NGOs have a lot of skill and background in advocacy and in deploying information and research to drive change
Kate Higgins
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NGOs play a really important role in promoting and pushing for evidence-based change. Increasingly, civil society and NGOs are using evidence and more sophisticated advocacy techniques to push for the change that they want to see in the world. Robust, clear, compelling evidence and research is a really important piece of that puzzle. NGOs are using and are looking for really clear, compelling evidence and information that they can use in their advocacy to ultimately drive the change that they want to see in the world.
How do NGOs engage with think tanks? What are the benefits of that collaboration?
I’ve worked for civil society for the last several years, but before working for NGOs or for civil societies, I worked in the think tank world. I spent a number of years at the Overseas Development Institute in the UK and at the North South Institute in Canada. It’s been really interesting to work both for think tanks and for NGOs and to see how they interact and the opportunities I think they have for more interaction.
Civil society organisations and NGOs are hungry for collaborations with think tanks. Think tanks are able to generate the sort of evidence that we need in our NGOs and civil society advocacy.
There are some really great examples of that sort of collaboration around issues: women’s rights, inequality, increasingly around climate justice and climate change. I think those are some excellent examples, but I really do think there are more opportunities for us to be working together. Think tanks bring robust research, strong evidence, rigour, legitimacy to the information that they’re generating and presenting. And NGOs have a lot of skill and background in advocacy and in deploying information and research to drive change. It’s a very complementary partnership and I hope we can invest in it more and see more of it.
The challenges in working together and how to overcome them
I think there’s a clear difficulty and challenge which is that research and robust research takes time, and needs to be thoughtful and needs to be carefully conducted. On the NGOs side we often want action now, and we want to be using the evidence now, and we want to be pushing for the change now. I think there’s a tension there which is difficult, but I think it can be overcome.
There’s a lot that we can learn from each other. As NGOs we have a lot to learn about how we can build up our in-house research capacity, how we can do a better job of working with think tanks and building those partnerships so that we have the sort of research and evidence that we need.
The think tank world can learn from civil society and from the NGOs sector as well. In terms of understanding and learning useful and effective ways for presenting evidence and for presenting research so that that research really has the impact that we’re all looking for.
Shifting power to where the work is happening
The localisation agenda and the decolonisation agenda in aid and in development is very real, and we should all be investing in doing a better job of shifting power to the places where the work is happening: shifting power south- shifting power and resources to the people who are on the front lines of the work that we all believe in and we want to do.
There is a real opportunity for NGOs around the world to build strong relationships with local think tanks wherever they’re working. And those think tanks often have really excellent networks, and a really robust and clear understanding of the local context. As we all are being pushed to shift power to the places where the work is really happening, and typically that’s from North to South, I really hope that the civil society sector and the NGOs sector can build better relationships with think tanks on the ground, in the locations where the work that we’re doing happens- to local think tanks. I think there’s a huge opportunity there and I really hope that we can prioritise that.
