Mission and governance

Who is behind this

The Foundation is currently the work of a small founding group rather than a seated board. Names and professional backgrounds are being published on this page as each person confirms public attribution, and no biography here will be invented, padded, or borrowed from an advisor who has not agreed to be named.

Reviewers are being recruited in chemistry and peptide synthesis, analytical chemistry, regulatory affairs, clinical research, and law. If you hold relevant credentials and want to be listed here as a reviewer or board candidate, write to the Foundation.

Formation status

Legal name

RUO Foundation

Entity type

Limited liability company

State of incorporation

New York

Founding date

August 28, 2026

Federal tax exemption

501(c)(3) application not yet filed

EIN

not yet published

The Foundation currently operates as a New York limited liability company, not as a tax-exempt nonprofit. Conversion to a nonprofit corporation with a governance board is the intended path, and no 501(c)(3) application has been filed yet. Contributions are therefore not tax deductible, and nothing on this site should be read as claiming charitable status the Foundation does not hold.

How we are funded

Membership fees do not cover the cost of running the Foundation. A $50 USD annual membership pays for examination delivery, payment processing, and part of the curriculum review; it does not pay for laboratory testing, legal review, or staff.

Remaining costs are intended to be met by individual donations and recurring gifts, grants, educational licensing to institutions, and unrestricted gifts. No enrollment or participation fee is charged to sellers, because no seller program is offered at this time.

Rules that keep funding from buying outcomes

• The Foundation does not sell, broker, or recommend research materials, and takes no commission, affiliate revenue, or referral fee from any seller.
• No single funder may provide a controlling share of annual revenue, and funders receive no review of curriculum, examination content, or published findings before release.
• Donations above a published threshold will be disclosed by source category in an annual report.
• Anyone working on curriculum, examination items, or standards discloses financial interests in RUO sellers, laboratories, or manufacturers, and recuses from decisions touching those interests.

Mission

To raise the floor across the research-use-only ecosystem through education, voluntary standards, verification tools, and better documentation, so that participants are informed rather than guessing. Public safety is the governing interest.

Research use only is a label. It is not an education. Thousands of products are sold under that designation, yet there is no widely recognized independent standard defining what an informed purchaser, a responsible reseller, or a credible product record should look like. The Foundation exists to help fill that gap, beginning with peptides and capable of extending to the wider RUO chemical market.

Three principles run through everything published here: education over ignorance, transparency over ambiguity, standards over assumptions.

Independence commitments

• No revenue from the sale, brokerage, or referral of research materials.
• No supplier holds a board seat, veto, or editorial control over curriculum, testing results, or database entries.
• Published conflict-of-interest disclosures for every board member, examiner, and curriculum author.
• Certification decisions are made on examination results alone and are never influenced by who referred a candidate.
• Testing results, once the laboratory program exists, are published whether or not they are commercially convenient.

Intended governance

A nonprofit board with a majority of seats held by people without commercial interest in the RUO market, including designated seats for:

• An analytical or peptide chemist
• A licensed clinician
• A regulatory attorney
• A research-ethics or IRB representative
• A public-member seat with no industry affiliation

Committees for curriculum and examination, standards and testing, ethics and credentialing appeals, and safety reporting.

Analytical testing: what we do and do not do today

The Foundation does not operate a laboratory, does not perform analytical testing, does not commission testing, and does not sell testing services. Mass spectrometry, HPLC, and endotoxin screening appear on this site only as subject matter, so that a reader can interpret a report produced by someone else. See testing and COAs.

A public-safety testing function is a possible long-term direction, not a current program. If it is ever pursued it would be described on its own page, with the accreditation basis, documented methods, and chain of custody stated, and it would be structured so that the entity issuing credentials does not earn revenue from testing the products of the sellers it educates. Nothing of that kind is in place, and no results archive exists.

Evidence agenda

Structured, consistently documented observations from independent research are not a substitute for clinical trials - but they can identify signals worth formal study and can support an eventual investigational pathway. The Foundation's long-term aim is a standardized documentation protocol and observation registry designed with research-ethics input from the start, so that any data collected could withstand scientific and regulatory scrutiny.

The Foundation makes no claim that any material described on this site is safe or effective, and it does not represent that any regulatory approval is pending. See the legal and risk page.

Get involved

The Foundation is seeking board candidates, curriculum reviewers, examination item writers, analytical laboratory partners, and sellers willing to comment on the draft reseller standard.