Poetic Futurism has significant implications across sectors. The Blog series is organized into a series of sectoral highlights and later into crosscutting themes to consider as we collectively work to build loving futures with love politics through poetic futurism. Today's blog considers the implications for philanthropy and it draws from my consulting as well as my lifelong interactions with the sector as an organizer. My sense of urgency around this conversations stems for a decade of consideration for the impact of AI on the economy and our ways of life, the role of tech in the rise of fascism worldwide, and our need to rethink, reflect, invent, and retool to build the future.

Communities across the U.S. and the world are navigating overlapping crises—economic inequality, climate disruption, political polarization, and rapid technological acceleration. Poetic Futurism is a transformative framework that offers philanthropy a way to invest in *imaginative, community-led, and justice-centered futures at a moment when traditional models are struggling to meet complexity.

At the same time, artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping society at a speed that exceeds our social, ethical, and governance capacities. Without strategic intervention, AI will deepen existing inequities; but with intentional design, AI can amplify community wisdom, strengthen local decision-making, and accelerate the creation of loving futures. Note that the conversation here is not about whether or not AI should be integrated. I begin with the understanding that its integration is necessary. In fact, we are late to the party by about 20 years.

I propose poetic futurism as a cultural, strategic, and systems-design methodology that uses imagination, relational practice, and justice-centered values to shape equitable futures. Rooted in interdisciplinary scholarship, 25 years of circle practice, and 35+ years of community organizing, Poetic Futurism:

• Mobilizes poetry as a design tool 

• Centers ancestry, culture, and community wisdom,

• Challenges extractive systems,

• And cultivates futures authored by all of humanity.

Poetic Futurism is both a philosophy and a methodology, guiding communities across sectors to produce durable strategies for transformation. Poetic Futurism is an important intervention for philanthropy because:

1. Traditional Strategic Planning Is Failing Under Complexity. Problem-based solutions create the illusion of simplicity and fail to transform complex adaptive systems. Linear planning tools are inadequate for nonlinear social problems. Poetic Futurism offers scenario imagination, narrative reorientation, and culturally grounded methodologies for navigating uncertainty. It also tends to the need for the creation of highly relational, collaborative, high performing coordinated teams.

2. Communities Need Futures They Can Envision and Own. Philanthropy often funds solutions for communities rather than investing in solutions authored by them. Poetic Futurism shifts power to community imagination, cultural knowledge, and emergent leadership.

3. AI is Reshaping the Social Landscape Whether Philanthropy is Ready or Not. AI can either: reproduce oppressive systems at scale, or support community-led innovation, memory, and resilience. Philanthropy must choose which future it funds.

I am aware of the resistance to AI and I embrace the practice of Critical AI, the task of working to democratize its deployment, and to embrace the technology to orient it towards the creation of loving futures. Yes, it is possible. 

AI has rapidly become a force multiplier in every sector. We are beyond the point of escaping its impact. For community-based work, AI presents opportunities to:

• Strengthen democratic and participatory processes through translation, information access, scenario modeling, and broader civic engagement.

• Amplify community knowledge and cultural memory by digitizing oral histories, rituals, and storytelling traditions.

• Support grassroots innovation via accessible tools for research, prototyping, modeling, and planning.

• Reduce administrative burdens so leaders can shift time from paperwork to people.

However, without intentional investment, AI will reinforce structural inequity. Communities need training, governance, values-aligned tools, and ethical frameworks grounded in justice—not just access to the technology. Poetic Futurism provides that grounding.

Poetic Futurism and AI, together, can strengthen communities by:

• Embracing Imagination Infrastructure. Communities cannot build futures they cannot imagine. Poetic Futurism builds imagination capacity using ritual, story, poetry, and circle practice. AI can then operationalize those visions into:

• Strategies

• Policy scenarios

• Prototypes

• Community planning tools

• Cultural and Ancestral Wisdom as Data. AI models rarely incorporate the vast knowledge held in cultural practice, oral history, and local experience. Poetic Futurism ensures that ancestry and culture become inputs, not afterthoughts.

• Relational Governance Models. Circle practice becomes a design architecture for AI governance and community decision-making.

• Narrative Power and Public Will. Poetic Futurism strengthens community narrative leadership. AI supports amplification and reach.

• Innovation That is Human-Centered and Justice-Driven. Together, Poetic Futurism and AI form a method for designing futures where technology serves community well-being—not corporate extraction.

Let's not create the need for reactive AI divide initiatives in the future. Poetic Futurism is an approach and methodology that can guide the creation of a future-facing relationship between AI and communities for the creation of loving futures. Philanthropy has a critical and time-sensitive opportunity to invest in an emerging field with enormous potential for structural change.  We need philanthropy to:

• Fund Poetic Futurism trainings, institutes, and fellowships to develop community poetic futurists.

• Support place-based labs where communities can experiment with AI through culturally rooted practices.

• Invest in storytelling, community visioning, poetry-led planning, and narrative infrastructure.

• Fund initiatives that help communities shape AI policies aligned with justice and love.

• Integrate Poetic Futurism + AI across: 

• Education

• Public health

• Climate resilience

• Arts and culture

• Civic engagement

• Local government

• Economic justice

• Philanthropy itself

• Invest in evidence-building, case studies, community-driven evaluation, and academic partnerships.

By investing in Poetic Futurism and AI, funders gain:

• Strategic clarity in a volatile future

• Community trust and legitimacy

• Access to innovative models that emerge outside dominant systems

• Alignment with emerging national/global priorities

• More equitable and resilient grant portfolios

Ultimately, funders gain the ability to support transformational impact rather than incremental improvement.

Philanthropy stands at a crossroads. One path accelerates inequity through passive adoption of AI. The other path—guided by Poetic Futurism—invites communities to become architects of the future. Investing in this work means investing in:

• Imagination as infrastructure

• Culture as technology

• Community as futurist

• AI as a tool for the construction of loving futures

Philanthropy has the resources to shape the next hundred years. Poetic Futurism provides the lens, the method, and the invitation. The restructuring of the economy is well on its way. The rich will get richer. This path creates a way to meaningfully share power and wealth.