In August 2015 the Institute for Development of Freedom of Information (IDFI) received the highest ranking of transparency by Transparify, a project funded by the Think Tank Fund of the Open Society Foundations and managed by CRRC. The project which started in January 2014 provides the first-ever global rating of the financial transparency of major think tanks worldwide.

Transparify has rated 169 think tanks both in 2014 and 2015, including 8 organizations from Georgia. According to the results of these ratings, only 2 Georgian think tanks - Economic Policy Research Center (EPRC) and Transparency International – Georgia - were given 5-star rating in 2014, while JumpStart Georgia has joined them in 2015.

Although the Institute for Development of Freedom of Information (IDFI) has been committed to transparency both in various levels of the government and the society, as well as in its own activities, it was not rated by Transparify neither in 2014 nor in 2015. For this reason, IDFI itself approached the team of Transparify and asked to be evaluated by them. Transparify has studied to what extent IDFI disclosed information about its funding – which includes regularly updated database of current and past projects, single document with complete overview of past performance as well as financial reports. As a result, in August 2015 Transparify has given IDFI five-star transparency rating. Four more think tanks were recognized as highly transparent along with IDFI, one of which (PMC Research Center) is also from Georgia:

• Analitika Center for Social Research, Bosnia
• Financial Transparency Coalition (FTC), United States
• International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), Canada
• Institute for the Development of Freedom of Information (IDFI), Georgia
• PMC Research Center, Georgia

Thus, at the moment there are a total of 10 Georgian think tanks studied by Transparify, 5 of which got the highest 5-star transparency rating.

IDFI team is proud to be recognized in this worldwide rating and hopes that while think tanks have increasing influence over public policy, more of them will commit to such values as transparency and accountability.