A new technology can increase capability while weakening relationship.
Flourishing Futures Foundation
Life depends on conditions.
Healthy ecosystems. Capable people. Trusting relationships. Institutions that can learn and endure.
Cultivating the conditions for all life to flourish.
01/Why we exist
Flourishing is more than growth.
A society can become wealthier while its ecosystems weaken, its people become exhausted and its institutions lose trust.
Growth measures how much we produce. It does not tell us whether the living systems, people and relationships that produce it are being strengthened or spent.
Are the conditions that allow life to flourish becoming stronger or weaker?
We look at four connected dimensions.
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Creation
The conditions for life
Land, water, climate, biodiversity, place and the living systems on which life depends.
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Self
The capacity to participate
Vitality, agency, responsibility, learning, purpose, relationship and renewal.
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Culture
How we live together
Belonging, trust, care, shared meaning, disagreement, repair and collective wisdom.
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Systems
What we build
Governance, institutions and infrastructure that shape whether flourishing can endure.
02/The question
What are we strengthening?
Every intervention changes more than one thing.
Progress in one dimension is often paid for in another. If we do not look at the whole, we mistake a transfer of cost for a gain.
An institution can create stability while reducing agency.
Economic growth can improve material life while degrading the systems it depends on.
The Foundation asks three questions repeatedly.
- What are we strengthening?
- What are we weakening?
- What are we passing forward?
03/Our work
Turn inquiry into useful learning.
Our early work focuses on four things.
Research
Develop and refine frameworks that help people understand the conditions underlying human, social and ecological flourishing.
Education
Create accessible materials that make complex ideas easier to understand and use.
Dialogue
Learn from researchers, practitioners and communities with direct experience of the questions we are exploring.
Charitable projects
Develop or support carefully scoped public-benefit initiatives that allow promising ideas to be tested in practice.
04/What we are building first
What we are building first.
The Foundation is new. Rather than announce programs we have not yet designed, these are the four things we are actually working on.
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01
A framework
A rigorous, evolving account of the conditions that allow life to flourish, open to revision as we learn.
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02
A body of research
Learning drawn across disciplines, communities and practitioners, and made public where it is useful.
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03
A network of people doing the work
Understanding what already exists, and who is already doing it well, before creating anything new.
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04
A small number of charitable initiatives
Carefully scoped public-benefit work through which ideas can meet reality and be tested against consequences.
This describes work in progress, not a grant program. The Foundation is not currently operating an open application process.
05/How we work
Stay curious enough to change our minds.
We do not begin by assuming we know the answer.
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01
Understand the whole
Look beyond a single problem or metric to the wider system around it.
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02
Listen before prescribing
Learn from research, practitioners and the people closest to the consequences.
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03
Build on what exists
Understand existing work before creating something new.
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04
Test assumptions
Be clear about what we believe, and what evidence could change that belief.
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05
Learn from consequences
Look at benefits, costs, trade-offs and unintended effects.
The goal is not to defend a worldview.
The goal is to learn what actually helps life flourish.
06/Who we are
Three co-founders. One long-term question.
Flourishing Futures Foundation was founded by James Hodges, Lauren Joseph and Dawn Nakagawa.
We come to the work from different backgrounds, but share a common interest in how ecological health, human capability, culture and institutions interact over time.
James Hodges
Co-founder
Framework, strategy and the long-term architecture of the work.
Lauren Joseph
Co-founder
Programs, research and translating the mission into practice.
Dawn Nakagawa
Co-founder
Systems thinking, philanthropy and institutional development.
07/Where we are today
Early by design.
Flourishing Futures Foundation is a new nonprofit organization.
We are currently:
- developing and testing the Conditions for Flourishing framework;
- conducting research and learning from practitioners;
- establishing strong governance and operating practices; and
- preparing our first charitable and educational initiatives.
We have not yet completed a grantmaking cycle and do not claim demonstrated program outcomes. We intend to show the work as it develops — including what changes our minds.