The trials tell us it worked. Someone has to ask what happened.
Small grants for the interpretive work — phenomenological, hermeneutic, depth-oriented — that can say what happened and what it meant, where the numbers can only register that something did.
Not yet open for applications.
The Vanguard Grants are designed and published, and not yet funded. Three things have to be true before the first call opens: nonprofit status, a seated review panel, and $10,000 in the fund. You can see exactly where each of those stands at the bottom of this page. Nothing here is offered as though it already exists.
The field is producing data faster than understanding
A randomized trial can tell you whether something worked. It is poorly built to tell you what happened, what it meant, or why it held. That is interpretive work — and almost nobody pays for it.
The question underneath this program is a single one: what actually happens when a person comes home to themselves, and what shape does that take? Psychedelic Vets exists to help veterans come all the way home. This is that same sentence, asked as a research question.
The money entering this field is going to institutions — tens of millions to universities and drug developers. None of it reaches a doctoral candidate who needs four thousand dollars for transcription and participant incentives. The dollars here are small because qualitative research is cheap. That is precisely why nobody funds it.
The first cycle opens at $10,000
Not a deadline and not a countdown — a condition. One seed grant fully funded, with enough behind it to be confident of a second. When the fund gets there, the call opens and we say so.
$0 of $10,000
35¢ of every dollar contributed to Psychedelic Vets goes here. See the full allocation →
Seven priorities
The first two are what this fund exists for. The rest are gaps the 2026 scoping review names as under-explored, and they are fully in scope.
Meaning-making and moral injury
What ruptured, what repaired, and what the person understands themselves to have done and undergone — in their own account, in their own frame.
The shape of coming home
The archetypal, mythic, and developmental structure of return. Not whether symptoms decreased, but what kind of journey this is and what arriving looks like.
Significant others, family, caregivers
What happens to the people around someone going through this. Named in the review as under-examined.
Integration, aftercare, and difficult experiences
Systematically under-reported, and the area where careful description does the most good.
Longer-term durability
What remains at six, twelve, twenty-four months — in participants' words rather than a follow-up score.
Therapist and facilitator perspectives
The other side of the room, rarely asked.
Naturalistic and non-clinical settings
Microdosing, community and ceremonial contexts, self-directed use — where most of the behaviour is and least of the research.
Open about the lens. Immovable about the method.
Interpretative phenomenological analysis · hermeneutic and descriptive phenomenology · reflexive thematic analysis · narrative inquiry · depth-psychological and archetypal analysis · heuristic and organic inquiry · grounded theory · case-based work · mixed methods with a substantial interpretive component · secondary analysis of existing qualitative data.
Transpersonal psychologists, scholars of contemplative and indigenous traditions, and depth-oriented researchers are exactly who this fund is looking for — people trained to interpret rather than only to code. What we ask in return is craft. The method list above is the standard, and it is the one thing here we won't bend on.
Small, fast, and low-friction on purpose
A grant this size should not cost more to apply for than it is worth.
| Tier | Amount | What it pays for |
|---|---|---|
| Seed | $2,500–$7,500 | Transcription, participant incentives, analysis software, research-assistant hours, translation, open-access fees |
| Project | $10,000–$15,000 | A discrete qualitative study end to end. Opens once annual grantmaking capacity passes roughly $40,000. |
Who can apply
- Doctoral candidates and postdoctoral researchers
- Early-career faculty within five years of a terminal degree
- Independent and community-based researchers with no institutional affiliation
- Teams whose lead investigator meets one of the above
- Researchers with no platform. A thin public footprint is usually a fact about temperament, not about quality. Review is built so it costs you nothing.
Who can't
- Anyone serving on the review panel that cycle
- Board members and their immediate families
- The founder and Executive Director, for the first two cycles
- Clinical trials, drug administration, or anything requiring us to have a role in obtaining a substance
Applications run to four pages: the question, the method, the budget, the timeline, and one paragraph on why this work isn't otherwise funded. One cycle a year to begin with, open for 45 days. Every applicant gets a decision and brief feedback — including the ones we turn down. Veteran-relevant work is preferred but not required; the gap is field-wide, and a grant program nobody can apply to helps no one.
An independent panel, a published rubric
Three to five qualitative researchers, named publicly, serving staggered terms. The panel scores and recommends; the board approves. The board may decline a recommendation but may not substitute a different applicant.
| Criterion | Weight |
|---|---|
| Methodological soundness | 30% |
| Fit to a stated priority area | 25% |
| Marginal impact — would this happen anyway? | 20% |
| Feasibility within 18 months | 15% |
| Relevance to veterans | 10% |
The founder cannot apply for the first two cycles
Psychedelic Vets is led by a researcher whose own work sits squarely inside these priority areas. That is a conflict, and the answer to a conflict is not a paragraph asserting good intentions. He is ineligible for the first two cycles outright. From the third, any application is disclosed publicly, reviewed by a panel he has no hand in selecting, and voted on by a board he recuses himself from. Reviewers with a shared institution, a recent collaboration, or a supervisory relationship recuse the same way.
Written in from the first cycle
On coverage
- Being interviewed is not a path to funding
- A grant does not buy coverage, and declining an interview costs a grantee nothing
- Sponsors have no input into priorities, the panel, or any decision
On the research
- Grantees keep full independence — we don't review findings before publication
- We publish null and critical results exactly as we publish positive ones
- We never fund our own research site; Microdosing Vets is institutional research and is not a grantee
Every grant is announced publicly in The Debrief the week it is made — recipient, amount, project, and any conflict disclosed. A permanent list of every grant ever made will live on this page.
We'll tell you when the call opens
A separate list, used for exactly one thing: notifying qualitative researchers when a Vanguard cycle opens. A few emails a year at most, and never mixed with anything else we send.
Signing up is not an application and gives no advantage in review.
What has to be true first
Updated as each one lands.
Thirteen studies. Let's make it fourteen.
The first Vanguard grant is roughly four thousand dollars and a researcher who would otherwise not have done the work. That's the whole thing.
The Vanguard Grants are a planned program of Psychedelic Vets and are not yet open for applications. Psychedelic Vets is building toward nonprofit status; until that is in place, contributions are not tax-deductible. Educational only — not medical advice, not an endorsement of any study or provider, and never facilitation of obtaining any substance.
