than ever in whether you succeed.
That’s because our collective capacity to confront the significant, complex social and environmental challenges facing us has not kept pace with our capacity—individually or collectively—to create those problems. The mar-ketplace alone cannot and will not address many of our most pressing social, moral, and environmental challenges, and indeed at times intensifies them. Neither can government alone do so, within nations or among them.
Philanthropy can’t do it by itself either, but we believe better philanthropy is a linchpin in any effort to create a more effective system of public prob-lem-solving that better engages the private resources that have grown so significantly in recent decades. Without a better system of tending to pub-lic, rather than private, benefits, it seems unlikely that there will be enough investment in the innovations we need to tackle the urgent challenges of the coming decades.
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But here’s the central challenge: no one is in charge of working for a better future, and no one can be. A better world cannot be brought about by some master strategy directed by a central agency. It can only emerge from the bot-tom up, by many creative citizens and institutions that are willing to grapple courageously with an issue they feel passionately about, whether it’s in their own backyard or in a village halfway across the planet. In the networked knowledge age, those eff orts can now be connected in ways never before pos-sible. Whether it adds up to a better future or not will depend on the quality of the choices that create it.
We hope that if you’ve read this far, you have a new appreciation that the choic-es you make—to connect (or not), to learn (or not), to share (or not), to adapt (or not), to tackle tough problems and engage a growing array of resources (or not)—will have an eff ect, and not just on your giving. More people connecting and learning together will make it easier for you to connect and learn yourself, and it will make it easier for others to do the same. More people adapting to the new ecology and modeling their giving style around the new forces and opportunities for problem-solving will inspire others who are looking for bet-ter paths for themselves. More people exercising the choices that givers have in these ways could create a new paradigm of giving over the next generation.
Th e great opportunity for each giver individually—to align with the broader forces and amplify their eff orts, to achieve greater impact and gain greater satisfaction—creates and contributes to an enormous opportunity for philan-thropy as a whole. It’s the opportunity to:
• Create a more eff ective, adaptive, connected universe of actors seeking social benefi t
• Enhance learning in the system for the benefi t of all
• Increase our collective capacity to tackle hard problems in a sus-tained way and make a diff erence in addressing them
• Draw more resources into the fi eld of social problem-solving as givers who might be content to stay on the sidelines see new potential for making a diff erence
• Stave off undesirable futures, whether it is the story of wasted op-portunity, cramped vision, or modest victories without big gains
79 Th e result would be a truly virtuous circle, in which the more individuals and
institutions make good choices and contribute to the health of the whole, the more the health of the whole can support and sustain good choices among the individuals.
Better Performance by Individuals & Organizations
More Coordinated Learning & Action/
Better Overall Performance
As we’ve stressed from the start, though, philanthropy is a profoundly vol-untary act, and these are choices that only some will make. Th ose who turn toward the new ecology and the forces it has unleashed in every fi eld that donors give to will by defi nition be pioneers. Th ere are many great examples from the past and many new ways to learn from them, but there are no proven paths for eff ective action in a world still being made. Th e opportunity for those who do fi nd ways to channel these forces for social benefi t is the opportunity to be a leader and a model for others. Let us hope that more philanthropists will commit to becoming pioneers, joining with others in new ways to look out for the future.
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This guide is one result of a partnership between the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, both of which have demonstrated an understanding of the leverage that can be gained by making efforts to en-hance the field of philanthropy a programmatic priority. The partnership was initiated by Tom Reis, a program director within the Philanthropy and Volun-teerism unit at Kellogg, and by Barbara Kibbe, then the director of the Packard Foundation’s Organizational Effectiveness and Philanthropy Program and now vice president for program and effectiveness at the Skoll Foundation.
As representatives from two of the very few funders doing grantmaking to build the capacity of philanthropy and nonprofits, Reis and Kibbe were troubled by their perception that the nonprofit sector was not keeping up with the pace of change in the world. In 2000, they asked Global Business Network to explore how the tools of futures thinking, in which GBN specializes, might improve the ability of nonprofits, including foundations, to adapt more effectively. For more than 17 years, GBN (www.gbn.com) has helped to guide both public and private organizations through a changing environment, and is internationally acclaimed for its leadership role in the evolution and application of scenario thinking—
a tool that combines research, creativity, and openness in order to imagine possible futures.
The resulting effort proceeded in two separate but related streams of activity that continue to evolve. The first, which was funded by the Packard Foundation alone, aimed to accelerate progress in helping nonprofit leaders learn to antici-pate and adapt better to a complex and rapidly shifting external environment.
It led to a number of experiments in training and consulting, and ultimately resulted in a guide for nonprofit leaders called, What If?: The Art of Scenario Thinking for Nonprofits, which can be purchased or downloaded for free at www.gbn.com/whatif.
The second stream of activity, which was funded equally by the Kellogg and Packard foundations attempted to do scenario thinking about philanthropy it-self. After an initial scenario-building exercise, the initiative broadened its ef-forts, ultimately creating elements of a theory of change for philanthropy. This guide is one result. A full look at the products of this initiative can by found at www.futureofphilanthropy.org.
While GBN continues to work with nonprofits frequently, the Future of Phi-lanthropy initiative will now be carried forward by the Monitor Institute, part of GBN’s parent company, the Monitor Group. The Institute is the primary vehicle through which the Group is now launching a new phase of experi-mentation about how to best use its knowledge, expertise, skill, and capital to address complex social challenges. (See the inside back cover for descriptions of Monitor Group, Monitor Institute, and Global Business Network.)