Author: Andrea

Module 1 looks at the basics of advocacy, moving from theory to practice. It revisits the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches to advocacy, provides guidance on advocacy aims, introduces the basic elements of an advocacy strategy, and gives participants an introduction to planning and budgeting for advocacy campaigns, in particular: positioning, goal setting, and issue analysis.

Most think tanks consciously seek to influence what powerful institutions do. A few years ago, a prominent American politician left Congress to lead a large think tank because, he explained, working for that think tank would give him greater power to influence US politics and policy. However, many other think tanks struggle to influence public debates and institutional actions for a very broad variety of reasons. In a context in which donors are demanding to see ‘impact’ and a growing number of competing groups (from lobbyists to campaigning charities) aggressively push their own policy prescriptions, think tanks need to learn to effectively advocate in order to survive.

Think tankers from a broad variety of backgrounds – research, communications, proposal development, grants management – can benefit from this course if they bring along a passion for using research to influence people, politics and policies.

The third module focuses on how to make interactive visualisations with Tableau Public, covering the basic concepts and elements of Tableau Public and an example of creating an interactive dashboard.

The second module moves straight into practice, showing participants how to structure and manipulate data in Excel and Google Sheets. It looks at how to improve the charts produced using these common technologies to make sure they adhere to the design lessons covered in the first module.

The first module session has a slightly more theoretical approach and provides an introduction to data visualisation with further discussion about what makes a good, or effective, data visualisation.  This is illustrated with an overview of good and bad examples.

Data visualisations are playing an increasingly important role in today’s information-rich society. This is especially true among think tanks, where translating complex ideas and data into accessible and relevant information is at the heart of what they do.

This course explores basic data visualisation practice with design theory. It shares examples of how think tanks around the world have built data visualisations into their communication plans as well as examples of what not to do. It then moves into the practicalities of data visualisation with basic data structuring and improving basic charts in Excel and Google Sheets. Finally, participants learn how to make more complex interactive visualisations with Tableau Public.

The third and final module focuses on blogs: what they are, how to structure them, and what is different about writing online content. The trainer then covers different think tank blogging formats. The session ends with an introduction to developing communication strategies and examples of communication action plans.

In the second module session, the trainer discusses policy briefs: what they are, why are they important and who they are for? She also covers the differences between objective and advocacy policy briefs, and takes participants through developing a policy brief, covering the key content and design techniques.

The first module focuses on writing, how to write clearly and to ‘cut the fat’ out of writing. Carolina discusses why publications are still so popular, and reflects with participants about how readable their writing is. The session also covers styles guides and publication policies as well as top tips for writing clearly.

Publications are one of the most important products produced by think tanks. While communication techniques are evolving and many organisations now use a mix of social media, data visualisation, podcasts, and events to help expose their research, the existence of a solid and well-written research report is a prerequisite.

Though publications come in different shapes and sizes (reports, background papers, policy briefs, books), there are a basic set of good practices that every researcher and communications professional should follow when developing written outputs. This short course offers the opportunity to learn about these by looking specifically at how to write policy briefs and blogs.