A Startup Philanthropy Targeting Serious Mental Illness Ramps Up

David Baszucki (Photo: The Baszucki Group)

A little over a year ago, I wrote about the tech industry couple Jan Ellison Baszucki and David Baszucki, who decided to focus much of their philanthropy on serious mental illnesses like bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and major depressive disorder. Their philanthropy got a major jolt of wealth derived from the initial public offering of Roblox Corporation, an immersive gaming company David founded. The liquidity event enabled the couple to ramp up plans for Baszucki Brain Research Fund, which they founded in 2019.

The foundation has been finding its way and making some sizable grants in the last year, and after the recent announcement of its latest round of giving, we thought it was time for a quick update on BBRF’s activity since we first wrote about them.

The Baszuckis are following a familiar path in philanthropy, albeit at a higher and more engaged level than your average donor. Recently, David Baszucki discussed his family’s philanthropic initiatives while on a panel at the last Milken Institute Global Conference, which ran in late April and early May this year. He explained that the Baszuckis’ interest in serious mental illnesses was prompted by their son’s bipolar diagnosis and health journey. Philanthropists are frequently inspired to seek solutions for problems with which they have first-hand experience. But the dearth of effective treatments for bipolar disorder, or even knowledge of the biology behind these serious brain disorders, coupled with the low levels of philanthropy in the field, pushed the Baszuckis to take on a more active role. In other words, their experience searching far and wide for ways to help their son prefigured their search for brain science they might support financially.

Philanthropy as a sector has not made mental illness a high priority, particularly these types of serious mental illness — estimates say less than 1% of health philanthropy goes to mental health, despite the enormous collective burden of this category of health conditions, including more common forms of depression and other disorders. Bipolar disorder is not so uncommon, affecting roughly 3% of the population, or nearly 45 million people worldwide. Schizophrenia affects about 1% of people worldwide. Depression, major depressive disorder and anxiety are more common than either of the above.

But identifying research to support is not necessarily an easy task for nonprofessionals wading into a field of science or medical research, especially one that has been historically underfunded, such as bipolar disorder. This led to the Baszuckis’ decision to partner with the Milken Institute Center for Strategic Philanthropy, which brings scientists and subject-area experts to advise philanthropists and develop their giving strategies. “I realized when Roblox went public, it’s really hard to figure out... how to wisely deploy that money,” David said at the Milken conference in May.

Just a few days ago, the BBRF announced $2 million in grants to back pilot clinical trials of ketogenic metabolic diet therapies­ — similar to the carbohydrate-restricting diets that are popular among people trying to lose weight — as interventions for bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and major depression. The diet-based intervention has long been used to improve outcomes for people with epilepsy, another brain condition, but despite some promising early research, it hasn’t been studied much as a treatment for other brain conditions like bipolar disorder. This grant, again, comes from personal experience, as David said at the Milken conference that the ketogenic diet approach essentially cured his son’s bipolar disorder.

The $2 million will fund five research teams — based at James Cook University, Ohio State, Stanford, UCSF, and University of Edinburgh — which will be the first to look at the ketogenic diet intervention for mental illnesses since the 1960s.  

“We’re hopeful that the innovative work of these science teams will help to advance the ketogenic metabolic interventions that helped transform our son’s life,” said Jan Baszucki, in a press release announcing the grants.

The recent grants for the ketogenic diet pilot studies followed commitments of $9 million in grants for bipolar disorder research that BBRF made back in January of this year. Those research grants, 45 in all, spread across 31 universities and medical research institutions, supported pilot research to develop and study potential therapies for bipolar disorder. The pilot studies will look at areas like neuromodulation, neurometabolism, genomics and new therapeutics. Prior to the January 2022 round of grant announcements, the Baszuckis had committed more than $4 million to bipolar science.

The Baszuckis, through the BBRF, are showing how philanthropy, even one organization, can potentially make a big impact on an underfunded field of research. But they can’t solve this on their own — by getting this new research rolling, their most significant role could be producing promising results that attract new funders to the space.