Understanding funder conditions is critical for sustainable budgeting, financial planning, and organisational strategy. To support this, OTT is building a shared, community-led resource that captures the conditions funders apply when supporting think tanks—across funding models, contracting, budgeting, and reporting.
Contribute to the shared resource
This short form invites think tanks to document the conditions attached to their funding relationships. By contributing information on your own funders, you help to:
- Make visible where flexibility exists (and where it doesn’t),
- Support more informed conversations and negotiations with funders, and
- Strengthen collective learning across the think tank sector.
Your responses automatically feed into a public resource designed to support learning and practical decision-making across the community. The more funders represented, the more useful and representative this resource becomes.
Complete the form: Mapping funders’ conditions
Practical tool: Funders’ conditions overview
Alongside the form, we are sharing a concise Funders’ Conditions Overview tool. This tool draws on On Think Tanks’ advisory work with think tanks and synthesises common patterns in funder requirements, highlighting where expectations are restrictive, flexible, or negotiable.
Think tank leaders and managers often use this tool to:
- Prepare and review project and organisational budgets,
- Navigate different contracting and reporting requirements,
- Compare funder approaches to indirect costs and flexibility, and
- Strengthen internal financial systems and decision-making.
For many organisations, funder conditions raise broader questions that go beyond a single grant or budget—such as aligning financial systems with strategy, managing multiple funder requirements, or building the case for more flexible funding.
OTT’s advisory programme works with think tanks and funders to address these challenges, offering tailored support on funding models, budgeting and financial management practices, and evidence-informed conversations around sustainability and flexibility.
Interested in exploring advisory support? Get in touch with the OTT team to continue the conversation.