The Talent Investment Foundation (TIF) aims to provide funding to enable high-potential and ambitious autistics to pursue their plans as well as to support the autism community with an alternative source of sustainable funding.
1) Community Scholarships: Sponsor autistics to obtain formal qualifications that can increase their earning capacity. They will then serve a community bond where they provide services based on their new formal qualifications for needy families in the autism community.
2) Startup Seed Funding: Invest in autistics who are starting new businesses as venture capitalists.
3) Community Investment Funding: Invest in promising autism community projects that can provide financial returns
4) Research Funding: Invest in promising autism community projects that can have a huge strategic impact; retain intellectual property rights to use the fruits of the research
5) Visionary Funding: Autistics who seek to pursue a worthy and strategic cause not covered by the above means may seek to go through this route. While the returns may not be measurable in dollars, they should have a direct and measurable impact on improving the lives of autistic people. A poor example would be a video that raises autism awareness would not qualify especially since there are already so many such videos and a similar additional video will have little impact on the lives of most autistics. A better example would be developing an open-source time management app that is preferred by autistic adults over other available time management tools.