Module 4. Risks and opportunities

Guiding question

What should you publish, who should see it, and how will you know whether it mattered?

Before the live session

Work through this module before the session (about 45 minutes) and bring your real documents to the live session.

Video

[EMBED VIDEO]

Presentation

[EMBED OR LINK SLIDES]

Readings

• School for Thinktankers background notes: Policy-relevant research, communications, and monitoring, evaluation and learning

Quiz

When you finish the module, take the five-question quiz in Google Classroom (about 10 minutes). It is marked automatically.

Live session

Wednesday 18 November, 15:00–17:00 CET
Facilitated by Camila Ulloa, with [GUEST SPEAKER]

Zoom link

What we cover

• Looking ahead: a small organisation cannot afford to get its research agenda wrong. If it puts everything on one issue and the issue fades, it becomes irrelevant. Scenario planning helps you anticipate change and decide where to place your bets.
• Visibility: staying in the public debate without the budget for a large campaign: work on policy problems rather than research topics, plan a package of outputs, publish as you go and prioritise the few actions with the most impact.
• Integrity and reputation: a small or new organisation cannot easily recover a damaged reputation. Be ready for the media agenda to try to set yours, and think through what happens if a large amount of money arrives. The integrity health check helps you keep your values and red lines under review.
• Financial shocks: funding can arrive or disappear overnight, and the effect on a small organisation is far larger. Reserves, alliances and diversified income are the main buffers.
• Difficult political contexts: in some contexts, a think tank that does well attracts actors who would rather it did not. Funding can be captured and space reduced. We look at what organisations can do before and when this happens.
• Learning and adapting: tracking whether the organisation is growing in the direction you chose, and deciding where to invest next. MEL in proportion: two indicators, one learning meeting a quarter, a theory of change that fits on a page.

Task for the week

A risk and opportunity map: for visibility, integrity, finances and the political context, one risk and one opportunity you can already see, and what you will do about each.

Submit your task in Google Classroom within a week of the session (45–60 minutes). The facilitator will comment on it there.

Complementary resources

• Short course on doing policy-relevant research
• Short course on writing to achieve policy impact
• Communications as an orchestra
• MEL for think tanks

Recording

The recording and slides of the live session will be posted here after the session.

[EMBED RECORDING]