It is clear that the current global shifts are creating unprecedented pressure on civil society. A pressure that is increasingly felt by the sector at large and further civil society actors.
At the International Civil Society Centre, we are tackling these pressures and sector-wide issues through our dedicated leadership support and collaborative meetings of our various networks and communities. Recently, the Centre’s Solidarity Action Network (SANE) Working Group met for their annual meeting in London (pictured below), while the Scanning the Horizon community met for the second time this year, both with a strong focus around deepening our understanding of the current crisis and its implications on the sector.
Our meetings and conversations with organisations and partners show us that this moment demands not only reinvention, but long-term strategies that help civil society navigate the complexities of uncertainty. For example, some organisations are seeking to turn disruptions into strategic opportunities – particularly through localisation and partnership-based models – while working towards a clearer collective direction.
Shifting from reactive to proactive
To become more crisis-resilient, it is critical for ICSOs to look at strategic foresight tools like scenario building and trends analysis to add to their core planning processes. Whilst reacting to crises and preparing for possible futures, civil society must also mitigate the impacts of worst-case scenarios and find ways to proactively envision – and work towards – preferable futures. There is no doubt, this must happen together through shared learning and joint initiatives. The ultimate strength of ICSOs lies in collaborative action to tackle the global challenges we are currently facing. Working in silos undermines collective potential, so today and into the future, the focus must be on collective action– rather than competitive activities. Through collective learning, ICSOs can build up shared capacity, and create stronger resilience. Together with strategic foresight, exchanging knowledge and practice across organisations can enhance adaptability, which is a key skill to have in the current state of the world. ICSOs not only need to move away from working in silos, but as well shift away from centralised roles to approaches that are partner-led, invested in joint action, and alongside working with grassroots actors. As it was raised in one of our sessions, the guiding principle to become future-ready must be:
“As local as possible, as international as necessary.”
Working together, strategically
Building strategic alliances are required to tackle today’s complex issues, including mis- and disinformation, and to mitigate the complex digital threats that are emerging. Strategic alliances can be built by working in collaboration with, for example, academia, media organisations, and the private sector, to foster long-term impact and help achieve strategic goal. During our sessions, we welcomed some external inputs from BBC Media Action and Internews, to explore how crucial partnerships across sectors are – here for example – between journalism and civil society. Colleagues from these organisations explained how co-creating responses, reframing narratives toward positive, future-oriented storytelling, and shaping public discourse together is essential to having a stronger voice to defend progressive, democratic values. This is about more than just damage control after a disinformation campaign – it is about proactively telling stories that reflect values, inspire engagement, and align with our future goals.
Solidarity must become part of the strategy. It should be evident in how decisions are made, power is shared, and resources are distributed. Civil society organisations need to ask: How can we collectively prepare for multiple futures and do so in a way that empowers all affected stakeholders? Mutual learning and exchange build the kind of shared intelligence that makes solidarity tangible and strategic.
Showing resilience towards crises
The civil society of the future must be more resilient and unified; hence, foresight can now be used to anticipate change, enabling the sector to act together for a future-ready civil society. Thus, integrating foresight tools like scenario planning into organisational practices becomes imperative in preparing to work towards preferable futures. The Centre’s key takeaways from engaging with our stakeholders to become future-ready and more resilient towards crises, so far are:
- Be open to shared learning through collaborative exchange across sectors and regions;
- Become financially diverse, explore alternative funding models and ways of working, community-rooted strategies, and joint initiatives;
- Become non-competitive, by working in complementarity to amplify impact;
- Be narrative-driven, through telling positive, future-oriented stories that reclaim space and inspire;
- Stay mission-led connected to progressive values;
- Be proactively people-powered through taking civil society as a whole into consideration.
As we see through the current challenges and shifts in the sector, the time for futures thinking and looking ahead is now. The interlinked crises civil society faces are not temporary – they demand transformation. By embracing strategic foresight through the Centre’s Scanning the Horizon and SANE communities, and exploring further innovative tools and mechanisms, civil society can build adaptive capacity, make smarter decisions, and lead systemic change within the sector and beyond. The challenge is clear – and so is the opportunity: to actively shape a better future through unity, vision, and collaborative innovation.
If you’d like to engage in the Solidarity Action Network to tackle civic space issues together or in the Scanning the Horizon community to explore strategic foresight and shape the future of civil society, get in touch with us.
Further reading
Download the ‘Toolkit for Tomorrow: Anticipating Civil Society Futures’
This toolkit provides tools, strategies, and resources to strengthen your ability to anticipate future challenges and opportunities, practice foresight, and build resilience in the face of rapid change.
Available in English, Spanish and French
About the Centre’s programmatic initiatives.
The Centre has several programmatic initiatives that work collaboratively to tackle the critical issues affecting the sector. These are focused on our core strategic ambitions: The futures of ICSOs; protecting and safeguarding civic space; and the empowerment of marginalised communities through citizen-led data and localisation.
- The Solidarity Action Network (SANE) aims to strengthen resilience and solidarity among civil society actors when faced with civic space restrictions or changing operating conditions. Within the network, we share experience, lessons learned and best practices and encourage joint actions.
- The Scanning the Horizon platform and community address the need for collaborative trend analysis in the sector. Futurists, strategists, trend analysts and organisational learning and research specialists form a cross-sector community of experts and practitioners to share insights, explore key trends and develop relevant strategies.
Alexandra Schlegel
Programme Officer
International Civil Society Centre
Alexandra is working as Programme Officer in the Solidarity Action Network and Scanning the Horizon projects of the Centre. She joined the Centre in January 2022 as the Executive Assistant and changed into the Programme Team in December 2023. Her role at the Centre involves addressing anti-rights actors, overseeing futures and foresight initiatives within the Scanning community, managing the SANE Resource Hub, and organising events. She is strongly engaged in voluntary work with different international as well as local organisations with a background in Political Science and International Relations. She holds a MA in International Relations from Leiden University next to her BA in Political Science and History from the University of Tübingen. She has lived in Germany, the UK, the Netherlands as well as Jordan and is currently living in Berlin.
