At On Think Tanks, our north star is helping think tanks and the community around them thrive. We believe resilient organisations grow by learning with and from one another. There isn’t a single blueprint for impact; every think tank can be influential in its own context.
What we can do, together, is experiment, borrow good ideas, adapt them, try again, and keep learning.
Against that backdrop, we’ve long worried about the negative effects of global think tank rankings. Beyond their methodological flaws, they have encouraged a kind of unhealthy competition: boards chasing places on a list rather than pursuing the harder work of getting things right; organisations trading favours and votes; and a sector drifting away from community and towards vanity. That isn’t healthy for anyone, and it doesn’t help the public learn who is actually doing useful work.
I’ve experimented with better ways to recognise good practice. For years, we co-organised the Premio PODER al Think Tank del Año in Peru, inspired by Prospect’s awards. Done nationally, awards can work. Why? Because judges know the policy debates of the moment, they can test whether a think tank mattered that year and can be held to account. They are inevitably subjective, but at least the subjectivity is transparent: you know who judged, and you can understand why.
Global awards are a different story. Think tanks are political creatures, shaped by their local contexts. Judging a team in Tanzania alongside one in Indonesia and another in the United States, without deep knowledge of each context, simply isn’t fair or meaningful. Influence looks different in different places. Unless you compare organisations within their contexts, you risk comparing apples to aircraft.
The OTT State of the Sector Report is our attempt to draw attention to the context in which think tanks operate.
Over the years, we toyed with the idea of a global award. If we ever do it, it must celebrate good work, encourage cooperation (or at least healthy competition), and promote learning, not a scramble for points. That thinking led us to something simpler and, we hope, more useful right now:
100 think tanks to watch is our next step on that journey.
For more on think tank rankings and awards, visit this series – including this great article from rankings expert Jelena Brankovic.
What this is – and what it isn’t
This is not a ranking.
This is not an award.
It is not a list of the best.
It’s a peer-built list, constructed by think tanks and experts in the global On Think Tanks community, to celebrate organisations worth learning from right now. Its purpose is to surface good tactics, sound strategies, interesting outputs, and thoughtful approaches so others can adapt what works in their own context.
Why do this?
We are driven by three key principles:
- Learning first: Spotlight practical methods, governance fixes, funding models, and communication approaches that others can learn from and use.
- Healthy competition, not vanity: Replace the race for a number with the motivation that comes from seeing a peer do something well, and thinking, “we could try that.”
- Community building: Recognition from peers should create bridges across sizes, regions, languages, and ideologies; rather than breaking the community apart.
How the list will work
For a detailed description of the methodology followed, you can visit the 100 think tanks to watch page, but in essence, we have combined:
- Peer nominations: Think tanks nominate other think tanks they respect.
- Expert curation: We don’t hide our role in the process. At On Think Tanks, we have considered all the nominations, reviewed all the submissions, checked websites and other publicly available information and made what I think are a series of educated judgments to decide who is included this year and what for.
- Diversity by design: We want the list to be relevant and useful to as many think tanks as possible and have therefore taken care to balance across regions, languages, themes, sizes, and institutional models, even if some regions and countries in the first list are overrepresented.
- Alphabetical listing: No scores, no league table, no implied pecking order.
- Short “why watch” notes: We’ll publish short, practical notes on why each entry is “one to watch” – what others might learn from them now. Over time, we may add cross-cutting briefs (e.g., “five ways small teams punch above their weight in outreach” or “how mid-sized think tanks professionalise fundraising without losing mission”).
- Transparency and humbleness: We accept no list is perfect. We are sharing our motivations, method, process and caveats for everyone to judge, for themselves, how best to use the list.
What this isn’t
Again, this is not:
- A global beauty contest.
- A proxy for “the best in the world.” Many excellent think tanks won’t be on this year’s list; we want to hear about them.
- A one-off. The mix will evolve as the field changes and as we learn more together.
An open invitation
If your organisation isn’t on the list but should be, tell us. Update your information in the Open Think Tank Directory (it will take a minute, and it helps produce the OTT State of the Sector every year!).
Make your work more visible, for instance, by writing about your work, what you have learned and sharing it with us. We will be happy to publish your good practices (and lessons!) with the wider OTT community. Point your peers to the practices you think others could learn from.
Come to the OTT Conference. We are always looking to invite new think tanks.
And if you can’t make it, invite us to join your events. We will be happy to join, learn and share!
And if your peers taught you something valuable, nominate them next year! You can do this by responding to the annual State of the Sector Survey.
Looking ahead
Perhaps this becomes a stepping stone towards a genuinely community-owned global recognition model. If we ever go there, we’ll keep these principles front and centre: celebrate good work, encourage cooperation, and promote learning. For now, 100 think tanks to watch is our contribution to a healthier culture; one that helps more of us do the real job better: produce useful ideas, communicate them well, and serve our communities.
If we get this right, we won’t be crowning winners. We’ll be building a collective body of practice the whole sector can draw from, and a stronger, more generous community around it.
If you wish to support our mission, please contact us and join the global think tank funders strengthening the field.