When faced with this level of unpredictability, boards tend to gravitate towards one of two extremes:

• Over-controlling: Trying to predict every operational variable, building rigid strategic plans that quickly become outdated, or holding onto past strategies because changing direction feels too daunting.
• Overwhelmed: Avoiding forward planning altogether because the future feels unknowable, unmanageable, or moving too fast to grasp.

Neither extreme supports effective decision-making. Panic typically sets in when boards treat disruption as a sudden, temporary emergency rather than an ongoing operational reality.

Reframing change as a continuous cycle, moving from disruption to disorder, emerging order, and a new baseline, helps us realise that governance is not about stopping the landscape from shifting. It is about building a stable way to think, decide, and act as it moves.

Finding Your Organisational Constants

To navigate this ongoing cycle, boards can benefit from adopting a kaleidoscope mindset.

When you look through a kaleidoscope, the image continually shifts. Turn it slightly, and the pattern rearranges into something completely new. Yet, the glass fragments inside stay exactly the same. The same core pieces create an infinite number of images depending on rotation.

Your charity works in much the same way. Even in periods of deep financial volatility, there are constants: fixed elements you can rely on even when external patterns move. These include your mission based constants, such as your Theory of Change, core values, and community commitments, alongside your operational constants, such as your team, policies, and financial tools.

Naming these fixed pieces creates immediate grounding for a board. It allows trustees to see clearly what remains steady, what should be protected, and what needs to flex.

Setting Principles Before Scenarios

When considering how these constants shift in different situations, it’s important that boards start by clarifying their values for decision making. Trying to define an ethical framework in the middle of a budget deficit crisis usually leads to reactive choices driven by fear, rather than intentional, grounded decisions.

A simple exercise can address this. Sit down with your board and ask: “Imagine it is one year from now, and whatever the outcome, we can look back and say: I am proud of how we approached this. What needed to be true for that to happen? Which principles guided our choices?”

Defining these guiding principles early ensures that when a major grant application fails or a funding stream ends, your board already possesses an explicit values framework to navigate the change.

Planning for the Worst Case First

With your constants identified and principles set, you can explore scenario planning for the shifting kaleidoscope. It is recommended you discuss at least three scenarios: Best Case, Most Likely Case, and Worst Case.

Counterintuitively, the most effective place to start is with the Worst Case. In charities and community groups, the worst case is often the unspoken bogeyman in the room: one we feel we must avoid acknowledging for fear of summoning it. Yet, worst-case planning simply means working out how to scale down responsibly or, in extreme cases, how to plan to “close well”.

“Closing well” is not a failure of governance. It means acting with responsibility, integrity, and care for staff, partners, and legacy. When a board confronts its worst-case scenario head-on and establishes its absolute bottom line, the ambient panic in the room dissipates. Knowing you can handle the worst case with dignity makes it significantly easier to make calm, clear-headed strategic decisions across every other scenario.

Scenario planning is not about predicting the future with complete accuracy. It is about building internal capacity to respond with agency, purpose, and clarity, no matter how the kaleidoscope turns.