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Advice For Think Tank
Advice For Think Tank
Whatever the approach, a new think tank should try to keep their
initial staffing costs low and flexible. You should not be forced to close
because you cannot pay salaries. Subcontracts, partnerships, short-term
consultancy arrangements, project specific contracts, and other
contractual arrangements are preferred to full-employment-cost contracts.
Publish while you read: If you and your partners are interested in
a topic you are likely to read about it. Every time you read a paper
or book or article, post a short review of it on the new think tanks
blog/website. Each post can be simply tagged under your think
tanks key policy topics; e.g. Education, Health, etc. After a while,
the site will contain an important repository of content on these
issues and you may be able to put together a background post that
summarises or draws from these previous posts from the literature.
You can add an opinion post as well. These are all outputs that
feel more like the outputs of think tanks.
Use research you have done before: New think tanks sometimes
say that they have little need for a website because they have little
to publish; or that starting with an event is not possible because
they do not have any research to present. This is not exactly true.
Think tanks are all about their people and it is unlikely that the
people making up a new think tank (however young they are) do not
have any previous work and ideas -published or not. All of this can
and should be used by the new think tank. You do not have to take
credit for it (say, if a paper was written by the director or a
researcher while working for another think tank do not delete their
logo) but can certainly republish it and add it to the list of studies
written by the think tanks staff. An event, too, can be organised to
broadcast the guests work via the new think tanks YouTube
channel or website. You are not stealing; you are helping to give
old researcher a longer shelf life. And this is great.
None of these things cost too much (in fact, there are free digital tools for
every one of these tasks). They can be done on the side to other work
and do not demand great skills. But they will go a long way in attracting
the attention of funders when you do go looking for funds. And more
importantly, your think tanks URL will not lead to a under construction
site that will disqualify you from the start.
To keep costs low, I would start with a small group of senior research
associates who bring their own expertise and work (form other
organisations, for example) and who may form the basis of a senior
management team, each leading on a policy issue, for instance. They do
not have to be full time members of staff and therefore would not be a
cost on the new think tank. I would include a senior (in terms of
responsibility at least) communications manager right from the start. Do
not be fooled by the idea that you can wait to deal with communications
later on.