The ambition

The World Marrow Donor Association (WMDA) and its members have built a global infrastructure that makes live-saving stem cell transplants possible across borders. We conducted a futures study to help WMDA make strategic decisions with confidence in a rapidly changing environment.   

WMDA appointed Firetail to produce a long-term evidence-based view of the evolving forces that would affect WMDA’s ability as a global membership organisation to deliver for donors, patients and members.

Our approach

After agreeing the scope and project deadlines, we began with an extensive PESTLE analysis to understand the political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental drivers influencing the future of facilitating transplants.

Next, we asked the community. To ensure the work reflected the diversity of WMDA members worldwide, we combined qualitative and quantitative engagement – expert interviews and a global member survey. During our futures workshop with WMDA members at the 2025 International Donor Registry Conference, we helped them identify the most significant drivers of change. These became the axes for four distinct future scenarios.

Futures work is grounded in imagination i.e. going beyond your frame of reality and asking ‘what if?’ We worked with WMDA to develop these scenarios into clear, practical and thought-provoking narratives. We explored scientific breakthroughs as well as a breakdown of international scientific cooperation driven by national interests, giving rise to strategic questions, such as, ‘If X starts to unfold, what will we do?’

The last step was to turn our scenarios into a strategic framework for WMDA and its members to use as a navigation tool. We addressed global ethical standards, sustainability of registry business models, donor trust, technology access, equity within the community, and organisational agility.

The impact

Our process of developing the futures framework strengthened WMDA’s ability to:

• anticipate and respond to diverse futures

• support members with very different capacities and needs, particularly smaller or emerging countries that are setting up transplant programs

• clarify the WMDA’s evolving role in standards, ethics, interoperability and equity

• embed futures thinking into strategic planning, leadership development and community dialogue.

The scenarios and accompanying insights continue to act as a living framework for WMDA, helping the global community navigate a fast-changing scientific and geopolitical landscape. They provide a shared foundation for long-term decision-making and reinforce WMDA’s mission to champion safe, equitable and collaborative stem cell provision worldwide.

If you’d like to explore how your landscape is changing – and how to navigate the change – get in touch with Firetail at mail@firetail.co.uk.