This Real Estate Mogul Is Funding Psychedelics Research to Support the LGBT+ Community

It wasn’t so long ago that there were few funders looking into psychedelics research. A few years back, I dug into the interesting Riverstyx Foundation, which focuses part of its grantmaking on psychedelics, spirituality and end-of-life care. Executive Director T. Cody Swift had a transformative psilocybin mushroom experience when he was younger and helped move family funds to stand up this unique foundation. At the time, Swift told me about the stigma around psychedelics, along with the paucity of philanthropic dollars that go toward the cause.

But there are funders on the case these days, more than there had been, backing research into what many consider to be powerful tools to deal with trauma and PTSD, anxiety, depression and more. Some of this funding has even come from unlikely places, including conservative billionaire hedge funder Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah. Back in 2018, they donated $1 million to the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) to complete clinical trials with veterans battling PTSD. MAPS, founded in 1986 by drug activist Rick Doblin, is one of the foremost nonprofit institutions working to raise awareness and understanding of psychedelic substances. The organization reported $78 million in net assets at the end of fiscal year 2022, up from just $15.1 million in 2017.

Then there’s entrepreneur Robert Ansin, president and founder of MassInnovation LLC, a sustainable development company. He established his foundation, Healing Hearts Changing Minds, in 2022 to build bridges between “those who seek healing and those who’ve found it through psychedelic assisted therapy.” Specifically, the foundation is working with the LGBTQIA+ population and describes itself as the only private foundation in the psychedelic space solely focused on this community. Late last year, the foundation announced $550,000 in grants to train LGBTQIA+ psychedelic therapists and facilitators to become healers in their communities.

Inside Philanthropy recently connected with founder Robert Ansin to find out more about his Healing Hearts Changing Minds foundation, the funder’s latest work with the LGBTQIA+ people, and how he sees the psychedelics funding space growing in the coming years.

A life-changing journey

Born into a family of Massachusetts-based shoe manufacturers, Ansin attended UMass Amherst and then embarked on an entrepreneurial journey of his own. He launched his sustainable development company, MassInnovation LLC, renovating abandoned mills across the state and turning them into spaces that housed schools, apartments and retail centers. Ansin was riding high — until the Great Recession hit. “I thought I was so smart,” Ansin said. In 2008, he was in the midst of a $200 million renovation project but soon found himself teetering toward bankruptcy.

Ansin bounced back in business. But more than that, he found new meaning and purpose in his own life. Like many others in this space, Ansin had an early moment of revelation after he read Michael Pollan’s book “How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence.” He sold his business in 2015 and then in 2019, took a trip to Jamaica for a legal psychedelics retreat.

“I had learned about the history of psychedelics, but had no idea of what to expect,” he said. “My experience was so earth-shattering that I couldn’t stop thinking about what sort of opened up to me.”

The entrepreneur is well aware of his privilege as a self-described “rich white guy” who could afford to pay five figures to fly to an island paradise for more than a week in order to have this experience. But as Ansin explored this world even further, he wasn’t just struck by how much these tools impacted his own life, but also what kind of potential there was for society, at scale — all contained within substances that have been around for thousands of years. He knew digging into this area would be his next chapter and wanted to make an impact in a space that has historically received scant funding.

Proponents note that before the 1970s and 1980s, the government funded a lot of promising, university-led research on psychedelics. But when these substances were banned, the funding dried up. So today, any work needs to be funded by individuals and private foundations, making the kind of philanthropy Ansin is doing all the more critical, he argues.

Easing the stigma and standing up a foundation

“When I was doing my research, I found that back in the ’50s and ’60s, these psychedelic molecules were considered the next big advance in treating myriad mental disorders. So the best and brightest in medicine, psychiatry and science really saw this as having that kind of potential,” Ansin said. “But unfortunately, as I’ve learned in business, timing is sometimes more important than anything.”

In 1970, Nixon signed the Controlled Substances Act, Ansin says, prohibiting many psychedelics in the United States and classifying them as Schedule I controlled substances, the same category as heroin, stymying research. And he credits the late Roland Griffiths, an American neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins, for jumpstarting this, the latest era of psychedelics science. Griffiths passed away last year at 77, but launched in a late-career mission to better understand these drugs, including helping terminally ill cancer patients.

“I respect the scientific method and the importance of proving these things are safe and work. But at the same time, despite the government’s best efforts, we lose a veteran on average every hour to suicide,” Ansin added. “What the research is showing is that some of these compounds can really prevent those from taking those lives.”

Soon Ansin pivoted to talking about ketamine, which is legal for doctors to prescribe, though the FDA hasn't approved it for mental health treatment. Admittedly, Ansin himself was skeptical of the drug. But now, after doing his due diligence, he’s convinced of its therapeutic power. But he emphasizes that there are no magic pills and any drug needs be administered in tandem with therapy. “This is psychedelic-assisted therapy,” he said.

Ansin launched Healing Hearts Changing Minds in 2022 with a small staff, including veteran psychedelics researcher Alex Belser and lawyer Andrea Alessandro. Ansin calls himself and his leadership “conductors.” They aren’t experts, but their job is to identify the best leaders and give them the tools they need to succeed. They put out an initial RFP and were shocked to receive 50 proposals. This was an early sign for Ansin that the demand for research funding far exceeded the supply.

Last fall, the foundation made $550,000 in grants to seven grantees, all focused on helping train LGBTQIA+ psychedelic therapists and facilitators to become healers in their communities. This first batch of grantees mixes large institutions and small grassroots groups, including Access to Doorways, which works with queer and BIPOC communities; Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics; Flourish: a Research Collaboration Between Columbia University and Golden Psychology; and Heroic Hearts Project, which works with veterans dealing with PTSD and other trauma.

Diverse communities and looking ahead

“There is no gold standard in terms of, ‘this is the right way to train facilitators in psychedelics.’ That’s how early we are. So we said, let’s choose seven of the best programs, and see what they do,” Ansin explained. So while Flourish might be taking a more traditional research approach that can be replicated by other universities and government agencies, another group is following an Afrocentric facilitation model.

Ansin has targeted the LGBTQIA+ community to start, in part because of his father, who came out as gay in the 1970s. Ansin also has a trans child. “It’s personal for me,” Ansin said. “I’ve witnessed my own child, Indigo, endure a difficult transition into a nonbinary adult. Thanks to the ongoing support they received, though, they can now report that they are ‘living their best life,’” Ansin wrote in an op-ed last year.

There’s a beauty in the fact that philanthropy can impact large swaths of society, and there’s also something special about focusing on the community that you know best. He notes that he’s had the car and the boat, and seemingly everything he’s ever wanted. But he’s never been happier than he is now, giving away money and making impact.

Just in the past 12 months, other philanthropists have stepped up in the psychedelics space, including Steve and Alexandra Cohen, who made a $5 million gift to MAPS last June, as well as TOMS founder Blake Mycoskie, who penned a Newsweek article and made a $100 million pledge in support of research into the medical and mental health benefits of psychedelics.

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