Definition

• A think tank is an organization, sometimes called a policy institute or public policy organization, made up of highly intelligent, experienced, and educated people who focus on a particular issue and attempt to define, discuss, and remedy it. The term "think tank" originally meant the human brain and was applied to a collection of bright individuals seeking answers to pressing issues sometime in the mid-20th century. Think tanks appear all over the world, taking up issues such as poverty, world hunger, war, global warming and other environmental problems, and pandemics.
  
  

History

• The first think tank in the United States was the Brookings Institution. Established in 1916, it was created to address a diverse collection of social issues. By the 1970s almost 30 think tanks had been formed in the United States. As think tanks grew in popularity, they became increasingly focused on specific issues and more ideologically driven, attempting to create policies from a conservative, liberal, or middle-of-the-road viewpoint. Today there are over 1,500 think tanks operating in the United States, and 3,500 worldwide.
  
  

Examples

• In 1971, the United Nations created the United Nations University, a think tank devoted to addressing issues relating to its members and the world at large. The Strategic Foresight Group in India studies ways young people in India can create policy changes. The European Council on Foreign Relations is a think tank that focuses on Europe as a whole, devising strategies and policies to benefit European interests. The first U.S. think tank, the Brookings Institution, created to provide a neutral breeding ground for ideas on a wide variety of social issues, has been joined by hundreds of more specialized think tanks, including the American Consumer Institute, the Center for a Global Development, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, and the Foundation for Economic Education.
  
  

Funding

• Funding for think tanks is largely provided by grants and donations. Many think tanks are housed in universities, like the UCLA School of Law, which hosts three separate think tanks--the Environmental Law, Empirical Research Group, and the Williams Project. Other think tanks are funded by corporations, for example Exxon/Mobil, which has provided 40 or more think tanks with over $8 billion in funding. Still others receive their funding from government agencies.
  
  

Credibility

• Though the majority of think tanks are formed to research issues and come up with viable solutions without the pressure and constraints of a particular ideology, say conservative, corporate, or liberal agendas, some are created specifically to address a particular issue in a particular way. Think tanks were once a primary source of information for media news outlets eager for a sound bite, but they have been regarded more skeptically recently due to the biased nature of some think tanks.