Expert convenings:

Mapping new tool-building agendas

To identify new opportunities to develop and test policy tools that coordinate socially beneficial decisions and actions, we need collaboration between policy makers, funders, and researchers.

Research on collaboration reveals that in-person convenings provide important opportunities for potential collaborators to build new working relationships. For example, 16% of collaborator scientists who do not live in the same city report that they met at in-person conferences (Freeman, Ganguli, and Murciano-Goroff 2015). Attendees at in-person conferences are more likely to develop research collaborations with each other than otherwise similar researchers who did not attend the conferences (Chai and Freeman 2019, Campos, Leon, and McQuillin 2019). Attendees at in-person conferences are also more likely to develop research collaborations with each other if they spend more time interacting at the conferences (Boudreau et al 2017, Zajdela et al 2022).

The Social Science Research Council hosts in-person convenings that provide opportunities for members of the philanthropic, policy, and research communities to map the existing landscape of decision-relevant research evidence, and to identify the most promising opportunities to innovate and evaluate new policy tools. 

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The Agenda Fund

FEATURED

The Agenda Fund is a launchpad enabling the philanthropic, policy, and research communities to identify the most promising opportunities to find scalable policy tools that coordinate socially beneficial decisions and actions. Through in-person convenings that foster collaboration, the Agenda Fund supports the innovation of new policy-relevant research agendas.