Why Your Grantees Need Future Thinking Skills (and Why It’s Not Just Another Buzzword)

Picture this: it’s 2054. Flying cars are zooming overhead, your smartwatch is now a brain chip, and your grantee is still running a food pantry with a spreadsheet from 2015. Meanwhile, ChatGPT-98 is asking existential questions like, “Do I dream of electric sheep?” Let’s face it: the future is coming, whether we’re ready for it or not—and your grantees? They need to be ready.

The Problem With “Business as Usual”

Nonprofits are like duct tape: reliable, versatile, and holding society together. But if they’re always reacting to problems with yesterday’s solutions, they’re missing out on a whole toolbox of opportunities. Foundations love to fund “innovative” programs—don’t lie, you know you’ve used that word in a grant description. But innovation doesn’t happen by accident. It happens when organizations have the time, space, and skills to imagine what’s next.

The bad news? Most grantees are too busy plugging holes in the sinking ship of underfunding to think about the future. The good news? This is where you, their benevolent funder, can swoop in like a caped crusader of strategic planning.

Why Future Thinking Matters

Teaching your grantees future thinking skills isn’t about turning them into amateur fortune-tellers (although, admit it, a crystal ball would be cool). It’s about helping them anticipate changes, adapt quickly, and stay ahead of the curve. Think about it: wouldn’t it be great if your grantees could spot trends before they become crises? Or identify opportunities before everyone else is fighting over them?

Investing in future thinking also helps grantees break out of the endless cycle of reacting. Instead of scrambling to meet the next funding deadline or shifting priorities whenever the wind changes, they can start shaping the future they want to see. Plus, let’s be honest: a grantee who can confidently navigate the next 30 years makes you, the funder, look pretty darn visionary yourself.

How to Make It Happen

So how do you equip your grantees with these superpowers? You don’t have to send them to a TED Talk or hand them a dog-eared copy of The Art of Long-Term Thinking (although both are solid options). Start small: fund professional development opportunities focused on futurism. Encourage them to set aside time for strategic visioning. Even sponsoring a workshop on scenario planning can spark big ideas. (We do all this work at FutureGood and can help you - wink wink.) 

The Upside for Funders

Here’s the kicker: investing in your grantees’ future thinking doesn’t just help them. It helps you, too. A grantee with a strong long-term vision is more effective, more resilient, and frankly, less likely to send you panicked emails about last-minute emergencies. They’re like that friend who always has a flashlight during a power outage—practical, prepared, and the kind of person you want on your team.

So go ahead, invest in their future thinking skills. One day, when the world is run by AI overlords, you’ll be glad you did. And your grantees? They’ll still be out there, leading the charge for good.

Final Thought

The future’s uncertain, but one thing’s for sure: we can’t afford to leave it to chance. Let’s give our grantees the tools they need to tackle it head-on. Who knows? They might just surprise us.