Scenario Development

Example:Cultural association

The cultural association promotes exhibitions and cultural evenings regionally.For some time, the association has shown steady growth and is therefore considering making its administration more professional and setting up a permanently staffed office.Before such a long-term decision can be made, the management board of the association would like to have a better overview of the possible future trends and influencing factors with the assistance of scenario development.

For this reason, the management board initiated a "scenario development” working group on which, besides several board members, users as well as technical experts on demographic change and the promotion of culture are represented.The parties agree, in view of the available data as well as the duration of the lease of the property under consideration, to develop scenarios until 2030.Demographic change as well as urbanization are to be included here as trends and possible political and social influencing factors.In a SWOT analysis the association identifies its strong growth in membership and users as a key strength.It defines the demographic change as an opportunity; however,urbanizationis a threat.Key weaknesses have to date been the poor accessibility of the association as well as the lack of information on its services.The trends are quantified on the basis of available forecasts.In addition, experts expect that the state will continue to withdraw from promoting culture, the demand for cultural goods could move to the digital sphere and patronage in the field of cultural promotion will grow.

From these trends and influencing factors, the working group develops various scenarios of which three can be used in the strategy formulation:

Most likely scenario

With the demographic change, the target group for the supported cultural offerings will be bigger.At the same time, however, less people will live in rural areas.The membership figures will therefore remain constant.State or municipal cultural funding will also continue to decrease.The financing options for the association will thus be focused on membership contributions and donations.The association can also continue to play a central role in cultural promotion in rural areas.

Best-case scenario

With the demographic change the target group will increase significantly; the trend towards urbanizationwill be less with the result that there will be a significant growth in the number of interested parties and members.With its improved infrastructure, the association will also gain more recognition from government than before as a partner in promoting culture in the rural areas and will be funded by same.Likewise the association will succeed in gaining large private donors.This secures the financing of the association in the long term and its infrastructure can be further developed.

Worst-case scenario

Although more people will be represented in the target groups relevant to the association’s cultural offering due to the demographic change, the demand for cultural offerings in rural areas will decrease more due to the urbanization as well as the move to the digital sphere.The association therefore has to cope with a major decrease in membership as well as correspondingly fewer contributions.This will also include a further decrease in public funds.

In view of these three scenarios the management of the association decided to rent offices as well as develop a professional administration that can be financed from the current membership contributions and donations and that is available as a contact point for institutional funders as well as major donors.The visibility of the work of the association can also be further promoted in this way.In addition, a strategy group will be set up that can deal with the possibilities of decentralized cultural offerings.