Imagination, Regeneration, and Foresight Community of Practice

We are living in complex, uncertain times that require competencies that we all need to develop. In philanthropy we’ve needed to work differently in the last 12 months – we’ve needed to be more flexible, more adaptive, to say ‘we don’t know’ and to be comfortable to ask questions rather than say we have all the answers. It’s also a time that requires us to do really transformative and imaginative work – to protect and preserve but also to take great leaps, and build preferred futures.

It needs us to be smarter about how to combine both strategic and participatory grantmaking approaches, and lived, learned and practiced experience, rather than getting stuck in singular approaches. This requires us all to ask what is needed of us now and to equip ourselves with new or more developed skills and competencies so that we design emergent strategies, adaptive organisations and use futures practices.

Against this backdrop, this Community of Practice on futures, imaginations, and emergent strategies explores what transdisciplinary philanthropy will look like and wrestle with the following questions:

• How do we support organisations and communities to continually adapt in a long crisis?
• How do we design our own strategies and consider different approaches to building strategies?
• What is the role of horizon-scanning and foresight in philanthropy and civil society?
• How do we bring foresight practice into local civil society so that they can design preferred futures rather than just being responsive?
• How do we fund assemblages and ecologies over time – intentionally linking up, through funding, different parts of an ecosystem?