Grounded in Reality,
Focused on the Future
A Strategic Partnership for Green Bay's Tomorrow
Envision Greater Green Bay engages business, government, education and the nonprofit sectors to guide our community’s future.
A tax-exempt 501(c)3 nonprofit organization led by an executive director and a volunteer board, Envision Greater Green Bay anticipates and leads change by teaching and applying proven strategies that identify disruptors to shape a preferred future.
2026 Appeal
Toward a Thriving Future
2026 City Flourishing Report
Is Green Bay flourishing? Envision Greater Green Bay collaborated on the 2026 City Flourishing Report with Together Green Bay to examine that question both now and into the future. The Harvard Flourishing Study is a long-term research project examining what helps people live healthy, meaningful, and fulfilling lives. Rather than defining well-being simply by happiness or income, the study looks at six interconnected dimensions of human flourishing: happiness and life satisfaction, physical and mental health, meaning and purpose, close social relationships, character and virtue, and financial and material stability.
This is the third year that Together Green Bay has applied the six domains to the Greater Green Bay area to determine how our community is flourishing and in what areas we are challenged. This year, Together Green Bay invited Envision Greater Green Bay to include strategic foresight analysis into the process. Rather than being a snapshot of our community as it is today, Envision provided the foresight lens through which to view the six flourishing domains and our community 10-15 years into the future.
To read the City Flourishing Report, click on the button below.
Looking Ahead, Together: Envision Greater Green Bay Launches Statewide Strategic Foresight Initiative
A new three-year partnership with Common Good Philanthropies will bring futures-thinking tools to hundreds of Wisconsin leaders serving older adults and people with disabilities.
At Envision Greater Green Bay, we spend a lot of time thinking about tomorrow. It's in our name, and it's been our mission for the past ten years and embedded in our earliest days as the Bay Area Community Council since 1990. So when Common Good Philanthropies invited us to bring that same forward-looking mindset to nonprofit leaders across Wisconsin, we knew we had to say yes.
We are thrilled to announce a new three-year partnership with Common Good Philanthropies as recipient of their 2026 Strategic Funding Award. A shared commitment to systems change will help nonprofits build resilience and take a longer-term view to collectively innovate and collaborate more effectively. This initiative brings Strategic Foresight training to nonprofit leaders across Wisconsin's long-term services and supports (LTSS) sector, the organizations and people who show up every day for older adults and people with disabilities.
Why foresight, and why now?
Nonprofit leaders in the aging and disability services space are navigating a lot at once: workforce shortages, rising costs, demographic shifts, and changing expectations about what care and access should look like. Those pressures aren't going away, and they don't leave much room for purely reactive planning.
Strategic Foresight is a discipline built for exactly this moment. It helps leaders anticipate the potential effects of change, identify emerging disruptors, and explore a range of possible futures. By working through different scenarios, organizations can make more informed decisions, respond proactively, and move toward their preferred future — rather than simply reacting to whatever comes next.
It starts with listening
Before we teach a single foresight tool, we want to understand what Wisconsin nonprofits are actually facing. That's why the initiative kicks off this fall with a Statewide Discovery Survey, designed to capture the real challenges, risks, and emerging trends organizations are currently encountering. The results will allow tailoring of our training topics, speaker sessions, and regional focus from day one.
Three years, three phases
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Year One — Awareness and Engagement (2026): The Statewide Discovery Survey, virtual speaker sessions, and in-person half-day seminars introduce foresight thinking to a broad audience of nonprofit leaders.
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Year Two — Skill Building and Application (2027): Regional Strategic Foresight Cohort Programs give leaders hands-on practice applying foresight tools inside their own organizations.
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Year Three — Integration and Systems Impact (2028): One-on-one organizational consultation, advanced cohort programming, continued Regional Strategic Foresight Cohort Programs and a new Statewide Foresight Network help embed these practices for the long haul and strengthen collaboration across the sector.
Training will be led by University of Houston–trained futurists, delivered through a mix of virtual sessions and regional in-person events, so that leaders in every corner of the state can take part. Over the next three years, we aim to reach 300 to 500 leaders from more than 100 organizations statewide.
The future of care for older adults and people with disabilities in Wisconsin is not something to passively let happen. Forward thinking and strategic action will shape that future toward a preferred destination. We thank Common Good Philanthropies for their trust and support and cannot wait to get started.
Signals to Watch
Engage with Envision
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Shape the Future
Imagine being poised to impact your organization’s future in the face of a steadily increasing pace of change! What if we, as a community, could identify risks and threats in advance in order to enhance the quality of life for all?
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Train in Strategic Foresight
Our Strategic Foresight Training Program prepares leaders from all sectors to determine the key drivers of change, identify plausible futures, and then influence our collective destination rather than just reacting to change.
