Increasing collaboration and
connection between think tanks

Smart Thinking's Membership Network hosts multiple training sessions, webinars and networking events throughout the year to help build the UK think tank community and enable knowledge sharing, pooling of resources and peer-to-peer support throughout the sector.

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Upcoming training

Being a strategic fundraiser (part 1)

21 October 2026
9.00am - 1.00pm

Want to think more strategically about how your think tank fundraises? Want to understand how to move from a more reactive model to one that takes an honest, whole-organisation view of your think tank’s fundraising and use it to plan deliberately for the short, medium and long term? This training is for you!

Members £295 (+VAT)
Non-members £395 (+VAT)

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Being a strategic fundraiser (part 2)

4 November 2026
9.00am - 1.00pm

Interested to find out how to turn your fundraising priority or project into a compelling, fundable, multi-year case? Want to learn how to translate strategic intent into practical skills that enable you to tell a story, persuade funders and steward a successful donor relationship? This training is for you!

Members £295 (+VAT)
Non-members £395 (+VAT)

Book your place

TAILORED TO THE THINK TANK SECTOR

Designed by think tanks for think tanks

Resources

Latest resources and information for think tanks

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Webinar archive

Take a look at some of our previously held webinars

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Member chat groups

Share knowledge, ideas and views with your fellow members

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MEMBERS ONLY

Upcoming webinars

MEMBER ONLY

Measuring impact in think tanks

24 September 2026
11am - 12pm

How to measure and show your impact and influence is a regular topic for discussion across the Network. This webinar workshop brings members together to explore how UK think tanks are approaching the challenge of measuring, understanding and demonstrating their impact.

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MEMBER ONLY

Think tank comms in the age of AI - with Soapbox

20 October 2026
11am - 12pm

We’re now more than three years into the AI revolution, and most think tank comms teams have got the basics down. But some are streaking ahead. What are they doing differently? And how can the rest of us catch up?

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Latest news

September CEO lunch

Ahead of party conference season we gathered the think tank CEOs for our biannual private lunch, hosted in the beautiful RUSI building looking out across Whitehall. We had a fascinating discussion on everything from the current political climate, engaging with government, how to effectively reward staff and much more.

New panels training

New training session launched! We ran our first Panels and Q&A in-person training session aimed at those who would like to understand and practice appearing on and chairing effective and competent panel events. The training covered all the stages in creating and running a panel from first idea to how to best prepare your panellists, starting the session, answering questions well, managing the audience and handling the Q&A.

Salary benchmarking 2026

Our fourth annual salary benchmarking report, published and shared with members in September, was our largest and strongest exercise to date. With 17 think tanks taking part and over 400 individual salary data points we were able to provide a comprehensive analysis of salaries across grades, functions and years. The report also includes detailed analysis on non-salary benefits.