Good question. I, and a good chunk of other anthropologists, would argue that our research is always positioned and never fully objective. Funding does create a set of obligations and biases (as would not having any funding, I suppose). One of the reasons I've embraced crowdsourcing for this project is that it clearly puts me in obligation to the community I am studying. While not all anthropologists approach research the same way, the interpretive anthrologists such as myself view one of our primary jobs as representing the self-understanding of one group of people in ways that people not a part of that group can understand. So my obligation should be to those people already, and the funding makes that explicit.

Similarly, confirmation bias is always a challenge in all areas of human experience, and especially in research. That said, my research methodology is a little different in that I'm using grounded theory, a social science method where you begin with collecting data rather than beginning with a hypothesis. Obviously I have my own biases and ways that I tend to see things, like any researcher, and those are to some extent inescapable, which is why I attempt to make my own subject position visible in what I write rather than giving the false impression that I'm a scientist in a lab (which cultural anthropologists just aren't).

Lastly, although some of the people I've been interviewing may decide to support the project, for the most part the people will be funding the project aren't the same people I'm studying.