Futures Thinking: Building Proactive Resilience in Nonprofit Organizations

In an era of heightened uncertainty, nonprofits face complex risks that challenge their mission-driven work, making resilience more essential than ever. Existing research on nonprofit resilience, however, tends to adopt a reactive lens, focusing on post-adversity survival and recovery. To complement, we advocate a proactive approach to resilience building and propose a framework encompassing four strategic attributes: awareness, adaptability, shared values, and slack across three levels: individual, organizational, and network. We apply this framework through a qualitative exploratory study of Singapore’s sustainability transitions. Drawing on 39 in-depth interviews with local nonprofits, our findings show that while these organizations recognize emerging risks and opportunities, and demonstrate adaptive capacity, enhancing their resilience will require greater financial and human-resource slack, as well as deeper engagement with both governmental and non-governmental stakeholders. Our contribution lies in theorizing nonprofit proactive resilience, advancing futures and anticipatory thinking in nonprofit studies.