2023 End of Year Update
Published on December 20, 2023 by Heidi Baumgartner
Dear collaborators and contributors to ManyBabies,
You are receiving an automated copy of this end-of-year update because you directly contributed or made a payment to ManyBabies (MB). As we say goodbye to 2023, I would like to share a bit about what MB has accomplished in the past year and some plans for the future.
Accomplishments and Challenges
2023 was a very exciting and productive year for MB! Over 100 developmental labs located in dozens of countries around the world collected data from over 2000 infants and toddlers as part of the ManyBabies 2 (Theory of Mind), ManyBabies 3 (Rule Learning), ManyBabies 4 (Social Evaluation), MB1-Africa, and MB1N (Native Languages) projects. ManyBabies 5 (Hunter & Ames Model of Infant Attention) submitted a Stage 1 Registered Report, MB3-NIRS is preparing to do the same, and ManyBabies 6 (Neonatal & Early Imitation) made significant progress on study design. We also celebrated the publication of the MB-ManyWebcams and MB-Demographics papers, as well as our collaborative Guide to Big Team Science. In addition, MB1T (Test-Retest), MB1-Meta, and MB1L (Language follow-up) all submitted final manuscripts for review. Last but not least, along with the Psychological Science Accelerator, ManyPrimates, and ManyDogs, we organized the second annual Big Team Science Conference, which had over 450 registrants and raised over $2,800 USD – nearly doubling the revenue of last year’s conference!
These accomplishments have all been achieved despite the obvious challenge faced by our network: a lack of continuous and sustained funding. We are extremely grateful for our dedicated team of volunteer contributors, but our goal is always to find a way to raise money – via public funder, private foundations, and/or individual donations) to support our projects and make participation more accessible and equitable.
Funding
In early 2023, we entered into a fiscal sponsorship agreement with the Open Collective Foundation (view our financial collective page here). This relationship allowed us to manage our share of the proceeds from the 2022 and 2023 Big Team Science Conference and work with an operating budget and accept donations for the first time! It also gave us free access to a Google Workspace linked to our manybabies.org domain, which allowed us to consolidate our project listservs and manage files via a shared Google Drive, and access to non-profit pricing for select services. Our account balance and transactions are publicly available on our OCF page, but here is a summary of how we’ve used our funds so far:
- An annual subscription for the manybabies.org web domain.
- A monthly subscription to Mailchimp, which allows us to efficiently reach our growing listserv (currently 1000+ subscribers) with a monthly newsletter and other network updates.
- An annual subscription to Airtable, which we are using to better organize and manage our network of contributors, labs, and projects in a relational database.
Plans for 2024
In 2024, we plan to further explore how the OCF platform will allow us to (a) accept contributions from donors in a tax-exempt manner, (b) create invoices and accept gifts, (c) distribute funds internationally, and (d) set up project-specific funding pages. Stay tuned for announcements via our monthly newsletter, updates on our website, and the third annual Big Team Science Conference (fall 2024)!
Thank You!
ManyBabies could not exist without the support of our amazing community of contributors. Thank you for a wonderful 2023, and we can’t wait to continue our work together in 2024!
Best,
Heidi Baumgartner
ManyBabies Executive Director