BACKGROUND The Think Tank Initiative (TTI) is a multi-donor program dedicated to strengthening independent policy research institutions -or think tanks -in developing countries, enabling them to better provide sound research that both informs and influences policy. 50 grantee institutions are now being supported in Africa (22), Latin America (12) and South Asia/India (16). Funding from the Think Tank Initiative will contribute to placing the Initiative's grantees from each region on a long-term sustainability path and to consolidate their role as credible development actors in their country.Specifically, the Initiative aims to:1. Select a group of promising independent policy research organizations and assist them to assess critical areas of strength and weakness, and identify opportunities for improved organizational performance,2. Provide a combination of general support funding and access to training and technical support to permit these organizations to achieve improvements in research quality, policy linkages and other aspects of organizational performance,3. Capture and share learning about strategies for supporting and managing policy research organizations, in order to influence the future activities.The Initiative has developed a detailed monitoring and evaluation strategy which allows it to monitor results of strategic value to the Initiative's grantee organizations, the program staff and the program's donors. A key element of the M&E strategy is a Policy Community Survey, this aims to reveal national policy stakeholders' perceptions of their needs for, and use of, information in policy making, as well as their perceptions of the quality, value and availability of research findings produced by think tanks (in general and specifically those funded by the Initiative). The first round of the Policy Community Survey was undertaken in Africa (11 countries) from October 2009 to April 2010, and the second round in Latin America (7 countries) and South Asia (5 countries) from December 2010 to February 2011. A total of 985 high level respondents were interviewed overall, from groups of policy actors including Government (both elected and nonelected), non-governmental organizations, media, multilateral/bilateral organizations, the private sector, research/academia, and trade unions. The Policy Community Surveys aimed to scope the views of the policy-making community in the 23 countries where the Think Tank Initiative is working regarding the capacity of think tanks in general, and of Think Tank Initiative grantees in particular, to undertake high-quality policy-relevant research and to influence policy making processes.The outcomes of the Surveys included a set of valuable findings for the Initiative and its grantees on perceptions of national policy actors of their needs for, and access to, research-based evidence for policy making, as well as their perceptions of performance of individual grantees. These were presented in Regional reports, as w