Foresight and Futures Initiative

Helping Philanthropy Innovate, Envision, and Build a Better Future

Change is the new normal, and philanthropy needs to catch up. How do we not only cope with change but proactively anticipate the challenges and opportunities, and shape our capabilities, strategies, and interventions accordingly? How do we hone a long-view lens that is not beholden to the events and assumptions of today but is driven by the observed trends, patterns, and imagination? How do we democratize who shapes, defines, and drives the future?

Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors’ two-year global Foresight & Futures Community of Practice for senior foundation leaders seeks to answer these and other questions in order to help philanthropy institutionalize best practices offered by the disciplines of foresight and futurism.

The initiative’s work will include convenings, research, and thought leadership production. Participation of historically marginalized communities and nonprofit partners will be a central feature of this Community of Practice.

The Fog of Turbulence

Across the globe, 2026 started full throttle, flinging change and challenges at unprecedented speed, scale, and magnitude. Today’s prolonged moment of turbulence and uncertainty is testing our resolve; institutional, democratic and societal resilience; operating contexts; strategic priorities; and long-established norms and assumptions. Many in the philanthropic ecosystem find it difficult to navigate this complexity and volatility, while simultaneously balancing the urgency of today and futures-directed strategies. 

The importance of our foresight & futures work—particularly work that centers frontline communities—has never been more evident. It not only provides us with a way to anticipate what may come next to design long-view, adaptable and resilient solutions, but also enables us to unlock spaces of bold imagination that can be incorporated into structured frameworks to make the foresight and anticipatory analysis that feed our strategies more equitable, inclusive and multidimensional. After all, if we can’t truly imagine radically new, different, equitable futures, no methodology, no scenario will help us build a better, equitable, verdant world of dignity and hope. 

But more than that, practicing foresight & futures helps us think about how we identify signals of change, where we look for them, and with whom. Crucially, it helps us see signals more clearly through the disorienting fog of turbulence. Thus, practicing foresight & futures collectively and individually will enable us to better respond to this moment in time and the imperative to act. Time is ripe for us to move from being futures-aware and futures-focused to futures-intentional and futures-committed, and to enable our organizations and ecosystems to do the same. 

Background and Learnings

In late 2023, RPA launched the Foresight & Futures Initiative and community of practice to help philanthropy and the broader ecosystem institutionalize best practices of strategic foresight and futurism, to better anticipate the challenges of tomorrow, hone organizational innovation, and create more robust, equitable, and adaptive strategies. Our goals were to gain applied knowledge of the practices of foresight and futures; engage in hands-on learning with experts from diverse geographies and sectors; and build internal foresight and futures capabilities.   

Since then, our community members have strengthened their foresight & futures know-how and practice; gained familiarity with a wide range of approaches; forged closer ties as a community; and begun to practice our learnings within our organizations and ecosystems. Significantly, many have begun not just applying and rightsizing foresight and futures approaches but also thinking about how to bring along colleagues, grantees and other partners. Additionally, the initiative has created a number of tools to help us continuously exercise these important muscles, including inquiry-based frameworks for applying and institutionalizing the practice, and a strategic decision-making board game.   

The Global Futures Weavery  

In this 2026-2028 phase, we will continue to deepen our applied knowledge by weaving together emergent and existing strategic foresight methodologies with a broader array of futures approaches, particularly community-anchored, non-Western practices. We will continue to weave together the past and the future; our visions and concrete interventions; our communities and different parts of our organizations, different sectors and perspectives; and more. We will continue to right-size our learnings for our organizations and ecosystems; exercise bold imagination; expand peer learning and exchanges; and engage in sensemaking across our global community. Additionally, we will supplement our work with data-based horizon scanning and analysis.   

The initiative’s work will include in-person and virtual convenings, as well as continued creation of applied learning curricula, futures-directed frameworks and other thought leadership products. Participation of funders and nonprofit partners from Global Majority geographies and historically marginalized communities will be a central feature of our work.