The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation announced Nov. 13, that it will be providing $206.9 million in 2026 to support UW research and the Morgridge Institute for Research, according to Channel 3000.  

This $206.9 million includes WARF’s annual core grant, which remains the same every year, accounting for inflation, and supplemental grants that go toward specific projects on campus, according to WARF Public Affairs Associate Kevin Walters. 

“We support things like special professorships, graduate student fellowships and recruitment and retention [of researchers],” Walters said. 

As an independent nonprofit organization, WARF works closely with the chancellor’s office and the vice chancellor for research’s office to determine how funding is allocated, according to Walters. 

WARF oversees a technology transfer office that works with laboratories on campus that have ideas with commercial applications to patent these ideas and license them to another company to get them out to the public, according to Walters.

Funding is allocated towards projects, people and facilities, as well as the Morgridge Institute for Research and the operational functionals report for patenting, licensing and entrepreneur support services, according to Walters. Researchers can access funding from WARF a number of ways, Walters said.   

“The most prominent example is something called the Fall Research Competition, which faculty and staff on campus can submit a proposal to the Fall Research Competition, and they can get money from our grants to support their proposals,” Walters said. 

In exchange, companies pay royalties to WARF that get invested in order to fund annual grants, according to Walters. He said that they are celebrating their 100th anniversary of investment this year. 

The core of WARF’s existence is to promote, encourage and aid research at UW, and that is written in WARF’s incorporation documents, according to Walters. 

“The very fact that we are able to give this money to the university, and we know it’s going to go support research and brilliant researchers on campus and a great university that’s highly ranked, that’s the reward in and of itself,” Walters said. “The ultimate purpose of really everything WARF does is to support the university and specifically its research.”