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63.5% of think tanks worldwide reported a lack of funding as a main challenge over the past twelve months. At the same time, 40.5% have no financial reserves or less than three months of operating costs covered. Financial sustainability remains one of the sector’s central concerns.
Yet the same data reveal another equally widespread challenge. Nearly two-thirds of organisations (61.9%) reported at least one people-related challenge—staff retention (23.4%), skills gaps (43.8%), or leadership transition (16.7%). Meanwhile, 81.3% said they need to strengthen at least one core organisational capability: research (47.2%), innovation (49.5%), or strategic planning (50.8%).
What is striking is that these two sets of challenges don’t appear as closely connected as we often assume. Looking at this year’s State of the Sector survey, I compared organisations operating with no financial reserves—or less than three months of operating costs covered—with those holding reserves equivalent to six months or more. The difference in funding challenges was exactly what one would expect: 79.3% of the first group reported lack of funding, compared with 48.0% of the second. When it came to people-related challenges, however, the difference almost disappeared: 60.3% versus 61.2%, with the financially stronger organisations reporting slightly higher rates.
The contrast becomes even clearer when looking only at organisations that no longer reported funding difficulties. Among the 109 think tanks that did not identify lack of funding as a challenge this year, 63.3% still reported at least one people-related challenge, while 80.7% continued to identify research, innovation, or strategic planning as areas requiring further strengthening. In other words, the sector showed almost the same pattern. Even among the most financially secure organisations—those with six months or more of reserves that also reported no funding difficulties (N = 51)—the proportion reporting people-related challenges declined only marginally, to 58.8%.
Within this sample, greater financial stability is not associated with meaningful differences in people-related indicators. That raises a different question: what sustains the intellectual capacity of organisations whose primary mission is to produce evidence?
What funding alone cannot solve
If solving funding challenges does not substantially change the main difficulties organisations face around people and capabilities, are we looking at the whole picture?
We often assume that strengthening an organisation is largely a matter of securing more resources. Yet these data suggest that even when financial resources are available, many of the same difficulties in retaining talent and developing organisational capabilities remain.
My hypothesis is that we are overlooking a dimension still absent from how we assess think tanks: the cognitive capacity of the people who produce evidence. We carefully measure funding levels, publication outputs, and many other organisational indicators. We rarely ask what intellectual conditions the people producing that knowledge actually work under.
That omission matters because the quality of evidence depends, at least in part, on the cognitive conditions under which it is produced.
The State of the Sector survey does not measure stress among teams. It does, however, describe a context that invites closer examination. Financial uncertainty, constant fundraising pressure, the workload associated with small teams, and the need to adapt continuously to political and technological change may together create a set of chronic stressors that shape the everyday reality of many think tanks.
Neuroscience offers a useful perspective for understanding how these conditions may affect the sector’s most important resource: the capacity to learn, think clearly, innovate, and produce rigorous evidence.
What neuroscience adds to the conversation
Chronic stress—fundamentally different from the short-lived pressure of a looming deadline—has well-documented effects on the cognitive functions that make think tank work possible. A neuropsychological review of workplace stress shows that prolonged exposure consistently affects the prefrontal cortex, hippocampus, and amygdala, and that impairments in attention, processing speed, and executive function can persist for years after the original stressor has disappeared. +
This points to an uncomfortable occupational risk that is highly relevant to our field. Cognitive flexibility, working memory, and the ability to think clearly are not simply desirable attributes of a good analyst; they are the very foundation of evidence production.
The encouraging news is that these changes are reversible when the conditions that generate them change. A team’s cognitive capacity is not a fixed characteristic of the individuals who comprise it. It depends, to a significant extent, on the conditions under which they work. That makes it a matter of institutional design rather than merely an individual concern.
Brain capital: A category the sector has yet to embrace
A framework already gives this dimension a name. Brain capital refers to the stock of cognitive skills and brain health accumulated by individuals, organisations, and societies, and treats it as a strategic asset with direct returns in productivity and innovation. The World Health Organisation and several multilateral organisations have begun using this concept to argue that brain health should be incorporated into development accounting—not as an additional health category, but as a condition that underpins many of the capacities development depends on.
An exploratory study that we conducted at Insight 21 with 1,050 participants across seven Argentine cities helps illustrate why this perspective matters. Confidence in one’s own cognitive abilities—learning, concentrating, and adapting—was consistently high across socioeconomic groups, ranging from 56% to 70%. Access to the conditions that sustain those abilities varied substantially. Talent itself appeared relatively evenly distributed; what differed was the infrastructure that enables people to use it. +
At a different scale, the same pattern emerges from the State of the Sector data. The findings suggest that the challenge lies not only in the talent organisations possess, but also in the conditions that allow that talent to be sustained and fully deployed.
Who, then?
If the title of this article asks who safeguards that capacity, the honest answer is that very few actors currently regard it as an organisational asset.
We measure think tanks’ financial, technological, and communications capacities with increasing sophistication. Yet we still pay remarkably little systematic attention to the conditions that sustain the capacity to think among the people who produce evidence.
Recognising this dimension does not mean diminishing the importance of funding. Rather, it means acknowledging that funding alone cannot fully explain an organization’s capacity to generate knowledge.
Perhaps the first step is simply to make this dimension visible. Just as we routinely measure financial reserves, communications strategies, or research capacity, we could begin asking about the conditions that sustain attention, learning, creativity, and sound judgment within our teams. What remains invisible is rarely managed.
Think tanks produce reports, policy recommendations, and influence. Yet none of those outputs exists without the most fundamental one of all: the human capacity to think rigorously. If we are serious about strengthening evidence production, perhaps it is time to recognise that capacity as a strategic asset for the sector itself.