We are committed to advancing evidence-informed decision-making on matters of public interest. This strand of our work seeks to support, build and champion individuals and organisations who fund the generation, communication and use of evidence.
We offer quality, relevant and timely support to mindful funders who want to inform their strategic grant making and practice to become more equitable and effective in their giving.
Our Services
Over the past decade, we have collaborated with numerous funders to deeply understand their challenges at various stages of their journey. Through this experience, we have gained valuable insights into funders’ needs and are committed to providing comprehensive support throughout the entire project lifecycle.
Below is an illustrative list of our service offerings We recognise that the support needed at different stages of the grant-making journey can vary significantly. While we aim to assist you at every step of this journey, we are happy to discuss your specific needs and provide a tailored service offering to address your unique concerns.
Strategic planning
- Delivering or supporting strategic planning processes
- Landscape and political economy studies
- Peer assessments to identify best practice
- Mapping, due diligence and needs-assessments of existing and new grantee-partners
- Inclusive grant making advice and design
- Portfolio design
Portfolio and partners support
- Communication of strategy and portfolio with existing and prospective grantee-partners
- Ongoing grantee mapping, needs assessments and consultation
- Ongoing monitor of portfolios’ changing local, regional and international contexts to inform strategic adjustments
- Design and facilitate grantee-partner communities of practice and events
- Facilitate grantee- funder spaces for communication and engagement, including grantee retreats
- Design, deliver and facilitate access to relevant information, resources and contacts to help grantee-partners deliver their missions
- Support funders in seeking and preparing future grantee-partners to ensure a sustainable and inclusive pipeline
Monitoring, evaluation and learning
- MEL framework design and delivery
- Monitoring of grantee-partners performance linked to efforts to support their learning and capacity strengthening
- Development and communication of impact stories
- Annual or final strategy and portfolio evaluation and refresh
- Planning for sustainable exits
- Long-term evaluation of strategy and portfolio legacies (i.e. 5 years after the end support)
Learning support
- Learning partnership
- Consultations with funder and its stakeholders
- Learning facilitation processes
- Design and delivery of capacity strengthening opportunities and services
- Mentoring and peer-support
- Best practice documentation and sharing
We can deliver these services through bespoke projects as well as long term learning partnerships.
Our Initiatives
We develop our own initiatives on the basis of emerging lessons, trends from the field or projects.
- Think tanks and impact investing: We believe think tanks have the potential to support the growing impact investing sector by helping to inform the development of national policy frameworks affecting the sector and providing evidence-based insights into the design, deliver and evaluation of impact investment strategies and initiatives. Find out more and join us here.
- African Education Research Funding Consortium: A space for funders of African education research to share insights, identify promising ideas, and collaborate to support education policy research based on African researchers’ priorities and needs. It currently comprises 12 funders mobilising over $370m+ in education research funding in Africa.
Our experts
OTT’s work engagement with funders is led by Joyjayanti Chatterjee. Our associates and consultants are based in the Global South and North, and from a diverse range of cultural and disciplinary backgrounds.
Our Guiding Principles
Our work with partners and funders has informed the following key principles to guide our support:
- Drive impact by supporting long-term visions.
- Respond to local needs, agendas, and initiatives by funding local organisations in ways that support their own missions.
- Provide funding across the generation, communication and use of evidence.
- Deliberately support the inclusion of women, young people, minorities and other disadvantaged groups in policy research.
- Continually learn, stay agile, and apply learnings.
Additional Benefits
Across all projects we invite our partners to join spaces and opportunities to further support their missions:
- The OTT Funders Circle
- The annual OTT Global Conference
- A private briefing on the annual On Think Tanks State of the Sector Report
Additionally, the OTT Research Support Service offers quality, relevant and timely research services to support busy organisations with strategic and day-to-day decision making. The RSS is a model we have built over the last four years through work with the Open Society Foundations, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. Learn more.
Recent consulting projects
- Facilitating the African Education Research Funders Consortium
- Rapid review of Oak Foundation’s investments in supporting new research talent in the prevention of child sexual abuse
- Mapping key think tank markets for the Gates Foundation
- Support for Scaling Care Innovations Programme in Africa from Concept Notes to Proposal
- Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Partnership for Open Society Foundations Initiatives
- Luminate organisational strategy consultation process
- Wellspring International Human Rights programme consultancy on tax justice