How we make money

Testing and running a registry cost money. Here is where ours comes from, and the rules that keep it from touching results.

Our main funding (no vendor ties)

• Reader contributions. One-off or monthly support from people who want better data to exist. (While our nonprofit incorporation and IRS 501(c)(3) determination are in progress, supporter contributions go directly toward blind lab testing and hosting costs and are not tax-deductible as charitable contributions.)
• Grants. From foundations and funders that support open, patient-led research.
• Paid data access. The de-identified data is free to read. Researchers who want bulk exports or support can pay for that service. Paying never changes what the data says.
• Community-funded testing. Readers can chip in to test a batch, bought under the Open Peptide Standard. The batch is still chosen by our published rule, and the result is published either way.

Right now the project is self-funded by Adam.

Where donations and membership funds go

Our commitment is to keep the vast majority of all contributions and sponsorship revenue going directly to blind ISO/IEC 17025 batch testing and observational peptide research, while equipping and running the physical chain-of-custody infrastructure required before the first two-vial retail batch is purchased:

• Phase 1 — Pre-Purchase Chain-of-Custody Cold-Storage Setup (funded first before buying vials): Because our Testing Standard requires logging and freezing Vial B at -20°C the day a blind retail order arrives, early contributions first equip our intake station with a dedicated manual-defrost -20°C retention freezer, a continuous NIST-traceable Wi-Fi temperature data logger, a LiFePO4 UPS battery backup (with emergency generator support), and tamper-evident cryoboxes.
• Phase 2 — Ongoing Blind Batch Testing & Ethics Oversight (primary ongoing allocation): Once the -20°C retention setup is online, the vast majority of donations and sponsorships go straight to anonymous two-vial retail purchases, ISO/IEC 17025 laboratory panels (RP-HPLC, LC-MS identity, net peptide content, and USP <85> endotoxin), and independent commercial IRB review.
• Lean operations & intake staffing: Covers utilities, hosting, insulated cold-pack re-shipping supplies, and minimal intake staff to receive packages, photograph and log unopened vials, manage cold-storage retention inventory (held 6–12 months at -20°C), and re-ship blind samples to contracted laboratories. Every quarter, our exact revenue and expense breakdown is published on Test results.

Personal supporter memberships ($10 / $25 / $100 per month)

Individual readers can back independent batch testing and evidence reviews through a monthly personal membership. To protect our vendor firewall and future 501(c)(3) tax-deductibility, memberships never include discounts or coupons on commercial peptide products; instead, supporter perks focus on public recognition (or anonymous listing if preferred), batch-queue nomination votes, and member discounts on Open Peptide Project educational publications, annual data compendiums, and research symposiums:

Tax & firewall note: While our Oklahoma nonprofit incorporation and IRS 501(c)(3) filing are in progress, personal memberships are not tax-deductible. Once 501(c)(3) status is active, low-cost member benefits within IRS token thresholds allow contributions to remain fully tax-deductible, or deductible less the fair-market value of any tangible benefit claimed.

Open-access research & laboratory publication fees (post-501(c)(3))

Once our 501(c)(3) nonprofit determination and editorial review board are established, independent laboratories, clinicians, and academic researchers will be able to apply for Research & Laboratory Membership or submit original analytical method validations, stability studies, and observational peptide research to our open-access publication series:

• Fee covers peer review & open-access production, never acceptance: Like established nonprofit open-access journals (e.g., PLOS ONE or BMJ Open), accepted manuscripts or participating laboratory/research members pay a transparent, flat Article Processing Charge (APC) / Peer-Review & Publication Fee to cover independent methodological review, statistical auditing, copyediting, DOI registration, and permanent open-access hosting. Paying a fee never guarantees acceptance.
• Free for readers forever: Charging submitting laboratories or institutional research groups an open-access publication or membership fee qualifies as mission-related 501(c)(3) program revenue and keeps every published paper, chromatogram, and evidence review 100% free to the public without paywalls.

Vendor sponsorship & advertising firewall

If we accept limited vendor sponsorship in the future, we do not use affiliate links, and Peptide Hall (which is owned by a family member of the project lead) never advertises or sponsors here (see Disclosure). Any future sponsorship or advertising policy is subject to independent legal counsel review before implementation.

These rules apply without exceptions:

1. We choose batches by a published rule: the batches most used in the registry, plus random picks. Never because a vendor asked or paid.
2. Results are published automatically within 7 days of the lab report arriving. One retest rule, stated in advance, applies to everyone.
3. No ads on test results, library, or registry pages. Nothing on a results or library page links to a vendor.
4. Batch grades attach strictly to the tested batch, never to a vendor. The Open Peptide Project does not certify, endorse, grade, or penalize vendors.
5. Sponsors get no preview of results, no right to respond before publication, and can’t remove or delay a result by pulling funding.
6. Any sponsorship is clearly labeled and never looks like our test results or library content.

What happens when a batch is tested

Every test result is published with its batch number and test date, pass or fail. Grades belong strictly to the tested sample from that batch—never to a vendor or brand across batches (see Testing standard):

• A+ (≥98.0% RP-HPLC purity, 90.0%–110.0% content): Exceeds standard; eligible for the Pharma-comparable impurity flag when no single unidentified impurity exceeds 0.5% (and identity & endotoxin pass).
• Pass (96.0%–97.9% RP-HPLC purity, 90.0%–110.0% content): Meets standard (identity & endotoxin pass); any single unidentified impurity >1.0% is flagged on the batch report.
• Caution (92.0%–95.9% RP-HPLC purity, or content 80.0%–89.9% / 110.1%–120.0%): Below passing purity or content tolerance; published with a Caution badge on the batch report.
• Fail (<92.0% RP-HPLC purity, content <80.0% or >120.0%, failed LC-MS identity, or failed endotoxin/sterility): Fails standard; published immediately on the batch report.

Proof, not promises

• Every fail is published, every time.
• Revenue by source, including any share from sponsors, is published every quarter.
• A public, dated log shows when each lab report arrived and when it went up, so anyone can see nothing was held back.

Quarterly revenue breakdowns and the public lab-report arrival log are published on our Test results page.

Sponsorship & advertising rate card

We offer flat-rate monthly sponsorship placements strictly on non-editorial overview surfaces (Home bottom, About, How we make money, and our monthly Lab & Evidence Digest)—never on Evidence Library compound pages, Batch Test Results, Testing Standard, or Registry pages, and never tied to affiliate commissions or cost-per-click. Sponsorship revenue funds our general blind testing pool and end-to-end testing operations (anonymous retail purchase, receiving, chain-of-custody photography and documentation, cold retention storage, insulated reshipping, ISO/IEC 17025 lab panels, and IRB/registry operations).

Additional pass-through & institutional options: Single-batch blind pool underwriting ($550 / batch all-in for Core HPLC + LC-MS + content, or $700 / batch with USP <85> endotoxin; covers anonymous two-vial retail purchase, intake receiving & photographic chain-of-custody logging, cold retention storage, insulated re-shipping, and ISO/IEC 17025 lab fees) and cleaned, de-identified institutional research exports once Stage 2 cohorts publish ($750 / export or $2,000 / yr). Under IRS rules (IRC § 513(i)), passive “Qualified Sponsorship” acknowledgments (name, logo, and factual description without comparative claims or calls to action) are structured to remain tax-exempt once 501(c)(3) status is active.

How blind batch underwriting works (no vendor-supplied vials)

Sponsors and vendors never provide, select, or ship their own vials, because any vendor-submitted sample can be cherry-picked (“golden-vialed”) and would break chain of custody. Every underwritten test follows five strict steps:

1. Funds go into the general blind testing pool, not to a hand-picked sample: Sponsorship and pool contributions cover the full all-in cost of anonymous two-vial retail purchase, receiving and intake labor, photographic chain-of-custody documentation, cold retention storage, insulated re-shipping, and the contracted ISO/IEC 17025 laboratory invoice.
2. We select batches by our published rule: Batches are chosen strictly from what registry participants report using most plus random pulls from the public request queue—never because an underwriter paid or asked to test a specific product.
3. We buy the vials anonymously at retail like a regular customer: The Open Peptide Project (or a designated blind shopper) orders sealed vials directly from the public retail storefront using an ordinary consumer shipping address and payment method so the seller never knows the order is going to a lab.
4. We log two-vial chain of custody and ship blind to our contracted ISO/IEC 17025 lab: Our intake team photographs the unopened mailer, vial label, lot/batch number, and cap seal on arrival, retains Vial B sealed in cold storage for re-verification if needed, and ships Vial A under a blind project sample ID (OPP-YYYY-NNN) to our contracted ISO/IEC 17025 laboratory.
5. The lab sends the Certificate of Analysis straight to us, and we publish within 7 days: We log the arrival timestamp on Test results and publish the full COA and raw chromatogram within 7 days—whether the batch scores A+, Pass, Caution, or Fail—while the underwriter receives their fenced SPONSORED pool acknowledgment credit.