Possible Now and the journey from machine mind to garden mind

Jenny Hodgson, GFCF Executive Director

For the past year and more, the headlines in the international development and philanthropy space have been dominated by stories of despair and loss: key services have been cut, organizations forced to reduce or close. Existing systems seem exhausted and calls for the “localization” of aid feel like yesterday’s news, as aid budgets are cut and the very norms of international development cooperation as a global public good are in doubt. The days of grand bargains and global pledges are over. In their place there is a battle for survival, with many in the mainstream searching for a new relevance in a dramatically changed world.

But there is another story too, quieter, longer in the making, and far less visible. Its origins do not lie in recent ruptures, but in a richness that has always existed – largely unrecognized and at times actively overlooked – by dominant donor structures. Across the world, communities and their organizations have been building their own alternatives — in the form of mutual aid, rotating savings, remittances, solidarity economies and community philanthropy. These are not just coping mechanisms but rather living systems, rooted in context and sustained by relationships. Most importantly, they enable groups to resource and sustain their ambitions and their struggles on their own terms.

This moment of rupture has provoked a deeper restlessness too, revealing a truth that many in civil society and movements have always known, that dependence on external resources was always a dangerous strategy, compromising autonomy, creating competition and weakening the very social fabric that makes collective action possible.

Possible Now

Possible Now is an evolving conversation that is unfolding in both the global south and north which is grounded in this reckoning. Uncertain and emergent, but alive with potential, it builds on the experiences of the #ShiftThePower movement around building power and community among those at the edges of the mainstream who are seeking new pathways and are already experimenting with new practices, and whose work speaks to the fact that something different is not only necessary but already underway. It recognizes the shift needed away from “machine mind” to one of “garden mind.” Machine mind assumes that “we can build something to ‘fix’ the problems and continue as usual, that we can always ‘progress our way’ out of trouble.”[1] In garden mind, “Life self-organizes. Networks, patterns and structures emerge without external imposition or direction.”[2]

Possible Now emerged out of the 2023 #ShiftThePower Global Summit in Colombia. At the Bogotá event, which brought together over 700 people from all over the world and mostly from the edges of the dominant international funding system, the energy in the room was overwhelming. Against a backdrop of growing global crises, there was a sense of abundance and possibility, glimpses of a future that felt within reach. However, while global conferences can serve to re-ignite energy, connect community and offer validation and solidarity, they are not enough on their own to fundamentally shift old systems or build new ones. Our questions were many. In a context of multiple, vibrant, creative but often isolated innovations and emergent practices, what would it take to build a common grammar and an expanded sense of community across geographies and silos? What kind of alternative civic infrastructure would be needed to facilitate new flows of multiple kinds of resources and knowledge in distributed and horizontal ways around the world? How could such an emergent ecosystem help strengthen collective intelligence and sensemaking and the building of new discourse, with those closest to the work re-cast not as “implementors” but rather as “makers” of the new system? What would it take to shift mental models, so that experiments and innovations that have emerged through the cracks of the dominant system are not dismissed as small and one-off, but as part of a larger system of new practices patterns and signals that, when seen together, point in a new direction altogether?

Possible Now is a space of questions and ambitions. It is a space lightly held by a growing number of people curious and keen to play roles as gardeners and caretakers. It does not seek to impose new frameworks or structures. It is not a new programme, a branded initiative or a campaign. Instead, it is an invitation to co-create a new “garden of alternatives” and contribute to a new architecture of coherence which can emerge rather than be imposed, shaped by ideas of emergence and experimentation rather than control.

Over the past two years, around 300 people have stepped into the space. In-person meetings have been held in Nepal, Kenya and the UK, and multiple small “conversation circles” have been held online. Conversations have taken place at events and workshops organized by others, and new friends and allies have also joined, bringing new seeds from adjacent spaces. The guiding question in this process is simple:

How might we, by connecting the small but powerful things that are already happening around us, create an open space to imagine, experiment and co-create a different system that is not only about fixing what is broken but also about breaking free from outdated structures and building something new?

The process so far has been deliberately emergent, unstructured and often messy. Nonetheless, certain patterns and key insights have already begun to emerge.

Ruptures and openings

The dismantling of USAID in early 2025, which precipitated other donor governments to follow suit, if in less dramatic ways, introduced a new urgency to the question of civil society resourcing. Organizations lost funding overnight. Key services were cut and jobs lost. Leaders were held holding both the practical consequences and the emotional weight of systemic collapse.

The rupture cannot simply be repaired. It is structural and fundamental and extends far beyond the container of international development. The collapse of aid is one crisis among a collision of global crises – economic, political, environmental, etc. At the same time, it has created new openings and possibilities, clearing space for new growth.

The dismantling of USAID was “the wake-up called we needed.” Previously, powerful incentives in the aid system – and a sense that more funding equated to greater success – had pulled many organizations away from their roots. Some describe this dependency as an “addiction.” As long as there was ample funding in the system, there were few motivations, nor – in the hamster wheel of fundraising, project implementation and reporting – much room for larger conversations aimed at charting new pathways towards greater autonomy.

If one opening has been the full and final recognition that the international funding model “stands on a global economy full of inequality and injustice – legacies of colonialism” and should never have been relied upon, then another has been that what comes next must not be shaped from within centres of old power but through the bricolage of experimentation and innovation at its edges, and through the navigation of uncertainty.

Harnessing mental freedom and energies at the margins

While the language of “resets” and “reimagining” now dominates the international funding and civil society discourse, they are often constrained by the narrow structures of the dominant system. The grammar, the inputs, the actors are the same – as if this time it will be different. The agendas purport to be ambitious, but the structure of dialogue places limits on any real kind of imagining. They produce exhaustion. Whispers of Audre Lorde and how the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house linger in meeting corridors.

At the margins, away from formal centres of power and without the burden of big structures who inevitably consider change through the lens of vested interests, there is a particular kind of freedom. Reimagining can be just that: a blank slate, the possibility of new shoots and buds, unburdened by the need to maintain legacy systems. Marginality offers fertile ground – “an advantage, not a deficiency, because it allows the emergence of imagination unbound by domination and dependence – imagination that is genuinely emancipatory.”

The transition will not be smooth. Navigating the present system while imagining a future brings tension. The current system continues to create demands – to raise money, to account to governance structures whose mandate is by necessity parochial (organizational rather than eco-systemic), to navigate and respond to restrictions and limitations of funding. The institutional structures that have evolved to help systematize an organization’s work may create certain efficiencies, but they are not conducive towards experimentation or in taking risks in pursuit of the unknown. “A new system cannot be built from what already exists. [We need] a laboratory for what we see is needed in the world but which is impossible to achieve alone or in an organization.”

Hope as a virus, and practice as compass

In the current climate, there are real reasons to despair, and despair can become infectious and paralyzing. But hope can spread too, carried through connections, like the mycelium in soil. Hope here is not the product of wilful or naïve optimism but of conviction grounded in concrete examples of alternatives that work. Following a global meeting held in Nairobi, one participant reflected that:

“There are many more people than we think who are dreaming of and building decentralized systems that are rooted in local realities and community nuances, without romanticizing and depoliticizing the meaning of ‘local.’ There is always so much more room for more curiosity and experimentation, even as we facilitate new and non-traditional ways of doing things.”

In another online meeting, a similar sentiment was shared: “We must build our boldness and confidence together and not let our work become depoliticized. Many of us have a theory about the power of community, as a source of social muscle, a place of care, not a place to harness or exploit. We need to keep up the energy and the sense of gains made…and recognize that we are not looking into a void. The emergent is already there.”

Relational infrastructure: The roots

The garden will be sustained by strong root systems, not in the form of financial capital but rather of “relational infrastructure“: relationships, trust, shared norms and networks of care which lie at the heart of all strong communities and movements. “Just as plants with deep roots and tough fibre can endure and recover from wildfires, communities with strong, interconnected systems are better equipped to face and rebound from adversities. Robust social infrastructure provides stability and resources during crises, while strong social bonds can act as the ‘thick bark’ that shields communities from external shocks.”

The wild garden: Embracing confusion and messiness

The moment feels full of uncertainty. But this is part of the transition: “Otherwise, it’s not change. If we are not confused, then it means we are not thinking properly.” A wild garden is neither neat nor orderly, its health enriched by its biodiversity, not the straightness of its lines. Confusion, in this sense, is not failure. It is an indicator that we are at the edge of something new.

“Scientists say it takes a lot of messes to finally discover what works. But underneath is the realization that all of those messes are tending toward the discovery of a form of organization that will work for multiple species. Life uses messes, but the direction is always toward organization; it’s always toward order.”[3]

By: Jenny Hodgson, GFCF Executive Director

This is the first in a series of essays about Possible Now. The invitation to be part of this is an open one, and the thinking that emerges will help frame the next #ShiftThePower Global Summit in Kathmandu in December 2026.

[1] Thanks for Sue Goss for this framing. https://www.compassonline.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/GardenMind_SG_FINAL.pdf

[2] Ibid

[3]  https://www.margaretwheatley.com/articles/unplannedorganization.html#:~:text=Someone%20once%20asked%20me%2C%20%22What’s,itself%20into%20different%20identifiable%20beings.