Organisations that lose touch with the forces shaping the future risk becoming passive recipients of change, rather than active shapers.

Scenario planning, when done well, helps to bridge this gap.

Effective scenario planning isn't a one-off exercise but an ongoing strategic conversation. The goal isn’t to predict the future, but to expand strategic imagination and prepare for a range of possibilities.

The ability to travel into the future isn't just for daydreamers or science fiction. It's a critical skill for strategy and planning, particularly when so much feels uncertain, volatile, and fast moving.

Being a time traveller is not about predicting the future, it’s about being better prepared for a range of possible futures and better placed to shape the future you want to see.

Many civil society organisations struggle to know when and how to work with consultants, especially if it's their first time. The most successful consulting relationships start with clear thinking about the challenge you want to solve through your collaboration, and can turn unexpected insights into an opportunity to co-create and strengthen outcomes.

Today’s mission-driven organisations are fuelled by their relationships. Networks provide adaptability, shared leadership, resilience, and innovation, making them vital models for impact in an interconnected world.

Strong networks are powerful, when they are purposeful.

When strategies look the same across organisations due to unseen pressures, we call this 'isomorphic strategy'.  But this tendency towards sameness - and its causes - deserves closer examination, particularly by civil society leaders seeking to deliver impact.

We have discussed the challenge of 'disconfirming evidence' and why it matters in philanthropy. Our new framework guides foundations through a process of understanding and incorporating contrary evidence into their decision-making. It's designed specifically for organisations pursuing systemic change, where traditional evaluation approaches often fall short.

Compared to other sectors, philanthropy lacks practices, structures and cultural norms to tackle confirmation bias. In this article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Andy Martin and Kecia Bertermann describe why this is a problem, and an opportunity to do better.

When philanthropists think about their impact, they should recognise that timing matters. What if the billions being spent on climate philanthropy today were spent in 2007? What will be boring to fund in 2044 that is weird to fund now? What are the opportunities and responsibilities of philanthropy to think about these issues?

The pursuit of fundraising growth can be a daunting challenge for many charities. Trustees and other stakeholders may push fundraising teams to “be more innovative”, but there is no big bang solution. Successful growth strategies focus on changing how the organisation thinks and works.

If your organisation no longer has a point of view about the future, then you might have a Futures Gap. Discover how identifying and bridging this gap can reignite your mission and reshape your impact.

Our second post on the future of communities. As communities become more fluid, more open, and less 'controllable', charities will need to find new ways of working. We discuss three high-level responses that charities might take: channel, platform and ecosystem.

Changing communities pose a challenge to traditional charities. New groups are more online, self-organising, and diverse, needing tools not directions. To stay relevant and support these communities effectively, charities must change profoundly.

The strategic questions that kept coming up in 2023 were about networks and emotions. They were about pace, agency and power. These questions shift the focus of strategy from a single, rational organisation. They ask us to look outwards to the network, and inwards towards the personal.

In 2011, the article ‘The Elusive Craft of Evaluating Advocacy’ by political scientists Mark Schmitt and Steven Teles, was published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review.

Whose strategy is it anyway? Under UK charity law, trustee boards are responsible for effective delivery of a charity’s objectives. They set a charity's strategic direction and ensure legal compliance.

“Transformation” must be one of the most over-loaded, over-used terms in discussions about organisations. Countless books, articles, think-pieces, lectures, tweets, conference talks, podcasts (and now ChatGPT answers) all pronounce ‘new’ ways of thinking about transformation, claiming to have finally unlocked the key to success.

A "theory of the state" can be thought of as a clear idea of the society you want, and the role of government in making it happen.

A Theory of Change can be a powerful tool. It can tell the story of how the world can be a better place, what it will take to get there, and how you are going to help make it happen.

Organisational values are powerful tools. They describe who you are and what you stand for. Done right, they provide everyone with a sense of purpose and belonging.

The Charity Commission is the regulator for charities in England and Wales. It is funded by the Treasury but independent of government.