YSI 18 -Month Plan and Strategy
Operational adjustments and budget projection for 2025
In early 2025 we have introduced new funding guidelines for YSI projects with stricter evaluation criteria which bring down the average cost of each project to around $3000 (from over $5000 previously), in particular travel expenses. We are also rejecting higher rates of proposals compared to previous years in which we were focused on growing the scope and scale of the community.
As such we project to be able to sustain our community in-person projects at about 130 projects for this year (down from 190 in 2024). These measures along with others will allow us to come in significantly below our budget submitted at the beginning of 2025:
2025 Budget (excl. overhead)
Submitted On track to spend Notes
Member-led projects
Special events
Event grants
Platform & tech
Misc.
$600,000 $550,000 On track to host 130 projects
$55,000 $25,000 Collaboration with IIT Mumbai in Q1
$80,000
$50,000
$15,000
$10,000 External events supported by YSI
$46,000 Process automations, software, maintenance
$2,000 Graphic design, photography
YSI projects have greater effectiveness when our members organize in cooperation with partners and the existing conference circuit because we can leverage the fact that senior speakers and mentors, and several young scholars will be traveling to these events already and we are able to use facilities free of charge. We are also able to have a high visibility and impact with fewer resources deployed and many new members join our platform as a consequence, or conduct follow-up webinars in YSI Working Groups.
Impact Reporting
With input from James Daves, we have and continue to improve our impact reporting to better demonstrate the value and lasting impact of the program.
We are systematically gathering evidence of impact and surfacing the stories and data that demonstrate how young scholars move from inspiration to influence.
In the coming weeks, we’ll roll out a new impact section on our platform, including:
• A searchable database of partners and mentors engaged over the years
• A working paper library showcasing research born from YSI collaborations
• A gallery of notable alumni and their current work on global challenges
YSI follows its theory of change in the following five-step framework:
1. Inspiration: YSI inspires young scholars to develop new economic thinking to address global challenges. INET research showcases the vanguard of new thinking and approaches to pressing issues.
2. Initiative: The YSI community empowers them to act on this by connecting their work to ongoing efforts by partners, senior scholars and peers. It creates a vibrant space for exploration and inquiry.
3. Retention: We retain the insights and social capitalboth for ourselves and our many partners - within our digital platform and continue the work between young scholars and partner institutions through hundreds of virtual webinars.
4. Synthesis: We connect many disjointed efforts into a coherent global whole, where each member feels connected and empowered. The formative stages of their career are deeply impacted.
5. Impact: As alumni, they carry this ethos into many new spaces in which they affect change and create new pathways for the next cohort of young scholars.
Fundraising for 2026
The YSI team is rapidly building its capacity to raise its own funds for 2026 and beyond, with guidance from Sunanda Nair-Bidkar. We are pursuing both general operational support and targeted funds. Our primary strategy is to attract donors for high impact events (regional convenings, topical conferences), which may also inspire general support.
Our updated pitch deck is attached (at the bottom of this pdf) and provides potential donors with a clear view of what their contributions make possible. We combine it with:
1. A dedicated Donor Relations Page
2. Last year’s Annual Report
3. A new page of Testimonials
2026 Budget and Fundraising Target
Our goal for next year is to stabilize community activities at current levels, and contingent on successful fundraising scale to meet growing demand.
We recognize the financial constraints that INET is facing, and we understand that fundraising is imperative. We therefore suggest reducing from $800,000 to a new baseline budget (excl. salaries) of $502,000 with the goal to raise an additional $450,000 in the second half of 2025 to reach the target and meet community demands:
2026 Budget (excl. overhead)
2026 Programming
From 2017 to 2019, YSI’s regional convenings fueled major community growth, sparked lasting partnerships, and empowered local engagement across every continent. Each gathering brought together 150–400 young scholars alongside INET mentors to tackle global challenges.
With strong alumni networks now established and renewed demand from members, this is the ideal moment to bring regional convenings back offering donors a clear, tangible avenue for sustained geographic and thematic impact.
In the coming years, YSI aims to launch a new series of regional convenings to strengthen local knowledge ecosystems, deepen institutional partnerships, and advance scholar-led research agendas. These events will serve as a forum to consolidate learnings and continuously update the agenda of young economists with guidance from INET research.
Complementing these convenings, we are also expanding our virtual topical programming. Curated by YSI’s management in collaboration with alumni and donors, these programs focus on themes where scholarly momentum, societal need, and donor interest align.
At the same time, member-led programming remains at the heart of our model. Communityorganized webinars, workshops, reading groups, and online series run year-round, enabling ongoing experimentation and global collaboration at a modest cost and without geographic restrictions to participation.
Platform & Tech
We plan to raise $50,000 to improve our custom-built web platform. This investment will enhance the user experience for virtual programming and will increase our team’s capacity by automating administrative workflows.
It will also enable us to improve alumni database tracking, allowing us to more effectively demonstrate YSI’s long-term impact. While we have a backlog of high-impact improvements ready to go, current funding only allows for slow, incremental progress.
With additional support, we can accelerate development and unlock the platform’s full potential as a tool for global collaboration and impact reporting.
YSI Activity Report for Q2 2025
In the second quarter the YSI community organized 43 in-person projects around the world along with 32 webinars.
Project Highlights
YSIWorkshop@TurinInternationalFestivalofEconomics
Themed “The New Citizens of the World”, this year’s festival featured Daron Acemoglu, Michael Spence, and INET keynote speakers Paul Krugman and Nicholas Stern. YSI was represented with a group of 20 young scholars who presented their own work, received feedback from Sanjay Reddy (The New School) and developed new collaborations with peers.
BerlinSummit2025
YSI members joined over 60 thought leaders, high level policymakers incl. Adam Tooze, Jamie Galbraith, Brad Setser and Anatole Kaletsky came together to talk about a new economic narrative and win back the future. The program featured YSI alumni like Cecilia Rikap, who debated government officials on Europe’s dependence on big tech and US cloud computing. We also featured INET’s History of Economic Thought Exhibition throughout the gathering.
YSIWorkshop@UNFCCCSubsidiaryBodies62 | Bonn
YSI participated in the UNFCCC Subsidiary Bodies 62 (SB62), representing young researchers in international climate negotiations. Participants networked with policy professionals, attended sessions, and ran their own side event, raising their profile in climate governance and fostered connections for future research and advocacy.
YSISatelliteEventswith5thYoungScholarsConf.on StructuralChangeandIndustrialPolicyinAfrica
YSI partnered with the University of Johannesburg (UJ) South African Research Chair in Industrial Development on conference, plus six satellite events across the African continent (incl. UJ), hosted at Osun State University (Osogbo, Nigeria); the Co-operative University (Nairobi, Kenya) the University of Environment and Sustainable Development
(Somanya, Ghana); Aime Cesaire (Abomey-Calavi City, Benin); and University of Namibia (Rundu, Namibia).
MoneyasifFinanceMattered | Manchester
YSI hosted a workshop with Jan Toporowski, Claudio Borio, Perry Mehrling, Jo Michell, Robert McCauley, and Giuseppe Fontana to develop a credit money approach that integrates the practical approaches of the BIS with various theories of money (money view, circuitists, Postkeynsian) to develop a framework of modern money and capital markets.
Full list of Q1 virtual projects
WINIR Young Scholars Workshop on AI & Institutions
Sound Policy System, Sectoral Institutions, and Community Capability Management for Sustainability
Canadian Bank Whistleblower Solution to Identity Theft
International Solidarity Economy, Indo-African Relations, and Development in Global-South
Money and Finance Reading Group
Money View Reading Group
Perspectives on the Latin American economy from a heterodox approach.
Scholars on Screen – Video Storytelling for social media
States and Markets reading group
Full list of Q2 in-person projects
YSI-Azim Premji University Summer School on The Sraffa-Keynes Approach: History, Theory & Applications Bangalore, India
Regional Industrial Policy - The Saarland Transformation Project in a comparative context
Saarbrücken, Germany
Trump, Tariffs, and the World Crisis Berlin, Germany
YSI @ Funding the Ecological Transition: Financial, Monetary, and Fiscal Policy Approaches Geneva, Switzerland
YSI Local Hub Netherlands Delft, Netherlands
YSI @ Sixth Nordic Post-Keynesian Conference Pre-Conference Aalborg, Denmark
International Workshop: Theoretical and Empirical Methods for Contemporary Economic Analysis Belo Horizonte, Brazil
From Theory to Practice: Frontiers in Macroeconomic Agent-Based Modeling Vienna, Austria
Choice and Welfare: Beyond the Rational Agent London, UK
III YSI – RSA Young Scholars’ Academy on Regional Studies Porto, Portugal
YSI UK hub meeting with civil society in London London
East Asia Money View Colloquium Shanghai, China
YSI @ European Society of History of Economic Thought Turin, Italy
Economic Thought and Philosophy: YSI Pre-JSHET Conference Workshop Amori, Japan
Workshop: Building the Future: Navigating Real Estate Cycles and Green New Deal Strategies Napoli, Italy
Advanced Course on Innovation, Growth, and International Production. Models and Data Analysis 2025 Rome, Italy
YSI-EBHS Doctoral Workshop 2025 Birmimgham, UK
Workshop on Sustainability through Innovation and Equity: A Global Dialogue on Economics and Sustainability Brighton, UK
YSI workshop @ the 59th Annual Meetings of the Canadian Economics Association Montreal, Canada
YSI @ Turin Festival of Economics Turin, Italy
Escuela de Verano de Economía Aplica para América Latina (EVEEAL)
Mexico City, Mexico
YSI: Financial and Economic Networks @NetSci Maastricht, Netherlands
16th PKES PhD Student Conference Hatfield, United Kingdom
YSI Local Hub Netherlands Delft, Netherlands
2nd YSI workshop at 2025 SRI Africa Satellite Event Johannesburg, South Africa
Africa Satellite Events for Industrial Policy Conference (Pending) Nairobi, Kenya
YSI Pre-Conference @ 4th Global Carework Summit “Histories and Futures of care” in Duke University Durham, USA
Economic Fitness and Economic Complexity (EFC) Summer School Rome, Italy
The Scandalous Rise of Inequality in Canada with Prof. Lars Osberg Toronto, Canada
Los planes macroeconómicos del neoliberalismo de ultraderecha y su impacto sobre los cuerpos-territorio Bogota, Colombia
Summer School on Inclusive Trade and Industrial Policy in Europe – 2nd Edition
Maastricht, Netherlands
YSI @ STOREP 2025 Termoli, Italy
Structural Traps and Opportunities in the Development of Latin America and the Caribbean Mexico City, Mexico
Young Scholars versus the socio-ecological crisis: Well… Let’s talk about adaptation Paris, France
From Draft to Publication: Editorial Feedback Workshop for Heterodox Economists London, UK
YSI Workshop on Structural Change, Inequality, and Growth Maastricht, Netherlands
Navigating Uncertainty: Geopolitical Risks and the path to Clean Energy Transition San Francisco, USA
YSI @DRUID Workshop: Young scholars in cross-disciplinary research on innovation and dynamics of change Toronto, Canada
The new geography of the electric vehicles global value chain Shanghai, China
Attending UNFCCC Subsidiary Bodies 62 in Bonn, Germany Bonn, Germany
YSI Experimental Panel @DSA2025: Interdisciplinary Workshop on Institutions and Development Madrid, Spain
YSI Workshop at the 28th Annual Conference on Global Economic Analysis (GTAP) Kigali, Rwanda
Workshop IPE-YSI: The redefinition of the trade partners: Global Value Chains, Innovation, Structural Change Berlin, Germany
YSI-EAEPE Summer School: Reimagining Migration Economics through a Pluralist Lense Rome, Italy
New YSI Pitch Deck for Fundraising
The below pitch deck is our base -template, to be customized depending on the target donor and ask. It lives alongside our dedicated Donor Relations Page.
Empower young scholars as they rise to the challenges of our time.
Young scholars want to address the challenges facing society.
But neither their curricula nor their institutions are equipped to support them on that path.
This is where INET brings provocative research and YSI offers an inspiring community.
Barriers to progress
How we break them
Rigid thinking
Conformist, competitive, method-centric.
Promotes the detached observer over the engaged citizen. Little interdisciplinary work.
Collaborativeculture
Creative,cooperative,question-driven.Rooted inservicetosocietyanddrivenbyengaged, transdisciplinarythinkers.
Lack of support for innovative work
Many scholars, especially in under-resourced regions, work in isolation without access to networks, mentorship, or funding.
Vibrantlearningenvironment
Mini-grantsfuel200+member-ledprojectseach year—onreal-worldchallenges,withINET’ s seniorscholarsandglobalallies.
Disconnected institutions.
Efforts remain fragmented, with little structure for follow-up, synthesis, or sustained collaboration.
Structuretobringlearningstogether
Acustomdigitalplatformpoolslearnings, nurturescommunity,anddrivesforwarda sharedagendaforchange.
We envision economic thinking that is free of intellectual barriers, resonates with reality, and serves our global society.
Rob Johnson (President of INET) at the YSI Plenary in Budapest, 2016:
“These people are setting an example of a community that can stay alive for a very long time.
I hope that 20 years from now, YSI is an enormous organization, a significant share of the population of people aspiring to be economists, in favor of dynamism and flexibility; all the things economists prescribe for the world, when they run their own profession like a politburo.”
In 2016, YSI had 2000 members. Today, we are 25,000 members strong.
Our community of 25k members organized 190 projects in 2024.
How we do it. We are resourceful.
Partners & Volunteers
Projects are member-organized, in collaboration with partners and senior scholars who care.
Innovative Tech
To manage 100’s of globally distributed events and processes efficiently
Lean Team: Cross-functional skills and expertise in global programming.
There is power in a long-term community.
Members turn into alumni who continue to work on global challenges at increasing levels of influence
Once established, they come to serve as mentors and provide new pathways for next cohort.
Meet Cecilia Rikap
Cecilia joined us in 2018. Based in had limited access to the global discourse. In YSI, her working group shaped a agenda on the political economy of hundreds of young scholars. She became the head of research at the Innovation and Public Purpose London, founded by Mariana Mazzucato. Today she is a leading voice on digital sovereignty, publishing widely and advising governments.
Her department has hired 8 other YSI
Projections for FY 2025
We are on track to hit our targets.
> Member-led projects > Regional Convening
$250k keeps us going. $500k scales.
Partner with us to boost our impact. with a gift of $500k
Program costs
> Member-led projects
> Regional Convening
Overhead and ops Total
Expected outcomes
+500 project participants
+100 community leaders
+25 new partnerships
Let’s make this possible.
Your gift unlocks:
Critical programming for 2026
A convening with long-term reach Pathways for hundreds of under-resourced scholars
We’re ready to execute. We just need the right partners.
Appendix
YSI Team
Based in different parts of the world, each team member brings a wide range of skills and knowledge.
Strategy Grants
Operations Community
Jay Pocklington Christina Mosalagae
Heske van Doornen
Manuel Valencia
Our partners include
Finance Ministry of Saarland
Regional Convening Track Record
Regional Convening Program
Over 3 days, participants take part in:
Senior scholar input talks
Participant presentations
Community-building activities
Senior scholars give input talks to on the big, societal questions that young scholars are grappling with.
Selected participants present their work and receive feedback from peers and a senior scholars.
An excursion or group activity creates shared memories and lasting relationships.
Regional Convening Budget
A local partner provides the venue free of charge. Senior speakers engage without honorariums.
Programming and venue
Participant travel and accommodation
We cover speakers’ expenses, and meals as well as social events for all participants.
$40,000
We cover a portion of participants’ flight costs and provide shared rooms in university housing or an affordable hotel $60,000
Staffing and logistics
Staff presence, local transport, and AV equipment allows for a seamless execution. $25,000
Total $125,000
Regional Convening Impact
A convening builds local regional capacity by:
Brings exposure to top scholars in the field Participants connect directly with leading voices on a level that would otherwise not be available to them.
Strengthens local knowledge systems
New connections are created between scholars and institutions that are local to the continent
Kickstart relationships and projects Participants make new connections and brainstorm projects they can roll out across the year, either virtually or online.
A typical member-led project
Averaging 10-12 participants and a 3000 USD budget, most in-person projects include:
Call for papers
Mini-program
The organizer publishes a call for papers, inviting peers to submit their work for presentation. Scholars are selected based on merit and diversity.
Selected participants come together to present and get feedback from each other, and from a senior scholar. A shared meal allows participants to bond and make plans.
Parallel partner engagement
Most organizers position their project next to a larger partner conference so they can make strategic connections and unlock free venue space.
Thank you. We’d be excited to work together.
