As a start-up, we are doing so much all at once, that we just realized we never published our “WOW” list for last year! We hope this list inspires you to want to learn more about ALL our programs, and more importantly – to get involved!
2011 Program Successes
2011 was the first year that Creating the Future operated as an official organization. As such, much of the year was spent building infrastructure – building a board, and building both technological and human systems to support the organization’s efforts. In addition to that infrastructure development, the organization had a great deal of program success to be proud of.
Education Program Success
In its first year, with only the 2 co-founders and a handful of volunteers, Creating the Future’s educational programs have been limited to what those few individuals could teach, both in person and via online / distance approaches.
• Taught 2 cohorts in our week-long consultant immersion courses
• Developed and beta-tested a new immersion course for on-the-ground changemakers (leaders in traditional “nonprofit” organizations, community activists, socially conscious business owners, social entrepreneurs…)
• Held our first-ever graduate seminar!
• Monthly “Making Change” podcast series at Chronicle of Philanthropy had incredible guests – including author Peter Block, OxFam New Zealand’s John Stansfield, We Are Family Foundation’s Nancy Hunt, former Clinton advisor Carol Rasco, and rabble-rouser / community organizer Rich Harwood!
• The NPCons Twitter chat continued to grow, with participants consistently rating this as “Don’t-miss professional development.”
• Growing from the NPCons chat, in 2011 we developed a Facebook Group for consultants to social change orgs so people could support each other and share advice throughout the month
• Our YouTube channel topped 16,000 video views while our online library had almost 200,000 visits – and that doesn’t even count our blogs!
• We were honored to work with organizers of a post-earthquake community conference in Christchurch, New Zealand, to participate via video at this critical time for community-building.
• Creating the Future’s co-founder Hildy Gottlieb delivered a TEDx talk, introducing portions of Creating the Future’s theory of change to a broader audience
Demonstration Projects
Creating the Future is acting as its own demonstration project, providing a living example of how an organization can engage transparently in every strategic decision it makes. To that end, we established our Walking the Talk blog, specifically as the place for that engagement.
Among the issues discussed publicly in 2011 (at the blog and throughout social media) were:
- Board recruitment criteria
- Conflict of interest policy
- Scholarship qualification
- What to look for in a payroll processing firm
Creating the Future also posted the minutes of its board meetings online, as well as bios for each member of our brand new board (yes, we started building a board, too!).
Research and Development
A large part of the work Creating the Future is doing to accomplish its mission is research and development into new approaches for improving conditions in communities. The following were areas of focus in 2011
• Recruited “Reinventing Governance” lab team (team to begin meeting in 2012)
• Recruited and convened “Reinventing Philanthropy” lab team (began meeting Fall 2011)
• Research into brain science behind successful social change approaches
Infrastructure Successes
In addition to all our program efforts, 2011 was Creating the Future’s first official year of operations. We began the year with no board and no tax exempt status. Our only blog was Hildy’s personal blog on behalf of the organization. And the website was an offshoot of the consulting website of the founders. Here’s what happened during the year:
- June 2011 – First board meeting (with 2 founding board members in addition to the founders)
- October 2011 – added 2 more board members
- October 2011 – board member Alexandra Peters worked with attorney Ellis Carter to file the application for tax exemption.
- Accounting systems were established in 2011, as well as selection of a payroll accounting firm.
- Website reconstruction – home page and significant chunks of the website (including education pages and About Us pages) were blown up and reconfigured from scratch (with more work still to be done). Migration of blog posts and articles to new URL and format was begun.
- Developed 5 new blogs, to be authored by Creating the Future graduates (with occasional guest posts from outside that core group).
Not bad for 2 founders over the course of one start-up year! 2012 is shaping up to be just as amazing, and we hope by 2013 to be deep in the search for a CEO and staff.
We hope this list inspires you to get involved in Creating the Future’s efforts. It is going to take a whole movement to shift how social change work is done, to make that work as effective as possible in creating the future we want for our world.