.

So how does this show up in the financials? Public IRS Form 990 records show that total revenue at LPS (CSFINDEX: PRES) grew 62% from $177k in 2022 to $288k in 2023, then grew another 34% to $387k in 2024. Contributions accounted for more than 95% of total revenue in each of those years.

While the public filings do not separate contributions by source, numbers shared by Madden provide a clearer picture of how the organization’s fundraising mix has evolved.

During the 2023–24 school year, LPS raised about $64k from corporate partners and $131k from individual donors. Those totals increased to $88k and $152k, respectively, in 2024–25. In the current 2025–26 school year, corporate support climbed to $180k (up 104% from the previous year) while individual giving reached $323k.

Notably, individual giving has grown alongside corporate support rather than being displaced by it, suggesting that LPS is expanding multiple revenue sources simultaneously to keep pace with demand for its programming.

For Madden, the experience has reinforced the importance of understanding an organization’s unique value proposition and identifying the stakeholders most likely to support it.

This has changed how she thinks about fundraising.

“Because I can provide this meaningful exchange for volunteers and for companies, I just sort of realized that for our model, because we have this volunteer program and this need for thousands of volunteers every year, I can provide this meaningful exchange that’s mutually beneficial, so that really works for us,” Madden explained. “I’m honing in on what we provide.”

She further added that the experience has led her to think differently about fundraising. “I think it’s like a takeaway for people to think about what their unique value proposition is and who the right people to invest are to help determine what revenue streams would make the most sense for them,” she said.

BioBus (CSFINDEX: BIOB) offers a useful comparison. It also began as a relatively small science engagement non-profit organization, with revenue in the low six figures in its early IRS filings: $170k in 2010, $191k in 2011, $260k in 2012, and $170k in 2013. By 2014, revenue had climbed to $511k. Today, BioBus (in its 2024 IRS filing) reported $5.5 million in annual revenue. But the mix matters: even in 2024, contributions (breakdown not publicly available) still accounted for about 89% of BioBus revenue while program services made up almost 11%. 

In a 2025 Questions of the Day interview, Ben Dubin-Thaler from BioBus described how that revenue model evolved over time. Early on, BioBus operated with “very little actual money equity,” he said, relying heavily on in-kind donations and volunteer labor, before generating its first earned revenue—$2,500 from a school partnership. Today, the organization’s funding mix is more distributed, he said, with the majority coming from private foundations, alongside roughly 20% from government sources, 10–15% from individual donors, and another 10–15% from earned revenue. 

Zooming out, the broader question is how science engagement organizations such as LPS and BioBus can continue to diversify their revenue sources to better weather inevitable economic downturns. LPS’s growing portfolio of corporate partnerships provides a useful case study in one approach to addressing that challenge.

That leads to another important question: What more can grant funders do to help those they fund build sustainable revenue models to enable the organizations to address community needs for the long haul? The Sandbox Fellowship from the Simons Foundation is doing just that by “equipping fellows with tools to refine strategy, reinforce financial sustainability and embed equity throughout their work.” Madden was part of the inaugural cohort of the Sandbox Fellowship in 2024. 

The LPS growth story is still in its early days.

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Fanuel Muindi

Fanuel Muindi is a former neuroscientist turned civic science ethnographer. He is a professor of the practice in the Department of Communication Studies within the College of Arts, Media, and Design at Northeastern University, where he leads the Civic Science Media Lab. Dr. Muindi received his Bachelor’s degree in Biology and PhD in Organismal Biology from Morehouse College and Stanford University, respectively. He completed his postdoctoral training at MIT.