Tinnitus Quest is established in Germany since 26 June 2024 as a “Verein”, which is a non-profit entity. As such, we do not have any commercial aims. All our activities and spending are geared towards our mission of silencing tinnitus through funding cure-focused research.

We have applied for “ANBI” status in the Netherlands, which would allow us to accept tax deductible donations there.

We have also established a non-profit entity in the United States and have applied for a 501c3 designation there, which would allow us to accept tax deductible donations in the US.

Our income currently comes 100% from donations by individuals. Our donations come from high-net-worth individuals, typically those who suffer from tinnitus themselves, and from online crowdfunding through our website. We may in the future explore other sources of income, such as corporate sponsorships.

We are working on building a counter on the homepage of our website that shows the amount raised so far towards our first goal of USD 1M, which is the amount that would allow us to open our grants program and kick off several research projects.

We already have pop-ups on the website that show recent donations made. These are real donation amounts made by real people, but without showing their full names, to protect their privacy.

We are committed to being a lean organization with limited overhead. Our aim is for 80% of our income from donations to go directly to research – the feasibility of this will depend on how much we can raise; the more donations, the lower we can keep the % of overhead costs.

The 80% rule does not apply to 2024, because of the significant start-up costs that are associated with founding a new organization, such as legal and accounting fees, website building, equipment and software costs, social media ads, and more. However, these start-up costs were all financed by Sven Köllmann, co-founder and Executive Board member, thus allowing donations from other people to be earmarked predominantly for research.

Tinnitus Quest has not yet started disbursing funds for research. We are currently in the fundraising stage and hope to open our grants program in early 2025. Our aim is to raise USD 1M for the first round of grants. Over the years, we hope to ramp up this number to several million in grants disbursed per year.

You can learn more about the type of research we aim to fund on our Research page. We are in the process of defining specific rules and requirements for research projects to get funding from us – we will publish these on the website once ready.

Tinnitus Quest does not own or rent any office space, allowing us to keep our overhead low. We also do not employ any full-time staff, though we may consider doing so in the future if it helps us fulfill our mission and our budget allows it.

We do pay modest compensation to several people for tasks like financial administration, project management, public relations, website maintenance, video editing, and social media. We believe that an organization run entirely on volunteer efforts is unsustainable and risky. That said, more hours for Tinnitus Quest are spent on a volunteer basis than on a compensation basis, and we are continuously expanding our network of volunteers.

If you would like to volunteer, you can email us at info@tinnitusquest.com and outline your skills and interests, ideally attaching a CV or LinkedIn profile.

Decisions on grant allocation are taken by our Executive Board, which is composed of 3 patients and 2 researchers. Input and advice are provided by our Scientific Advisory Board, composed of scientists, and our Patient Advisory Board, composed of tinnitus patients. You can learn more about the people involved here – click on each name to see their bio.

Our Innovation Board is working on designing a framework for our grants program (what and who are we funding) and a process for grant applications, disbursement, and monitoring. We will publish this information on the website once ready. We are aiming to open our grants program in the first half of 2025, depending on how successful we are by then with fundraising.

Broadly speaking, our grantmaking process will consist of an open process where any qualified researcher can apply. Bureaucracy will be kept to a minimum. For example, instead of filling in long forms, we will ask researchers to pitch their ideas to us in a (video) meeting, following a business-like approach. We will, however, require grantees to report to us on how the money is spent, and there will be guidelines for what kinds of expenses are allowed.

No. Their role is to help make decisions on where we should allocate funding, based on their scientific expertise. We would not however prohibit researchers affiliated with them – for example, PhD students working with the researchers who are part of Tinnitus Quest – from applying to our grants program. In that case, the board member with the affiliation to the applicant will be recused from the decision-making process.

Having been founded in July 2024 in Germany, we will release our first annual report in 2025, in compliance with relevant German accounting standards.

If you would like to make a sizeable donation, please contact us first at info@tinnitusquest.com. We can then discuss the best process and help ensure tax effective donations, transnationally if needed.

For donations over USD 50,000 you can request to direct the funds to a particular area, provided it fits our general philosophy for the type of research that we want to fund (see our Research page).