The Mensa Foundation wants to fund more research into intelligence and giftedness. As our philanthropic support grows, we will be able to put more resources directly into the hands of researchers, but we do not have to wait for a larger research budget to play a larger role in advancing understanding.
We already have research to build from, relationships with scholars working in this space, programs that bring researchers and the Mensa community together, and access to people whose lived experiences can help surface questions worth examining more closely. The opportunity is to use those resources more intentionally, beginning with better questions.
Start With What We Know
Not every interesting question requires a new study. Sometimes the research already exists but has not reached the people who could benefit from it, while in other cases the literature may be mixed, contested, or too limited to support a clear conclusion.
The Foundation can help connect the questions people are asking with what research already tells us while paying attention to where uncertainty or meaningful gaps remain. That approach builds naturally from work already underway.
Our Unmet Needs Study helped us better understand the experiences and needs reported by highly intelligent people who participated in that research. Our recent literature review on giftedness and neurodivergence examined what the existing scholarship tells us while also showing where definitive conclusions remain difficult.
Together, that work points toward a broader role for the Foundation. We can help researchers and the Mensa community better understand what is already known while identifying questions that may deserve further exploration.
Use the Programs We Already Have
Our existing programs can become part of that process. The Mensa Foundation Speaker Series, for example, can do more than introduce people to interesting topics. It can create opportunities to explore questions alongside researchers who have spent years studying them.
We might ask what intelligence explains about a person and what it does not, how culture shapes the way intelligence is understood, or why high intellectual ability does not necessarily translate into wise judgment. Those questions could lead us toward researchers studying wisdom, metacognition, cognition across cultures, or other related areas.
The point would not be to find researchers who confirm what we already think. They may challenge the premise of a question, point us toward evidence we had not considered, or take the conversation somewhere we did not anticipate.
The same thinking can extend to other Foundation programs. The Mensa Foundation Challenge could sometimes bring people together around a question before anyone assumes they know the solution, while our awards and grants could encourage work in areas where meaningful gaps have emerged. We do not need entirely new programs to begin doing this. We can start by using some of the tools we already have differently.
Listen Before We Decide What to Study
Sometimes we also need to listen before we know what question is worth studying. That is one reason qualitative research can be valuable alongside quantitative approaches.
Quantitative methods help researchers measure and identify patterns, while qualitative methods can help illuminate how people interpret and experience the things those measurements describe. Used together, they can help us better understand both what is happening and the questions that may deserve closer examination.
The Foundation can help create more opportunities for researchers and the people whose lives intersect with their work to hear from one another. Facilitated conversations, polls, and other forms of community engagement are not substitutes for rigorous research, and we should not treat what emerges from them as research findings. Their value may simply be helping us recognize a question we had not thought to ask.
Build Toward More Research
Ultimately, this work should help us understand where further research can make a meaningful contribution. When existing scholarship provides a strong answer, we can help communicate it. When the evidence is contested or incomplete, we can help people understand what remains uncertain and why.
When important questions remain unanswered, the Foundation can help make the case for further investigation. That is where greater philanthropic support becomes especially important.
Rather than asking supporters simply to fund “research on intelligence,” we can show what we are trying to understand, why the question matters, what scholars already know, and what additional research could contribute. The more resources we raise, the more opportunities we can create for researchers to pursue worthwhile questions.
When that research produces new knowledge or challenges what we thought we understood, we can bring those findings back to the Mensa community and continue the conversation. In that way, the questions we explore today can help shape the research we are able to support tomorrow.
So, What Should We Be Asking?
The Foundation does not need to have all the questions yet, much less all the answers. What we can do is create a better process for finding them by starting with the research already available, bringing researchers and the Mensa community into conversation, and paying attention when the evidence reaches its limits.
That is a role the Mensa Foundation can begin playing now. We can learn from what is already known, remain curious about what is not, and help create the conditions for the next worthwhile question to be explored.
So, what do you want to understand about intelligence or giftedness?
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