Watch the Not-for-profit Agenda for expert analysis of how the Budget affects your organisation
Posted on 24 Apr 2024
UPDATED: The nation’s top not-for-profit thinkers have summed up the big challenges for the sector…
Posted on 07 Feb 2024
By Paul Higgins
Not-for-profits wanting to face the future with confidence need to do so strategically. Here are five tips to help your organisation navigate uncertainty, from Paul Higgins, futurist, Emergent Futures.
Before you start thinking about the future, think about the resources you want to commit to the exercise. The reason for thinking about the future is to disturb the present – to change what you do.
This means that if you are committing resources to the thinking, you need to be committing resources to the doing. Otherwise, you are wasting energy and will be worse off.
As a general rule, larger organisations in complex environments should commit more resources than smaller organisations in simple environments.
Again, this is very specific to your organisation. If you are in the long-term infrastructure business (e.g. social housing), you need to take a long-term view. If you are in a fast-moving environment with a lot of change, then take a shorter view.
As a general rule, Emergent Futures works in the five- to seven-year time frame. This goes beyond any strategic plan, which reduces the friction people feel when they are asked to reconsider a strategy they think is settled, yet it’s not so far out that people feel disconnected from it.
This is not to say that people should not contest the current strategic plan.
What happens in practice is that people are freed up by going beyond the current plan and then realise that some of the stuff they have talked about should be started straight away. You have to allow that self-realisation to occur.
All organisations have biases and blind spots. Involving as many people as possible from inside and outside your organisation is critical to creating insights that deal with this. This should involve people from other sectors, individuals with different cultural backgrounds, a spread of young and older people, and people with different expertise and experience. If you are a small organisation, then involve other not-for-profit organisations in a joint effort and involve your supporters and donors.
Many people find thinking about the future hard, but it can be fun. Get people to write short stories or plays and act them out, record TikTok videos, and get access to 3D printers to make stuff. Allow people to look at the improbable and the preposterous.
If you are a large organisation, this may mean designating a group of staff to review the scenarios and stories you have created every six months. Then have them present what has changed and what has not changed and what that might mean to a board meeting for discussion. In smaller organisations, it might mean just allocating an hour in a board meeting every six months to have a wide-ranging discussion on what might affect you in the future.
If these principles seem a little vague, then consider the words attributed to an exasperated former US president Harry Truman: “Give me a one-handed economist. All my economists say ‘On the one hand…' then ‘But on the other….’”
The reality is that what you need to do is very context-specific, and you should adapt these principles to your own needs.
Paul Higgins ([email protected]) is a futurist with Emergent Futures, and is chair of Social Venture Partners Melbourne, which assists not-for-profits that work with disadvantaged young people by providing pro-bono capacity-building and grants.
Posted on 24 Apr 2024
UPDATED: The nation’s top not-for-profit thinkers have summed up the big challenges for the sector…
Posted on 10 Apr 2024
ICDA has compiled a large library of resources, webinars, help sheets and policies to help…
Posted on 10 Apr 2024
A detailed study into the corruption risks faced by government-funded community organisations has…
Posted on 10 Apr 2024
Not-for-profits have been hit by a spike in insurance premiums because of a perfect storm of…
Posted on 10 Apr 2024
Not-for-profits must brace for the challenges of an increasingly volatile world in which risks span…
Posted on 10 Apr 2024
A leading not-for-profit finance expert believes that tightening the liability rules for community…
Posted on 10 Apr 2024
Time and time again, we read news accounts of boards that did not have their eyes on the ball and…
Posted on 10 Apr 2024
If crises were predictable we’d never have to experience them, but life is complicated and – in…
Posted on 14 Mar 2024
Fundraising experts say not-for-profits must adapt to major changes this year. That means adapting…
Posted on 14 Mar 2024
So you’ve found a grant that would be perfect for taking your organisation or venture’s mission to…
Posted on 14 Mar 2024
I’m regularly shocked at how few organisations thank their greatest supporters. Call me old…
Posted on 14 Mar 2024
One of Australia’s foremost fundraising observers says Australian not-for-profits must get the…