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
2026 arrived at full throttle, flinging change and challenges at unprecedented speed, scale, and magnitude. This prolonged turbulence is testing our resolve, our institutions, our operating contexts, and long-held assumptions. Many in the philanthropic ecosystem struggle to navigate this volatility while balancing today’s urgency against tomorrow’s strategy.
The importance of our foresight & futures work — particularly work that centers frontline communities — has never been more evident. It helps us anticipate what’s coming so we can design adaptable, resilient solutions, and it opens space for bold imagination, making our foresight more equitable, inclusive, and multidimensional. If we can’t imagine radically different, more equitable futures, no methodology or scenario will help us build one.
Foresight also shapes how we identify signals of change — where we look, and with whom — helping us see more clearly through the fog. Practiced individually and collectively, it sharpens our ability to respond to this moment. The time has come to move from futures-aware to futures-committed — and to help our organizations and ecosystems do the same.
Background and Learnings
In late 2023, RPA launched the Foresight & Futures Initiative and community of practice to:
- help philanthropy institutionalize strategic foresight and futurism to better anticipate tomorrow’s challenges
- sharpen organizational innovation
- and build more robust, equitable, and adaptive strategies
Our goals were to gain applied knowledge of foresight practices, engage in hands-on learning from experts across geographies and sectors, and build internal capabilities.
Since then, our community has deepened their foresight know-how, gained fluency across a range of approaches, forged closer ties, and begun applying these learnings within their organizations and ecosystems. Significantly, many have begun not just applying and rightsizing foresight and futures approaches but also thinking about how to bring additional colleagues, grantees, and partners along.
The initiative has also produced several tools, including inquiry-based frameworks for institutionalizing the practice and a strategic decision-making board game.
How We Work
1. Facilitation & Capacity Building
Our team leads facilitated conversations to help organizations institutionalize and strengthen foresight and futures practices. This includes public workshops, private workshops, conference facilitation, and executive sessions. Interested? Contact us.
2. Frameworks & Tools
Our tools and frameworks help organizations imagine, prepare for, and shape more resilient futures. Explore them here.
3. Ecosystem Building
Our work through our Global Futures Weavery builds on the momentum of the Foresight & Futures Initiative by deepening our applied learning journey and centering community-driven foresight. Our Global Futures Weavery Hubs in Kenya, Brazil, and the United States provide permanent “homes” for this work. Learn more.
