Want to know how we scrutinise think tank funding?

Dear Diogenes,

Our Who Funds You? project, which scrutinises UK think tank funding, has real impact. It's been mentioned in the media and the House of Commons. The latest report is out now and t's a valuable tool for those fighting for transparency in our politics.

We rate think tanks' on how transparent or otherwise they are about their funding. We also measure their influence on social media and in the UK Parliament.

It's not an easy process. First, we have to identify which organisations it is appropriate to scrutinise. Then we have to decide if a given body fits our definition of a think tank, which is trickier than you'd think. After that we go through its website to see if and how it declares its funding. Now, for the best think tanks that's a doddle, but for the 'dark money' ones it means hunting through all their pages to make sure we've missed anything. We see what it declares (or doesn't) and rate it on a scale from A to E based on how transparent it is.

We then try to identify the think tank's income by checking its filings to either the Charity Commission or Companies House. That can be very time consuming – and it's not the end of the story.

We then measure the influence of each think tank based on an objective measurement of its social media footprint and the number of times it has been cited in Parliament. We combine both to score it on how influential it is.

Finally, we approach the think tank to let it know what scores it will be getting. There can be quite a bit of back and forth at this point. Sometimes the think tank will change how it reports to funding to be more transparent, which is great.

We did this more than 60 times to create the most recent Who Funds You? report, which came out last week and is our biggest yet. We started work on it in July!

This is one of those projects that we can do only thanks to reader donations. openDemocracy is a small, independent news organisation that shines a light into places some people would rather remain hidden. We don't have the huge resources of big media organisations or campaign bodies. I know it's pretty tough at the moment, with the cost of living crisis, but we need readers to chip in to help pay for our work. Can I ask you to please make a donation? It would really make a difference.