With institutional sustainability at the core of its mandate, the Think Tank Initiative (TTI), in collaboration with the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, commissioned a report that explores the current funding landscape for policy research organizations who are based in low- and middle-income countries.
The report presents findings from in-depth interviews with a broad range of funders from around the world, and shares insights into their current and anticipated strategic directions around supporting evidence to policy processes. It reveals that while the overall amount of funding directed towards long-term, flexible forms of support for policy research organizations is decreasing, funding for research appears to in fact be on an upward trend.
In addition, the report offers some suggestions for policy research organizations to explore in terms of strategies for navigating changes within funding environments, such as aligning with global development agendas and revisiting cost models. It also speaks to the donor community by suggesting innovative ways of supporting policy research institutions and their work, such as improving research partnerships and creating regional and/or national-level pooled funding mechanisms.
As TTI programming ends in 2019, along with its 10 years of core support to 43 Southern policy research organizations, this report is very timely. It provides policy research organizations and funders alike with insights into the status of current global and regional funding environments for evidence to policy, and is also helping to drive discussions around future opportunities for funding and collaboration. As such, the findings were used to inform the discussions which took place at the Evidence to Policy Dialogue in April this year.
Read the report here.
