Think Tanks

Think tanks play a bridging role between academics and policy makers, bringing insights from long term research and data to support relevant decision making. They typically seek to shape the agendas of the areas they work in by producing high quality, evidence backed work that can be used within policy frameworks.

Often the work of shaping policy agendas is slow and long and dependent on many factors. We believe that funding for organizations of this kind is critical precisely because there is value in a group of qualified people working in a sustained manner on a set of problems over a long period of time. The objective is to produce and become repositories for intergenerational knowledge.

Historically, think tanks were funded by governments to help bring expertise to policy making but much of that funding has receded leaving a gap that the philanthropic community should consider supporting.