Institute For The Future

  • What We Do
    • Who We Are
    • IFTF Vantage Partnership
    • IFTF Foresight Essentials
    • Forecasts
    • Workshops
    • Maps
    • Artifacts from the Future
    • Events
    • In the News
    • Media Center
    • Gallery
    • History of the Future
  • Our Work
    • Featured Projects
    • Global Landscape
    • People + Technology
    • Health + Self
  • Partner with IFTF
    • IFTF Vantage
    • IFTF Foresight Essentials
    • Research Labs
    • Partners
    • Jobs
    • Donate
    • Contact Us
    • Privacy Policy
  • Future Now
  • Donate
Medium Facebook Twitter RSS
  • Global Landscape
  • People + Technology
  • Health + Self

Ruby's Bequest

  • Featured Projects
  • Global Landscape

    • Ten-Year Forecast

    • Food Futures

    • Work + Learn Futures

    • Workable Futures

    • Cities Futures

    • Governance Futures

    • Inclusive Futures

    • Socialstructing

    • Sustainability

  • People + Technology

    • Smithsonian Futures Beacons

    • Tech Futures

    • Work + Learn Futures

    • Workable Futures

    • Games

  • Health + Self

    • After the Pandemic

    • Centering Health

    • Health Futures

    • Health Care

    • Health Games

    • Aging

INTERESTED IN LEARNING MORE ABOUT IFTF?

Contact us today »

Future NOW Blog

Identify Your Assets and Gaps: A Foresight Tool for Action

Oct 14, 2022

IFTF News from the Future #80

Oct 06, 2022

IFTF Equitable Enterprise Newsletter | September

Sep 28, 2022

Sparking a Sense of Hope & Agency

Sep 19, 2022

IFTF News from the Future #79

Sep 08, 2022

Browse all blog posts »

"Help us fix the town that doesn't care right"

This intriguing invitation launched Ruby's Bequest, a project by United Cerebral Palsy and the Institute for the Future to create the first platform for public collaborative innovation in health care and caregiving.

For five weeks in the spring of 2009, participants from many backgrounds shared their stories, frustrations, and ideas. The platform that supported them was a structured website and immersive future narrative, one where a typical American city at the beginning of the 21st century is forced into a process of civic soul searching when their ability to care for each other is suddenly thrown into doubt.

The analysis from this public interaction is summarized in a report outlining seven strategies to create the future of caregiving as catalyzed by the stories and ideas of Ruby's Bequest participants:

  1. Tap into broad community engagement to fill in service gaps
  2. "Unbundle" traditional volunteer opportunities into groups of people and niches of time
  3. Rethink incentives for the networked age
  4. Create open technologies and engage people in collaborative co-creation
  5. Translate emerging data into persuasive stories
  6. Look for innovations across domains—not just within caregiving and volunteering
  7. Expand "caregiving" to engage everyone who cares about the future of their community

But these strategies are hardly limited to caregiving—Ruby's Bequest participants soon realized the mounting challenges to caregiving are inextricable from challenges facing health care systems, civic engagement, volunteering, and declining cities.

This report also pulls back the curtain on the process of creating the Ruby's Bequest experience and the potential for narrative to engage broad publics in collaborative innovation at all scales.

For more information about Ruby's Bequest or IFTF's work on engaged forecasting, please contact Jason Tester at [email protected] or Sean Ness at [email protected]

Download

  • IFTF_RubysBequest.pdf

    From Caregiving to Caring: A New Approach to Civic Engagement (PDF)

Podcast

  • IEEESpectrum_2011.03.07_SmartGrid2025_Game.mp3

    Interview with IFTF's Jake Dunagan for IEEE Spectrum's "This Week in Technology"

Game Date

Spring 2011

  • Institute for the Future

  • 201 Hamilton Avenue
  • Palo Alto, CA 94301
  • 650.854.6322
  • [email protected]

  • © 2025 Institute for the Future

    What We Do

  • Who We Are
  • IFTF Vantage Partnership
  • IFTF Foresight Essentials
  • Forecasts
  • Workshops
  • Maps
  • Artifacts from the Future
  • Events
  • In the News
  • Media Center
  • Gallery
  • History of the Future

    Our Work

  • Featured Projects
  • Global Landscape
  • People + Technology
  • Health + Self

    Partner with IFTF

  • IFTF Vantage
  • IFTF Foresight Essentials
  • Research Labs
  • Partners
  • Jobs
  • Donate
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy Policy

    Future Now

    Donate