We are excited to find someone who loves governance and wants to help Creating the Future's board as our Recording Secretary / Documentarian. And while we will be posting this to Idealist.org in the next few days, we didn't want to waste a moment before posting it here. If you find boards and governance issues beyond intriguing, we hope you'll consider joining us!
Do you spend your spare time
learning and thinking
about governance & leadership?
Do you consider yourself a “nonprofit geek”? Do you find yourself enthusiastically drawn into discussions about boards and their potential?
Creating the Future's board is not just a governing body. We are a group of people who want to learn about effective ways to lead by actually leading, creating the path as we walk it – a living laboratory for leadership and governance.
This position is not about sitting quietly and taking notes – just the opposite. We will be encouraging you to participate in our discussions right alongside us. What a waste it would be to have someone who is excited about leadership and governance, who isn't able to share their thoughts and ideas!
We are therefore seeking someone who believes boards can make a huge difference, because that's what we believe.
We believe that boards can be the key to making a huge difference in communities.
We believe that effective leadership is about asking and listening and learning, and then reaching for what is possible (vs. mandating and reacting and making rules).
We believe that principles of participatory governance can be applied within any effort that is seeking to create community change – that a prerequisite for creating healthy, vibrant communities is leadership / governance that engages those communities in creating their own future.
We believe that the legal and operational oversight functions of boards are means to the ends of leadership, and that while such legal functions are critical (and legally mandatory), that they are by no means the most important aspects of governance.
We believe that, because leadership has been an evolving field of study for thousands of years, that boards have the opportunity to further that field by acting as a living laboratory, experimenting with various aspects of leadership and governance, and then sharing their results by engaging openly with others about what they are learning.
We believe that the best way to encourage other efforts to move to more participatory, engaged forms of governance is to be a living example not only of what is possible, but to show that it is practical, what it looks like, and how it can work.
And we believe that the work of our board can be richly enhanced by having someone who finds governance fascinating (that’s you!) listening and participating and recording and documenting our work.
The board is seeking someone who wants to volunteer alongside us, to record our proceedings and translate mere “notes and minutes” into opportunities for engagement, participation, teaching and learning. While those “minutes” are legal documents of decisions and actions, they are also a historical reference of one group’s efforts in an emerging governance framework.
So…
• If you are curious about exploring alternatives to traditional governance, and excited about being at the forefront of this emerging governance practice…
• If you want to learn by immersing yourself in an ongoing governance education experience that happens to take place at our monthly board meetings…
• If you want to learn to use the strategic thought framework Creating the Future teaches and uses for all its work (not just our board work)…
• If you are excited at the thought of helping Creating the Future remain deeply and authentically engaged as part of the world (vs. an organization surrounded by walls), encouraging those who are affected by our work to be the ones to shape it…
• If you relish the opportunity to create this position by working in it, helping to design the evolving job description for this critical role…
• If you want to be included in a community of practice focused on putting that framework into action (one of the perks of being part of this work – the community includes our board plus all our fellows and lab team members)…
• If you want to be surrounded by people who find as much joy in exploring the ins and outs of leadership and governance as you do – and who are excited to teach you what we have been learning in our explorations to date…
• And most importantly, if you like to laugh (because our board meetings are fun )…
Then this may be the volunteer position of your dreams! Just click on this link, and let us know a bit about you – including…
Please tell us about your knowledge about leadership, boards and governance. What excites you about this topic?
Do you have a flair for writing? Would you be comfortable translating language used at the board table into well-thought-out interpretations that will engage meaningful conversation – gathering the gist and being able to relay the true meaning of what is said (vs. the letter of the conversation)?
Do you have time to participate in our 2 hour monthly meetings (2nd Monday of the month, 10am US Pacific time), to take notes and then translate those notes into both our official minutes as well as blog posts and other forms of communication for the purpose of engaging others?
Are you willing to commit to a year of participation in this position?
If this post gets your creative governance juices flowing, please click here and tell us a bit about you – your background, and especially your interest in governance. And please, share 2 or 3 (or more!) reasons why this position is intriguing / exciting to you. We're looking forward to hearing from you!
And one more thing – if there is anything we either left out that should be in this post, or questions we haven't answered, let us know. This is a work in progress, and we're looking forward to all of us figuring this out together.
Additional Information
All our board meetings happen live online via Google Hangout. We take open participation seriously, inviting anyone, anywhere, to not only watch but participate via Twitter – ask questions, share thoughts and ideas. You can see more about the reasoning behind that openness here.
And you can watch all our meetings since January 2013 here.
Here is a list of our current board members.
And the discussion about this position (which will give you a sense of how the board moves everything from its own discussion out into the world for all sorts of input) is at this link.
Now that's how you write a compelling position description for a knowledge philanthropist!