Scenario Mapping & Philanthropic Levers for Impact: Planning for 2025

In 2024, with major elections occurring in the US – the outcomes of which are impossible to predict – public interest stakeholders from across fields and sectors will face critical uncertainties about what the future might hold for their work and issue areas. One tool that can be helpful in dealing with such uncertainties is scenario planning — a structured approach to considering how the future might look under different scenarios, and what the impacts might be on important and even existential issues facing organizations and their field. 

Linked here is an approach we completed in January 2024, analyzing how the policy landscape might be impacted by different election outcomes. Methodologically, our team has found use in a two-step approach: taking a look at the context of the emerging policy ecosystem overall, and then using the lessons from that analysis to consider what may happen within a single-issue frame, such as climate. The abridged approach linked here offers that first step, and the insights presented can then be applied in the second more critical and action-oriented step. The process should help decision makers not just imagine the context of what may be coming, but also make their strategic choices going forward.

Click here to read the report.