The Four Futures of Generosity Report

“He who anticipates the coming of challenges reduces their impact when they arrive”

– Seneca

If recent history has taught us anything it is that planning for a specific future is a fool’s errand. No organisation has complete control over the environment in which they operate. What helps us build engagement, adaptability and allows us to shape the narrative of our team and the broader industry is to have a structured conversation about possible futures.

In this report we explore four possible futures for Australian society and their impact on Organisations, Not-for-profits and generosity.

the challenge

• To create a conversation about the future that engages your team and helps them see the bigger picture and the complexity.
• To have a conversation about the future that allows for the fact that you can’t predict a specific future but you can explore possible futures.
• To build adaptability into your organisation and team.
• To shape the narrative in the organisation and across the industry.

the approach

• Gather a group of intellectually clever, engaged and curious individuals who are keen to explore with you.
• Select axes of uncertainty that will play out in your industry over which you have little control.
• Overlay those axes and explore how society will look in the future worlds they suggest.
• Apply different lenses to deepen your understanding of the implications and opportunities in each of the worlds.

the output

• Martin Paul from More Growth and Rod Matthews spent 9 months exploring the future landscape of Australian Society and its implications for generosity.
• We explored and documented dozens of megatrends and forces of change at play.
• The Four Futures of Generosity report contains:
• A description of the process we used
• A detailed description of the four worlds
• Implications and Experiments for NFP’s and Organisations that rely on donor or membership support