Pioneer Fund

Pioneer Fund is an American non-profit foundation established in 1937 "to advance the scientific study of heredity and human differences". The organization has been described as racist and "white supremacist" in nature, and as a "hate group".

From 2002 until his death in October 2012, the fund was headed by psychology professor J. Philippe Rushton. The fund states that it focuses on projects it perceives will not be easily funded due to controversial subject matter. As of October 2013, Richard Lynn is the primary contact for Pioneer Fund.

Two of the most notable studies funded by Pioneer Fund are the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart and the Texas Adoption Project, which studied the similarities and differences of identical twins and other children adopted into non-biological families. Pioneer Fund has also been an important source of funding for research on the partly genetic hypothesis of IQ variation among races.

The fund's grantees and publications have generated controversy including the 1994 publication of The Bell Curve, which drew heavily from Pioneer-funded research. The fund has also been criticized for its ties to eugenics.

Pioneer Fund was incorporated on March 11, 1937. The first five directors were:

The 1937 incorporation documents of the Pioneer Fund list two purposes. The first, modeled on the Nazi Lebensborn breeding program, was aimed at encouraging the propagation of those "descended predominantly from white persons who settled in the original thirteen states prior to the adoption of the Constitution of the United States and/or from related stocks, or to classes of children, the majority of whom are deemed to be so descended". Its second purpose was to support academic research and the "dissemination of information, into the 'problem of heredity and eugenics'" and "the problems of race betterment". The Pioneer Fund argues the "race betterment" has always referred to the "human race" referred to earlier in the sentence, and critics argue it referred to racial groups. The document was amended in 1985 and the phrase changed to "human race betterment."

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