History

Creating the Future was founded by Hildy Gottlieb and Dimitri Petropolis in 2011. Rooted in two decades of Hildy’s research, idea development and experimentation, Creating the Future is now a collection of people around the world, putting that thinking into action, and bringing out the best in everyone around them.

1998 – 2007

Hildy Gottlieb is experimenting with new thinking for more effective social change, applying that thinking to her consulting practice. Her results are noticed among colleagues around the world, with requests to teach them how to replicate those results.

2007 – 2009

Hildy begins sharing what she’s learning.

  • Wrote & published The Pollyanna Principles.
  • 7 consultants from US & Canada join Hildy & Dimitri for a whole week, to help develop an immersion class to teach what Hildy has learned about creating change. Hildy and Dimitri are still consulting full time.

2009 – 2011

Hildy & Dimitri build Creating the Future (while still consulting full time).

  • Crowdsourced the name “Creating the Future”and secured domain names.
  • Built a temporary website.
  • Recruited a board and filed for tax exemption.
  • Hildy teaches 11 week-long immersion courses,including a cohort of New Zealand college professors.
  • In 2009, launched the monthly #NPCons Twitter chat forcommunity benefit consultants; participants demand to meet more often,becoming a facilitated Facebook community by 2011.

2012 -2014

  • Board votes to open all meetings to anyonewishing to participate –streaming video,with participation via Twitter.
  • Board also begins inviting guests tosit at the board table, participating / adding their wisdomalongside board members.
  • Ongoing board development, program development
  • Ongoing teaching of immersion classes and webinars,developing 30 minute “FlashClass” mini-webinars.
  • Co-developed and produced joint conference as demonstration project in community capacitybuilding, with Community Foundation ofWestmoreland County (PA) and PA Assoc of Nonprofit Orgs.

2015 - 2016

  • Board votes to restructure to more movement-like,distributed leadership structure, as first steptowards accomplishing the mission (restructuring to becompleted in 2017).
  • After 17 cohorts, taught final immersion in 2015,as content grew beyond what could be learned in 1 week.
  • Developed and BETA-tested year-long, online curriculumto replace immersion.
  • Added 5 new faculty members to teach the newcurriculum, to expand the missionbeyond Hildy in preparation for scale-up.

From the start, Creating the Future’s board of directors and organizational leaders have seen this as both a movement for creating a more humane world, and an experiment to determine more effective ways for social change groups everywhere to create that world.

Creating the Future’s work has lived up to that mandate, driven by the organization’s vision and values, and by the Catalytic Thinking framework that guides all decisions made everywhere throughout the organization.

Creating the Future received its 501(c)(3) tax exemption in 2013.