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Our Events Network met up over lunch in April to discuss plans for party conference, how to get more speaker diversity, events pricing, setting events objectives and how to use events to boost coverage of research. A thoroughly interesting and enjoyable discussion!

In April we ran our newly developed part 2 writing course. This is an intensive, half-day course, that specifically looks at how to collate and assess your research and evidence, how to build that into a narrative and how to effectively plan out your think tank report. We also cover the writing process and how to edit both yours and other’s work.

Focus groups are an important part of think tank research but can be prohibitively expensive to run. Ben Cooper from the Fabian Society regularly holds his own focus groups to feed into his research and in this webinar runs through the practical and useful steps he deploys from recruitment specification to the conversation itself.

In March we welcomed the new and exciting think tank PolicyWISE to come in and run a session for members on how think tanks can become ‘devolution-able’. It was a knowledge-rich, practical and timely session that got to the nuts and bolts of both the opportunity for think tanks in the devolved governments and how best to go about it!

February’s webinar was with an expert in think tank communications – David Watson. David took us through how over a process of a couple of years he moved Chatham House’s comms from being reactive and all about broadcasting to being much more strategic and thoughtful. This session also had a great Q&A with other comms leads as well where common frustrations and suggestions were shared. Available in the webinar archive.

A full house for our Fundraising Fundamentals training as we took a big group of think tankers through a whole of day of core fundraising knowledge and skills. We covered who and why do donors fund think tanks, how to generate leads, how to get your introduction, how to make the ask and how to manage the donor relationship so you successfully secure repeat funding.

In January our Regulation Working Group met online for a detailed catch up. This is an ad hoc network that we call together every few months and where our members can discuss the regulatory environment think tanks operate in, any current issues or changes and share their thinking on what organisations in the sector need to be aware of and planning for.

Paul Swinney, late of Centre for Cities and now Chief Economist at The Data City returned to the think tank world to tell us a bit more about what Big Data can offer policy research. He showed us how it can make your research go faster and deeper and how it was already being harnessed by other think tanks. The recording is now in our webinar archive.

A brand new training session was run for the first time in December. This training is aimed at those working in the communications teams of think tanks and is split over two sessions to fully explore the topic. Part 1 looked at the purpose of a comms strategy, defining comms goals, understanding and mapping audiences and developing a strong key message. Part 2 will take place in the new year.

Our Operations & HR Network (one of our most established networks) met in-person just before Christmas for a big meeting covering everything from our new compliance master list that everyone has contributed to, diversity in recruiting, AI policies, salary discussions with staff and many many more.

Earlier in the year we ran a series of workshops with the Active Bystander Training company. This was in response to the recent changes to sexual harassment in the workplace legislation. Rather than each think tank sourcing their own training provider we took a recommendation from one of our members and arranged for several sessions that the think tanks could book a number of spaces on depending on their staff needs at the time. This November we hosted a further session for new joiners or those who missed the earlier sessions.

Hannah Corbett, former Head of Communications and think tank PBE joined us in November and took us through the key learnings, opportunities and pitfalls of rebranding a think tank and what to consider before embarking on such a project, based on PBE’s recent experience.

In November we held our popular media training with a full house! This is a very intensive all-day session that takes think tankers through the different formats of media interviews including press, radio and TV. We also cover how to really hone your message, how to deal with difficult questions and what journalists are looking for.

This month’s webinar was aimed at those working in the operations side of things. We had strategic IT company Nutbourne come and take us through what a think tank needs to be aware of when thinking about their cyber security and the items to prioritise. The webinar was especially tailored for think tanks as generally smaller organisations with limited budgets but important research to safeguard.

Our biggest network! This is for Researchers and Senior Researchers where they can gather and meet lots of other people working in research, across lots of different think tanks. We have a casual sandwich lunch where everyone gets the chance to mingle and then we break off into groups to work on a short, fun policy challenge!