Masters is senior fellow and directs the Better Futures Project at Democracy Funders Network. She is the author of “Imagining Better Futures for American Democracy.”
This year feels especially consequential. Given the stakes and the media drumbeat, it’s hard not to fear what 2024 could portend for America going forward. The potential for an authoritarian turn, civil unrest and government dysfunction looms large. Such outcomes would inevitably have downstream implications for almost every policy issue that philanthropy concerns itself with, and for itself as a sector, should it find itself opposing an authoritarian president, having to backstop an ineffective government or contend with the shock waves of violent upheaval following the elections.
This is precisely what most pro-democracy donors and activists are trying to prevent. But the elections could also unleash powerful pro-democratic forces, and that’s something to prepare for as well.
It’s sobering to realize that high-stakes elections are just one of many sources of uncertainty and disruption facing philanthropy, with important consequences for America and the world. That’s because these are not ordinary times. We are living through accelerating change of immense proportions, occurring in a number of different arenas simultaneously – from technology and climate to demographic change and racial reckoning. In the face of such radical openness, threat and possibility, it’s easy to feel untethered and scared, to cling onto the vestiges of old paradigms even as new ones are emerging, to aspire to turn back the clock and even to blow everything up and start anew. This is as true for institutions as it is for individuals.
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Uncertainty at this scale can be terrifying, exhausting and exhilarating, sometimes all at once. But does it have to be? Is it possible to develop a futures-ready mindset – the skills, discipline and imagination – to embrace this openness, to prepare for a wide range of possibilities and to find hope? I am especially taken by Rebecca Solnit’s views on hope:
"Hope locates itself in the premises that we don’t know what will happen and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act. When you recognize uncertainty, you recognize that you may be able to influence the outcomes – you alone or you in concert with a few dozen or several million others. Hope is an embrace of the unknown and the unknowable."
Flux times require philanthropy to dispense with business-as-usual thinking, to stretch its time horizon and its imagination, both of which are likely to atrophy if too much time is spent fearing change, ignoring change or playing defense. I recommend three main interventions, informed by extensive research and interviews, for cultivating a futures-ready mindset and bringing about better, more democratic futures.
Take a longer view and use futurist techniques to think rigorously about the future. The high-stakes 2024 elections will have important implications for donors, whatever the outcome. A range of techniques can help donors imagine what could come next and prepare. First, they should look out far enough into the future so they can hold their assumptions about what’s inevitable more lightly, opening up space for more visionary thinking and action, more resilience in the face of unexpected change, and greater nimbleness and adaptability.
In addition to lengthening the time frame, it’s important to use well-known strategic foresight techniques like scenario planning and horizon scanning. Robust scenario planning helps mitigate risk and also explore possibilities for positive change, even (perhaps even especially) in worst-case scenarios, and to identify possible risks in rosier scenarios too. Horizon scanning identifies data points of all kinds that don’t fit neatly into existing mental models or paradigms, stresses the need for diverse information sources, and trains you to look for harbingers of the future.
It’s still early days but some donors are beginning to recognize that new approaches are needed to address the seismic shifts happening all around us. Several are engaged in internal processes to integrate futures thinking into their strategy development and help their grantees think longer term and more imaginatively about the work ahead.
Fund greater experimentation and innovation to strengthen and invigorate U.S. democracy. While a majority of the pro-democracy field is rightfully engaged in defensive actions to protect existing democratic institutions and the integrity and fairness of elections in America, new efforts are emerging now that point the way forward.
Democracy 2076 is reimagining what a fit-for-purpose 21st century constitution could look like. Novel legal organizations and strategies, such as those used by Our Children’s Trust to secure rights for future generations, are winning cases and setting new precedents. Fresh ideas to re-invigorate how democracy and civic participation are practiced, like participatory budgeting, citizens’ assemblies and other forms of co-governance – as well as new ways to engage youth – are gaining traction. And global governance trends that feature intergenerational policy-making, future governance roles and legislation to leave a better world to future generations are set to gain a powerful platform at the first ever United Nations Summit of the Future in New York this fall.
Philanthropy can play a catalytic role in seeding, testing, piloting and scaling all of these promising new approaches.
Develop and spread positive narratives about what’s possible. The media ecosystem dominant in America today thrives on conflict, drama and polarization. The goal is to shock and draw views, not to tell nuanced stories about finding solutions and working through complexity together. At scale, we need the proliferation of stories that share solutions and common aspirations, as well as production of more optimistic content via films, TV shows, literary genres and media plaforms to counter the prevailing dystopian narratives based on conflict and hopelessness. ‘
The recent launch of Futurific Studios by Kathryn Murdoch and Ari Wallach and its upcoming PBS TV series “A Brief History of the Future,” designed to help the public to imagine better futures, are important markers of movement in this arena. Once we activate our imagination muscles at scale, it will be easier to act on those aspirations.
My advice to donors, and to all civil society sectors, is to embrace uncertainty and use it to stress test and strengthen your strategy and embolden your actions.
- Stay focused on aspirational long-term goals and then align those as best you can with shorter-term actions you feel you need to take now. Don’t let your rapid response work swallow your long game or dilute your mission.
- Avoid binary thinking about the upcoming elections and their implications. Plan for all eventualities rigorously, by looking for nuance, for the risks and opportunities in all scenarios, and thinking through second- and third-order effects.
- Finally, remember that the future is already here and it’s all around you. The key is figuring how and where to look for it and opening your eyes wide enough to be able to see it. When you do, lean in and nurture it.
Philanthropy has longevity, capacity to shape and execute on a long-term vision, and extensive resources. It has all the makings of the perfect “good ancestor.” But can it get into the right frame of mind to meet that challenge?
