Cold Call

A cold call is an unsolicited first contact with a person or organization with whom the sender has no existing relationship. The term originated in sales but has spread to journalism, fundraising, research, and professional networking. For IR students and junior think-tank researchers, cold calling (or, more commonly today, cold emailing) is a standard way to secure expert interviews, informational meetings, internships, or comments for a paper.

A well-constructed cold outreach typically includes:

• A clear subject line that signals purpose (e.g., "Research interview request – [topic]").
• A one-sentence identification of who you are and your affiliation.
• A specific reason for contacting this person rather than anyone else, often referencing their published work.
• A concrete, low-cost ask (15-minute call, a single question, a referral).
• A deadline or timeframe and easy scheduling options.

Response rates are generally low—industry benchmarks for cold email in business contexts often fall in the low single digits to around 10%—so practitioners send batches and follow up once or twice before moving on. In policy and academic settings, response rates tend to be higher when the requester demonstrates genuine engagement with the recipient's scholarship.

Cold calling sits in tension with several professional norms. Many jurisdictions regulate unsolicited commercial contact: the U.S. Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 restricts automated calls, the EU's ePrivacy Directive and GDPR impose consent requirements on unsolicited electronic marketing, and national do-not-call registries exist in countries including the U.S., U.K., Canada, India, and Australia. These rules generally target commercial solicitation rather than individual research outreach, but researchers contacting officials or private citizens should still observe data-protection rules and institutional ethics guidelines.

In a Model UN or think-tank context, cold outreach is most effective when the requester treats the recipient's time as scarce, asks something the recipient is uniquely positioned to answer, and follows up with a thank-you and a copy of any resulting work.