1) The MacArthur Foundation:

New Competition for a $100 Million Grant: Round Two of 100&Change
MacArthur today announced it will launch a new round of its 100&Change competition for a single $100 million grant to help solve one of the world's most critical social challenges. 100&Change remains open to organizations and collaborations working in any field, anywhere in the world. Proposals must identify a problem and offer a solution that promises significant and durable change; they will be accepted online only from April 30 to August 6, 2019.
With an initial minimum grant of $10 million, the custom competitions will use an open, transparent process to source, vet, and evaluate proposals. This level of funding allows applicants to think big and propose ideas designed to achieve transformational change. Lever for Change will also help strengthen top applicants' proposals, so they can more effectively absorb and deploy large grants for impact.

Building on the success of 100&Change, MacArthur is creating Lever for Change, a new nonprofit committed to unlocking philanthropic capital and helping donors put their resources to work to accelerate social change.
"We set out to do something bold three years ago when we launched 100&Change—address problems and support solutions that are radically different in scale, scope, and complexity," said MacArthur President Julia Stasch. "We learned there is no shortage of compelling ideas with the potential for tremendous social impact. The success of 100&Change led us to create Lever for Change, which seeks to connect donors with organizations and collaborations with the potential to deliver the impactful and inspirational change they both dream of helping to bring about."
Lever for Change aims to drive formidable change by unlocking philanthropic capital to address some of the world's most pressing issues. Lever for Change will connect donors with high-impact philanthropic opportunities by administering custom competitions or by matching donors with vetted proposals from such competitions. It will develop a pipeline of projects and organizations that can effectively address significant social challenges at scale.
"Lever for Change complements and expands the emerging field of collaborative philanthropy," said Cecilia Conrad, MacArthur's Managing Director who leads 100&Change and is the CEO of Lever for Change. "We are enabling more philanthropists to engage in 'big bet' approaches by providing them with tools and resources to maximize their giving. We will scale and democratize philanthropy by connecting funders to powerful solutions and problem solvers."
At its essence, Lever for Change is a new type of philanthropic infrastructure, facilitating more and better giving.
With an initial minimum grant of $10 million, the custom competitions will use an open, transparent process to source, vet, and evaluate proposals. This level of funding allows applicants to think big and propose ideas designed to achieve transformational change. Lever for Change will also help strengthen top applicants' proposals, so they can more effectively absorb and deploy large grants for impact.
"Lever for Change will facilitate connections between philanthropists and organizations developing effective solutions at scale," said Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn. "It is this scale mentality to social impact and problem solving that gives this effort great potential for making a difference, and why I am excited to support it."
Hoffman is on the Lever for Change Board, along with MIT Media Lab Director Joi Ito and outgoing MacArthur President Julia Stasch, who serves as the Board Chair. Lever for Change is being co-funded with a $20 million grant from MacArthur and a $5 million commitment from Hoffman, who is providing an additional $5 million for technology support, as needed.
MacArthur co-designed Lever for Change with the Bridgespan Group, whose research identified barriers, such as perceived risk and lack of staff capacity, that impede wealthy donors from fully realizing their aspirations to contribute significantly to social change. Lever for Change will continue to work with Bridgespan across a range of strategic and operational activities.
"Many philanthropists struggle to productively invest large sums of money to affect social change. High-impact opportunities can be frustratingly hard to identify, evaluate, implement, and monitor," said Tom Tierney, chairman and co-founder of Bridgespan. "Lever for Change is enabling donors to support impact opportunities, driven by exceptional social sector leaders. At its essence, Lever for Change is a new type of philanthropic infrastructure, facilitating more and better giving."
2) The Gates Foundation
I will initiate a discussion in the next couple of month with The Gates Foundation which funded the 2010 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Study whose result was, as stated above and below:
"The 2010 Global Burden of Disease Study funded by the Gates Foundation found (Published: Dec 13, 2012) —much to the surprise of many—that neither cancer nor diabetes were the biggest problems as far as the global burden of disease…it was spine impairment.”
And,
The leaders of the North American Spine Society (NASS) cited a recent Gates Foundation report as they announced the new North American Spine Foundation (NASF). Says Michael Reed, the executive director of the newly launched the foundation, “The #1 disease burden, worldwide, with respect to economic and social impact, is now low back pain (neck pain is #4). Combined, low back pain and neck pain outpace diabetes, cancer, cardiac, and mental health problems with respect to years lived with disability. Care fragmentation and this growing spine disability crisis have created an imperative for change; an imperative that will require widespread collaboration and unified action.” January 5th, 2015
Our project fits the Gates Foundation funding/healthcare/world-wide humanitarian grant qualifications. I welcome the assistance from any Mekanika Shareholder who has worked with The Gates Foundation, or could make an introduction to The Gates Foundation or any other Foundation they are familiar with.
3) European Union/European Commission Funding Opportunities
“Horizon 2020 is the biggest EU Research and Innovation programme ever with nearly €80 billion of funding available over 7 years (2014 to 2020) – in addition to the private investment that this money will attract. It promises more breakthroughs, discoveries and world-firsts by taking great ideas from the lab to the market.
Horizon 2020 is the financial instrument implementing the Innovation Union, a Europe 2020 flagship initiative aimed at securing Europe's global competitiveness.” [50]
4) A NEW Equity investor, Venture Capital/Hedge Funds,
Mekanika will leverage the MacArthur Project or other foundation grant to raise about $15MM - $20MM in equity financing in Mekanika, Inc. to cover additional operational expenses, and investment in Mekanika’s carbon fiber composite implants, and the acquisition/investment in new patient ‘aftercare’ products and our own new product development. And, the original $100MM, combination of investment and foundation funding, for Ortho-Gnostics, Inc., to complete the described Project.
5) Equity-Based Crowdfunding:
One other option to fund this Project is Equity-Based Crowdfunding – “the practice of funding a project or venture by raising many small amounts of money from a large number of people, typically via the Internet”.[51] The Ortho-Gnostics Inc., project could be crowdfunded on a global scale since it is a global project addressing a global problem: “The #1 disease burden, worldwide, with respect to economic and social impact, is low-back-pain”. This would be an Equity-Based-Crowdfunding[52] where we would sell upwards of a 35%-45% equity position in Ortho-Gnostics, with Mekanika, Inc., retaining a 65%-55% ownership, respectively, for example.
In further consideration of Crowdfunding, I feel that this type of project fits the Equity-Crowdfunding model; i.e., to foster awareness of the proposed clinical study and especially the grassroots SpineCareCenters that will be operating globally, these are ‘free’ rebab centers for low-back-pain patients. Everybody has had back pain; here are some choice USA numbers/stats: I have referenced both the 2004 CDC Report [53]and 2015 CDC Report[54], and extrapolated the 2006 numbers to 2016 Census numbers[55] :
· When asked about four common types of pain, respondents of a National Institute of Health Statistics survey indicated that low back pain was the most common (27%), followed by severe headache or migraine pain (15%), neck pain (15%) and facial ache or pain (4%).
· Back pain is the leading cause of disability in Americans under 45 years old. More than 26 million Americans between the ages of 20-64 experience frequent back pain. In 2016 numbers this equates to __________ Americans in 2016 numbers.
· Adults with low back pain are often in worse physical and mental health than people who do not have low back pain: 28% of adults with low back pain report limited activity due to a chronic condition, as compared to 10% of adults who do not have low back pain. Also, adults reporting low back pain were three times as likely to be in fair or poor health and more than four times as likely to experience serious psychological distress as people without low back pain.
· Etc., etc., there are hundreds of references dating back to the 1990’s to today.
I would almost prefer that this project be crowdfunded since it is a global grassroots problem and the more people that can participate in its success the better; all back-pain patients can become shareholders at some level, including business owners wanting to get their employees back on the job, etc., etc.,

Comments area is located below the References:
References:
[50] European Union/Commission Funding Opportunities
Horizon 2020 is the biggest EU Research and Innovation programme ever with nearly €80 billion of funding available over 7 years (2014 to 2020)
AND:
Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising monetary contributions from a large number of people. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and of alternative finance. In 2015, it was estimated that worldwide over US$34 billion was raised this way.
Equity-Based Crowdfunding: Unlike the donation-based and rewards-based methods, equity-based crowdfunding allows contributors to become part-owners of your company by trading capital for equity shares. As equity owners, your contributors receive a financial return on their investment and ultimately receive a share of the profits in the form of a dividend or distribution.
Dear Shareholders; feel free to comment on the above subject; including any ideas/suggestions that you may have. If warranted, I will respond in the post but I would like as many Mekanika Shareholders as possible to participate.