April 17 update to our grantees: We have been monitoring the COVID-19 situation and the impacts of lab closures on wet lab research activities. To ensure that each of our grantees receives the appropriate funds needed at this time, we will be reaching out directly to any grantees who are scheduled for grant payments in the second quarter of 2020 to plan accordingly. We will continue to monitor the situation and, in the coming months, may also be reaching out to grantees expecting grant payments in the third quarter of 2020.
Our thoughts are with everyone in The Mark Foundation community during this challenging and uncertain time.
We at The Mark Foundation are staying abreast of the news and developments worldwide as well as within the scientific community. We understand that, in almost all cases, the response among our scientific partners involves taking swift action to shut down labs and suspend research efforts for some unknown period of time. We also acknowledge the constraints that some of our researchers are facing as they assume full time childcare responsibilities along with setting up systems for home schooling. We are especially concerned about our scientific partners who treat patients as they prepare for the next several weeks and seek to protect some of the most fragile individuals among us amidst challenges such as personal protective equipment shortages.
For our grantees and partners: To relieve some of the administrative burden on our investigators over the next few months, we will be adjusting the deadlines for our upcoming progress reports. We will also be offering to extend the termination dates for grants that will expire in the next few months with the goal of allowing our investigators to resume Mark Foundation projects once it is safe to return to the lab. Because each grant is a unique case, we will be reaching out to those of you who have an approaching progress report deadline or grant termination date to communicate details of the shifted timelines and work with you on any other considerations that this unusual situation may demand. Despite these shifting deadlines for reports, we plan to stay on schedule with upcoming installments of grant payments to your institutions so that you can continue to pay salaries and other outstanding expenses covered by our grants. As the next few weeks to months unfold, we will stay on top of this situation and continue to work with you to ensure that we are taking steps to provide optimal support.
Our hope is that the responses taking place to this unprecedented global situation will allow our scientific partners to return to advancing cancer research in their labs as soon as is safely possible. In the meantime, The Mark Foundation team remains at the ready to support them in any way that we can.
Stay safe. Stay well.