2025-2027 Strategic Plan
A Note From CEO Lindsay Baker
To read Lindsay Baker’s letter framing Living Future’s work over the next three years, please read our Strategic Plan:
At Living Future, we hold a vision and a commitment to transforming the building industry in ways that are deeply and urgently needed. We are proud to have created tools and resources that are actionable, accessible and evolving to support the growth of our movement as we make these ambitious shifts. As industry leaders, the community of Living Future practitioners and champions have a key role to play: this takes all of us, using our unique voices in our unique communities, to really achieve the transformation we need in the next decade.
We aim to have regenerative, resilient solutions adopted as the common practice for everyone creating and maintaining buildings by 2030. We have plans for every area of our current work and are embarking on several areas of new growth to provide the inspiration, support, and community to expedite the journey towards a regenerative building sector. We will be pushing for ambitious goals and measuring our industry’s progress towards them. We hope you will join us.
A Summary of Our Goals
As an organization, Living Future undergoes a strategic planning process every three years. We’ve developed ambitious goals and tactics to achieve them in collaboration with our staff, Board of Directors, Affiliates, and partners in the industry. Here is a high level summary of our targets in each area of our work. For more information about how we plan to get there, take a look at the strategic plan.
Our Buildings Work
The Living Building Challenge, issued 18 years ago, remains the north star for defining what regenerative impact (health, environmental and social) looks like in the architecture, engineering, design, and construction (AEC) industry. Our plans for our buildings work include:
1.1 Inspiration: Facilitate 15 million visitors to buildings certified under our buildings programs. Reach 300,000 people with stories of Living Buildings through support and attendance at industry events. Engage with 50 professional organizations globally to increase our influence in the building industry.
1.2 Support for those on the path to regenerative buildings and systems: Support 35 million square feet of diverse projects in our building programs on their path to certification, an increase of over 400% from the 8 million square feet certified to date. Register 50 million square feet of project area. Increase the diversity of registered project types, with a focus on supporting community resiliency projects.
1.3 Refining Pathways to Regeneration: Complete the Equity in the Built Environment Initiative. Make substantial and public progress towards LBC 5.0.
Our Products-Related Work
At Living Future, we inspire and support a positive tomorrow: shifting from mitigating negative impacts to creating positive outcomes through regenerative product design and manufacturing practices. Our plans for our products-related work include:
2.1 Scaling the regenerative materials economy: Strengthen our efforts to accelerate market adoption of our materials programs, doubling the number of participating manufacturers from 375 to 750.
2.1 Supporting Manufacturers: Increase the total number of published labels by 50% from 1,500 to 2,250 with 20% of products achieving two or more labels.
2.3 A New Structure for our Products-Related Work: Successfully develop a world class materials program, rolling out two new labels and revamping our existing frameworks, with the goal to answer the market need for inspiration, scaling, rigor, affordability, and alignment
Our Organizational Equity Work
We launched Just 3.0 in 2024 after a robust research and development process. Over the next three years we intend to focus our energies on enhancing the Just community.
- Triple the employees represented by participating Just organizations, contributing to a positive work environment and benefits for 165,000 or more people
- Drive a 50% increase in published labels by supporting 400 or more organizations through the process.
Building Community, Advocating for Change
Convening and creating community is a critical part of our theory of change, because this field is still relatively new and small. Our goals in this area include:
4.1 Living Future Membership: 7,500 total members.
4.2 Education And Our Living Future Accreditation (LFA) Program: 14,500 education enrollments, a new set of courses focusing on materials, LPC and Declare, as well as general interest courses to help accelerate awareness of regenerative building practices.
4.3 Our New Advocacy Work: A complete Policy Platform by the end of 2025, with funding secured for staff to build momentum on that platform in 2026 and beyond.
4.4 Our International Community: Defined paths for international engagement, including a process for new affiliate organizations.
4.5 Ecotone And Long-Form Publishing: Five to seven new books, three or more new industry reports, and 1,000+ purchases or downloads of existing publications.
Growing Our Voice
Through the Living Building Challenge, we started a conversation in the building industry about how to define and aim for truly regenerative buildings, and we began the work of spreading that inspirational thinking around the world. To manage the level of change we aim for, we need to increase the volume of content we put out into the world, and be more strategic and holistic in our communications strategy.
- Improve our storytelling to leverage the compelling successes of Living Future to attract new audiences, nurturing them through compelling narratives that inspire action and align with our mission.
- Publish 35 new Trim Tab blog posts annually, acting as a leading voice on key topics such as regenerative buildings, the Living Building Challenge, zero carbon buildings, the Red List, and Living Future’s Declare and Just programs.
- Gain 21,000 new followers across all social media platforms and 7,500 new newsletter subscribers (subscribe here!).
Operational Goals
We also have goals for Living Future’s internal operations. We will:
- Improve financial resilience by growing an operating surplus, growing earned revenue by 20% year-over-year, and securing approximately 20-25% of our annual revenue from philanthropic sources.
- Increase staff compensation by achieving a level 3 on our Just Living Wage indicator and follow through on our J.E.D.I. (Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion) Framework operational commitments.
- Invest in our technology infrastructure to revamp our data infrastructure and streamline internal work.
Would you like to support the work of Living Future? Make a donation or get involved by becoming a member.