Principles

Convergent is committed to fostering high-ambition coordinated science and technology projects. Our mission is to launch organizations that build scientific products that seed ecosystems and drive scaled revolutions.

1. Maximize public benefit impact for each FRO.
2. Allow FROs to grow quickly, operate independently and make the scientific and organizational decisions that ensure their success.
3. Meet funder expectations, adhering to grant agreements and contracts.
4. Run an excellent nonprofit. Be compliant with local legal requirements.

Structure and Governance

Each FRO is incorporated as a subsidiary under Convergent Research’s nonprofit umbrella. Convergent helps form the FRO entity with the FRO founders as officers.

Each FRO is launched with employment, benefits, payroll, and key operational systems in place. This means teams can onboard hires in weeks instead of months, purchase equipment on timelines that match experimental needs, and deploy funds efficiently from the start.

A FRO can be launched from the US or UK:

<aside> 📜

Each FRO has the following governance board and advisory boards:

1. Governance Board: formal board consisting of 3 directors, including one Convergent appointee, one FRO appointee, and one independent mutually trusted third director. The Board meets quarterly with formal reporting and monitors the overall health of the organization including FRO CEO performance evaluations, executive salary, and FRO progress and strategy.
2. Impact Committee:  3 - 7 member group that advises Convergent and the FRO on FRO paths to larger impact, post-FRO transition pathways and IP outlicensing, with the goal of maximizing the public benefit of the FRO’s outputs. The Impact Committee has representation from the FRO’s founders, as well as mutually trusted outside experts.
3. Scientific Advisory Board: a group of technical advisors that provide not only scientific advice, but can help with external advocacy and ecosystem building.

A FRO may have additional advisory boards as it sees fit.

</aside>

Convergent's governance infrastructure allows FROs to navigate crises while staying true to their mission. For funders, this governance layer provides accountability without micromanagement, while allowing teams to retain speed of execution.

We have helped FROs navigate both opportunities and challenges that can derail many startups. When technical approaches needed fundamental pivots, we facilitated board-level decisions about scope changes and managed funder expectations through the transition. When founder dynamics became untenable or an executive needed to be replaced, we provided the governance framework and legal support to navigate these sensitive situations. We have supported FROs through high-stakes partnership discussions and licensing negotiations.

Operational Support

While FROs are responsible for running their organizations (managing budgets, recruiting and hiring, fundraising, etc.), Convergent provides active support in several areas including HR, legal and finance, and guidance in others (branding, strategy, etc.). It is important for a FRO to have a full time operational point of contact for interacting with the Convergent ops support team.

Outside of finance, legal, recruiting, and HR platforms, FROs have quite a bit of flexibility to choose which tools and platforms they work with.

We have experience operating 10 FROs with employees across 13 different countries. Our role is to enable new FROs (provided they are responsive, organized, and decisive) to very quickly be able to do things like: