Radical Hope: A Survival Guide for the Coming Storm

Hope is one of those words we use all the time but rarely stop to define. Ask ten people what it means and you’ll get ten different answers. Some say it’s a feeling. Others say it’s a value. A light in the dark. A trap. A story we tell ourselves. A strategy of last resort.

In the impact sector hope runs through the heart of so many mission statements, brand straplines, and campaign promises. It’s in how we talk to supporters, staff, funders, partners and collaborators. We ask people to hold it, to act on it, to stay in it. We dangle the promise and we leverage the good will generated by its presence. We live, breathe and survive on hope.

But what if we (the impact sector) have been using the word, and profiting off its promise, without building the supporting structures to hold it, protect it and deliver on that promise?

But ... something is shifting. We’ve reached a tipping point. Not because everything has changed already. But because everything around us is changing, fast. And in the middle of all this sits the charity sector, trying to stay hopeful, strategic, and relevant in a world where old tools no longer fit the job.

Our people are tired. Tired of trying to hold everything together while the world keeps falling apart. Tired of systems that reward caution, communications that oversimplify, and strategies that ask people to do more with less. Tired of pretending that optimism is the same as impact.

Nick Cave calls hope the warrior emotion. “Hopefulness is not a neutral position,” he writes. “It is adversarial. It is the thing that can lay waste to cynicism.” Hope, in this report, is not sentiment. It’s structure. It’s not the light at the end of the tunnel; it’s the architecture we build inside it. Because what has surfaced, over dozens of conversations with CEOs, strategists, fundraisers, service designers, trustees, futurists and artists, is that we are all feeling the cracks. But we’re also feeling something else: the pull to build.

This is where Radical Hope: A Survival Guide for the Coming Storm begins. As a cultural inventory of what’s ending, a reframing of what hope could mean now, and a working blueprint for redesigning the systems we work within.

We offer this report as an invitation. Not to agree with everything it sets out, but to stay in the room with us. To challenge what no longer fits. And to help shape what might, which is why we’ve structured it into three acts.

Act I begins with endings. It looks at what’s fraying, what people are already walking away from, and what needs to be grieved before it can be rebuilt. Because it is through letting go that we can see the space for what’s next.

Act II reframes hope. To treat hope as a cultural force, a political stance, and a strategic design principle, set out through the seven dimensions of hope.

Act III is the blueprint. It explores how hope can be operationalised across our work: community and people, strategy and mission, culture and leadership, innovation and growth, and mission delivery. 

And the report closes with the Architecture of Hope; a practical foundation for organisations who want to do more than survive change. They want to shape it.

Because if hope is going to last, it has to live somewhere. Not just in our comms. But in our systems. Our culture. Our strategy. Our actions. We need that kind of hope now. Hope that’s lived. Structured. Shared. Hope that demands more from us, but gives us back the future in return. 

Hope isn’t the whole strategy. But it might be the start.