In 2024, ECNL turned 20 years old. Our anniversary coincided with the end of our most recent strategy, so the moment felt right to take stock of what has changed in the last two decades but also to explore what is happening in the world right now and to look ahead to the future.
With support from James Logan, and through conversations with our team, allies, activists and experts from different fields and parts of the world, we sought to ‘sense’ what the world in 2035 might look like. Specifically, we posed the following questions:
- What are the ‘building blocks’ of our future – the trends and drivers that will shape our world as well as the signals that we can see in the present and that may hint at how it may change in the years ahead?
- What kinds of issues will civil society groups need to address in the future, and what are the different ways they will be doing that?
- How might civil society groups have to change themselves internally to be ready - in other words, what will the ‘organisation of the future’ look like?
These questions generated a range of insights and ideas that we have now used to inform our new strategy and which, we believe, will give us the ability to better deliver our mission and work with our diverse partners in these changing and uncertain times.
That sense of change and uncertainty has rarely felt so acute as at the time of writing with the commencement of Donald Trump’s second Presidency. He has introduced an array of disruptive measures that are having global consequences. The conversations and thinking that we have engaged in through developing our strategy have, however, meant that we feel prepared to meet these and other challenges.
Capitalising on this work, we have also launched a strategic planning work with key partners to envision pathways that help build civil society's power in this changing landscape. If interested to join these efforts and shape a positive future together, please reach out to us at [email protected].