‘Tourist’ funders are unhelpful when supporting and evaluating think tanks
I've been in Peru for the last couple of weeks working on several projects related to think tanks: helping to establish a think tank focused on forestry based on a series...
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Take the initiative: design your own support plans
A few years ago I was involved in a (very big) water and sanitation project for which I had to go to Burkina Faso for a planning event. As a distraction from the workshop environment they...
Economic downturn affects think tank funding
The global financial crisis has caused another kind of recession -a recession in foreign funding for think tanks. According to an article in the Research website, some think tanks in Sub -...
Supporting think tanks to develop their communication capacities: organisations not projects
Over the last 6 months or so I have been working with four Latin American think tanks helping them to develop or strengthen their organisational communication strategies....
Supporting think tanks: Advice from the think tanks themselves
Last week I spent a few days in Jakarta participating in a conference focused on think tanks. About 50 organisations that could be categorised as (but are not necessarily)...
A case for funding university-based/linked think tanks: more and better staff for others
I rarely write about individual think tanks -mainly because I do recognise that, given think tanks' complexities, it is very easy to get it wrong. But on this issue I am...
Fund like a “Secret Dragon”: some ideas on how to support think tanks
Think tank funding comes in many guises: large untied funds offered to think tanks to do whatever they want; short or mid term institutional funding to support certain...
AusAid’s knowledge sector support programme for Indonesia
By far one of the most interesting programmes related to think tanks out there is AusAid's Revitalising Indonesia's knowledge sector for development policy. (But if I...
INASP’s reflections on lessons from recent research communication capacity building experiences
This is the third in a series of posts in response to a paper that Enrique and Martine produced after evaluating a capacity building for research communication project...
Capacity development: it is time to think about new ways of generating and sharing knowledge
I am not an expert on capacity development per se but I've been a practitioner from CIPPEC of a combination of activities during the last years in Latin America which...
Hans Gutbrod: new head of the Think Tank Initiative
Almost half a year ago I wrote some unsolicited recommendations for the future head of the Think Tank Initiative. This week I've had the chance to share some of them with...
IDRC has been keeping ideas alive -literally
IDRC has made a rather interesting claim: Canadian support to researchers in the 1970s and 1980s Chile kept ideas alive, quite literally. Few scholars were more under threat than social...