Institute For The Future

Social Impact at IFTF: An Old Legacy for New Times

Throughout its history, IFTF has used forecasting to help a wide range of public, private and nonprofit sector organizations to address the most pressing public issues of the times. For example, our projects focusing on youth, seniors, energy policy, science, health care, and nutrition, to name just a few, help position corporations and nonprofits to enhance their capacity to address emerging issues in these areas. One of the Institute’s key strategic priorities is to expand its social impact as an organization. Our Social Impact Initiative includes several projects designed to strengthen society's capacity to optimistically address emerging social challenges of the future. 

Continuing Social Impact Initiatives

Our Ten Year Forecast, Health Horizons, and Technology Horizons cost shared programs continue the Institute's tradition of social impact. Focused primarily on helping cross-sector organizations identify insights and foresights to shape the future forces affecting their work, our InterAct for Change, Mobile Health, and Superstruct projects have crafted novel perspectives on health and social issues more broadly. These initiatives, and others like them, also inform the Institute’s core forecasting research.

A map for a national nonprofit, InterAct for Change, created a future forecast of participatory philanthropy that engages the public in giving. Using cutting edge techniques from gaming, Superstruct engaged almost 7,000 people from around the world to create alternative institutions and strategies to address the global community’s most urgent concerns from pandemics to global climate change. Findings from Superstruct will also be used as data in the Institute’s 2009 Ten-Year Forecast.

Expanding Social Impact

The Institute is undertaking a variety of new projects to further extend its social impact. Primary among these is expanding the number of social benefit organizations that are clients or sponsors of Institute projects. We just completed a map and presentation for an international convening in Austria of philanthropy leaders in collaboration with the Salzburg Global Seminar, exploring responses to the worldwide financial crisis. The Institute is also developing a Philanthropy Services Group. Among the projects under development is a forecasting conference to expand the sector's capacity to use social impact technologies for collaboration and innovation.

Amara Fund/Jeffrey Rowe Initiative: Promoting Youth Futures

The Roy Amara Fund for Participatory Foresight has become a primary forum to extend the Institute’s social impact. The Fund allows us to translate our forecasting research into concrete actions to address future social challenges. The Rowe Initiative specifically attempts to help organizations expand their ability to promote positive youth futures. A team of staff has created two Youth Futures Pilots, one at the East Palo Alto Charter School in partnership with Collective Roots, and the other at the Hoopa Reservation Elementary School, that provide teachers with a curriculum focused on health and community forecasting. In East Palo Alto, the program translates our forecasting theory and methods into a youth-friendly tool to promote healthy futures for youth. The Hoopa curriculum will apply a variety of indigenous Native American concepts to engage youth in creating healthy personal and community futures. After evaluating and refining the pilots, IFTF and community partners will publicly share the curricula to promote broader use of forecasting in youth education and development.

Organizational Initiatives

IFTF is undertaking several efforts to assess and continuously improve its social and environmental sustainability. We are planning a staff professional development series and coaching support to build program design, evaluation, and social entrepreneurial skills. Staff will also continue to support local nonprofits through volunteerism. In 2008 IFTF also completed its first Sustainability Survey, which determined its carbon footprint and created recommendations to reduce it.

For more information about IFTF’s Social Impact Initiative and related research projects, please contact Miriam Lueck Avery at [email protected].