2038

INGOs are navigating an unprecedented perfect storm: a global context of escalating conflict and instability, a loss of legitimacy challenged by calls to decolonise and cede power, and a funding crisis driven by most major governments cutting funding.

Now is the time to be bold and imaginative. The Impact Works team has been working with organisations to see how futures approaches can help their strategic thinking, and we want to share what we have learnt and some practical tools to help others do the same.

In December 2025 we developed four future scenarios for 2038:

• A Fortress World

• A New World Order

• A World in Flux

• A World Bought by Big Tech

In each one we explore what the world could look like in 2038 and what that could mean for civil society, international development and INGOs. Discover the radical shifts in power dynamics, resource flows and operating models that await!

These future scenarios are not predictions, but a creative strategic tool to help you get past incremental thinking to explore what the future could look like and what your INGO might need to do today to continue being effective in a radically changed world. 

We have also laid out some practical exercises that you and your teams can use to explore the scenarios and think through what it means for your organisation's future.

In the tumultuous times we are living in, it felt right to make these open source and let people adapt and use them to ask some of the big questions we think all INGOs need to be asking themselves today.

Now travel with us into 2038.....

Why these futures scenarios?

It’s hard to escape the bleak state of the world. From genocide in Gaza and Sudan to the normalisation of the far-right in the West, from floods in Pakistan and Sri Lanka to hurricanes in Jamaica...our world is in flux and organisations are struggling to respond to the scale and complexity of the challenge.

The international development sector needs to step up and respond to these crises. This is not a moment for tinkering around the edges. 

But thinking big is not always easy. So in order to stimulate and provoke big ideas and bold thinking, we have produced a range of possible futures that could exist in 2038.  Looking into and exploring potential futures can help us to think through what we might need to be doing differently now and what our future roles might be. They can also help us explore what we can do now to make the bits we like in these futures more likely to happen (and the scary and dystopian parts less likely).

We have developed these scenarios through a detailed futures thinking methodology that draws on a range of work we have done with INGOs over the years to explore potential futures and the signals, trends and changes that underpin them. These are not predictions and they are not intended to be discussed as such - i.e. are these right? Is scenario 1 or scenario 4 more likely? They are simply a small number of a myriad of possible futures that may emerge by 2038. In reality, the world might look like a combination of elements from all of these scenarios, or something entirely different might emerge that we cannot see today. Their purpose is not to be right but to catalyse good thinking and strategic ideas.

We recognise that to keep the scenarios as accessible and useful as possible some inconsistencies and logical leaps may exist, and that there are lots of other areas they could cover. We have focused on areas we thought most relevant for INGOs.  As you use these scenarios we encourage you not only to imagine what your role might be in a drastically changed world, but also to apply a racial justice lens, reflecting deeply on what it might mean to stop perpetuating colonial ways of working and how we might do this in multiple futures.

Get in touch if you would like to discuss integrating or adapting these scenarios into wider pieces of strategy, impact or programme development work.

If you would like a PDF of this document - then you can download it here