We Need to Reimagine the Modern Think Tank

Next100 policy entrepreneurs. (Photo by Bridget Badore for Next100)

We are in the midst of a great realignment in policymaking. After an era-defining pandemic, which itself served as backdrop to a generations-in-the-making reckoning on racial injustice, the era of policy incrementalism is giving way to broad, grassroots demands for structural change. But elected officials are not the only ones who need to evolve. As the broader policy ecosystem adjusts to a post-2020 world, think tanks that aim to provide the intellectual backbone to policy movements—through research, data analysis, and evidence-based recommendation—need to change their approach as well.

Think tanks may be slower to adapt because of long-standing biases around what qualifies someone to be a policy “expert.” Traditionally, think tanks assess qualifications based on educational attainment and advanced degrees, which has often meant prioritizing academic credentials over lived or professional experience on the ground. These hiring preferences alone leave many people out of the debates that shape their lives: if think tanks expect a master's degree for mid-level and senior research and policy positions, their pool of candidates will be limited to the 4 percent of Latinos and 7 percent of Black people with those degrees (lower than the rates among white people (10.5 percent) or Asian/Pacific Islanders (17 percent)). And in specific fields like Economics, from which many think tanks draw their experts, just 0.5 percent of doctoral degrees go to Black women each year.

Think tanks alone cannot change the larger cultural and societal forces that have historically limited access to certain fields. But they can change their own practices: namely, they can change how they assess expertise and who they recruit and cultivate as policy experts. In doing so, they can push the broader policy sector—including government and philanthropic donors—to do the same. Because while the next generation marches in the streets and runs for office, the public policy sector is not doing enough to diversify and support who develops, researches, enacts, and implements policy. And excluding impacted communities from the decision-making table makes our democracy less inclusive, responsive, and effective.

Two years ago, my colleagues and I at The Century Foundation, a 100-year-old think tank that has weathered many paradigm shifts in policymaking, launched an organization, Next100, to experiment with a new model for think tanks. Our mission was simple: policy by those with the most at stake, for those with the most at stake. We believed that proximity to the communities that policy looks to serve will make policy stronger, and we put muscle and resources behind the theory that those with lived experience are as much policy experts as anyone with a PhD from an Ivy League university. The pandemic and heightened calls for racial justice in the last year have only strengthened our belief in the need to thoughtfully democratize policy development. While it’s common understanding now that COVID-19 has surfaced and exacerbated profound historical inequities, not enough has been done to question why those inequities exist, or why they run so deep. How we make policy—and who makes it—is a big reason why.

For more think tanks to be able to make this shift, the broader policy ecosystem will need to come along. Funders who support think tanks tend to incentivize and prioritize funding to a narrow, traditional form of policy expertise, and while funders have recently appeared more willing to fund proximate voices in other areas of social change, the shift has not extended to organizations developing policy. And although tides are shifting, many philanthropic organizations still impose limits on funding for organizational overhead, exactly the type of expenses that support investment in hiring, recruiting, and training diverse talent.

Here are three ways that redefining expertise can better position think tanks to tackle our most urgent policy challenges:

1. Producing Policy Recommendations Informed by Impacted Communities

Most think tanks follow the traditional employment model, engaging emerging researchers to work at the direction of more senior policy experts to contribute to the institution’s existing research and policy priorities. While this apprenticeship model creates a consistent pipeline of young talent, those new to the policy sector spend a substantial amount of their time helping advance other people’s ideas before they can drive their own agenda. What if, instead, think tanks consider people from and connected to communities most impacted by policy, and equip them with the training and platform to effect policy change that they think is needed?

For example, Rosario Quiroz Villareal grew up as an undocumented immigrant, a former DACA recipient and teacher, and she brought these experiences to her work at Next100, focused on supporting children of immigrant backgrounds. Her background and connection to communities provided insight to help build trust with communities that are hard to reach, yet no less affected by state policies that shape their lives. She worked to weave the often-silenced voices of undocumented parents into recommendations for improving state policies that affect immigrants. Her project design was developed in collaboration with trusted community organizations, included focus groups in four states, and ensured language access for Creole and Spanish speakers throughout the process. She returned to focus group participants to present the work before it was published, to remain accountable to these communities. Her final product presented recommendations based on the real-life experiences of undocumented families, a population that is often hard to examine through data analysis.

By broadening our conception of expertise, think tanks open themselves up to untapped resources that can enrich and deepen their recommendations.

2. Building a Diverse Talent Pipeline That Brings Fresh Perspectives on Age-Old Debates

If think tanks truly want to hire different people, they must think differently about their talent practices. From investing in outreach and recruitment, to revising the application and selection process, to more intentional onboarding and ongoing skills development, dramatically changing who shapes policy requires investment and creative thinking to attract promising candidates who do not fit the traditional public policy school mold.

At Next100, by committing to robust recruitment outreach to a wide range of networks and developing an application process that intentionally avoided certain roadblocks in hiring—no college degree requirements, for instance—we fielded nearly 750 diverse applications for a handful of positions at an organization no one had heard of. The first cohort’s eight policy entrepreneurs, as we call them, brought diverse perspectives and a variety of lived experiences that have informed the work that they are doing, including having been incarcerated, formerly homeless, undocumented, and an Iraqi refugee. However, it’s also critical that, once a think tank has successfully recruited new people to its team, the organization must support these voices through investments in quality onboarding, ongoing training, and skills development—areas that are not priorities in the think tank sector.

For example, Taif Jany was 16 when he fled his native Iraq for Syria after his father was kidnapped, eventually arriving as an international student at Union College in New York. Having navigated the complex visa system that too often limits or wastes the contributions of people who bring their ideas and contributions to America, his work at Next100 aims to shift the narrative around immigrants, spotlighting their tremendous contributions to our economy and social fabric. When the United States government took action to ban international students during the COVID-19 pandemic, Taif’s work made the case for embracing these students instead.

Similarly, another Next100 policy entrepreneur, Isabel Coronado, a citizen of the Mvskoke (Creek) Nation, has drawn on her personal experience growing up with an incarcerated mother to reframe criminal justice as a family issue. Nearly 3 million children in the United States have an incarcerated parent, many of them Native, Black, and Latinx children. By focusing on the promise and potential of children of incarcerated parents, Isabel’s work has strengthened sentencing reform efforts that prioritize keeping families together.

For think tanks that have worked for decades on particular policy efforts—say, public education/immigration or criminal justice reform—an infusion of fresh ideas and perspectives can help break through age-old roadblocks and surface new ways to make change.

3. Going Beyond the White Paper

Changing who makes policy also changes how it gets made. While the bread and butter of think tanks are mostly numbers and words (lots of them), neatly packaged into a report or fact sheet to be shared in print or PDF, such publications rarely reach the people who have the most at stake in policy debates.

Michael “Zaki” Smith, a barber, a DJ, and an activist, came to Next100 on a mission to end the perpetual punishment faced by individuals with a criminal record. Zaki experienced the “silent life sentence” of having a criminal record when he lost his dream job mentoring students due to a series of laws that limit his access to employment, housing, and other basic needs. Eschewing traditional think tank white papers, Zaki instead worked to erect public art murals across Brooklyn to educate and engage impacted communities on the collateral consequences of having a criminal record. His innovative and creative approach has bolstered support for legislation in New York that would automatically expunge criminal records after individuals have repaid their debt to society.

In recent years, an ecosystem of new organizations have begun reimagining policymaking for a more inclusive, post-pandemic future. Think tanks have always been a crucial part of any policy movement, and we need them to help us confront the complex challenges we face. By modernizing our concept of what constitutes expertise, who gets to drive policy change, and how policy is developed and implemented, think tanks can pave the path toward a more inclusive, just, and equal country.

Read more stories by Emma Vadehra.