At their peak Kinsey’s grants amounted to half of all RF contributions to the NRC Committee. By 1947 Kinsey’s project was allotted $40,000 annually in RF support.
Kinsey received his first grant of $1,600 in 1941.
Their decision to support Kinsey was a radical move. Prior to their support of Kinsey, Committee members had typically been conservative in their funding decisions, opting to support studies of animal rather than human sexuality. When the BSH ceased operations in 1933, the Committee continued to fund projects with direct support from the RF. Established in 1921, the NRC Committee originally operated with funding from the Bureau of Social Hygiene (BSH). Kinsey’s research was funded by the RF through the National Research Council’s (NRC) Committee for Research in the Problems of Sex. Ultimately, the work transformed American society by challenging American perceptions and attitudes toward sex. Entitled, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, and funded largely by the Rockefeller Foundation (RF), the work was widely read by academic and popular audiences, and inspired both praise and condemnation. In 1948 Alfred Kinsey published his first research findings on human sexuality. World War II & the Rockefeller Foundation.World War I & the Rockefeller Foundation.The International Agricultural Development Service.The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture.