It’s time for our annual post, celebrating all we accomplished in 2025.
This year has been quite the whirlwind, as we all know. On January 1, we were prepared to step more firmly into the final phase of our mission – documenting and sharing all we learned from our 30+ demonstration projects, with the ultimate goal that the powerful questions of Catalytic Thinking become ubiquitous.
By the middle of that month, though, it was clear that our current work was needed more than ever. While we were still exploring different approaches for that final phase, the bulk of our work would have to wait until we all got our sea legs from the events of 2025.
And that is what 2025 was really all about – helping our community members to step into their power during this time of authoritarian overreach in the U.S. and beyond. We accomplished that through a wide variety of activities, all focused on that one theme: Stepping into our power when times are tough.
Now that we know the extent of what we’re up against – and now that we have had time to adjust our programs to meet that need – we will be stepping confidently into the final phase of our mission in the year ahead. (More about that below.)
For now, here is all that we accomplished with and for our community members in 2025. And what a year it was!
Education Programs
In 2025, we took several big leaps with our education programs, the largest of which was to shift our newsletter to a weekly publication, showing how Catalytic Thinking can help folks react to new circumstances, and importantly, create what is possible, even in these dark times. (Check out the archives of all those newsletters at this link.)
Our community of practice continued to meet, with members strengthening their Catalytic Thinking reflexes. And our Creating the Future podcast exploded, with 14 new episodes – interviews about the factors that lead to change, with change leaders as varied as foundation leaders, scholars, activists – people seeking change in all aspects of life.
And we continued to produce webinars, which we intend to do more of in 2026. This year’s webinars including a session on taking an asset-based approach to resource development, as well as one session just about what it takes to step into our power. Importantly, we kicked off a webinar series that is just for consultants, so that they can better support their clients during these times.
Publishing and Speaking: Sharing the Mission Broadly
A big part of the work this year was about sharing the power of Catalytic Thinking more broadly. In addition to our education programs, that meant more speaking and writing outside our own venues, including writing via social media.
In the past, our social media had been a bit here and there – some Facebook, some Twitter, some Instagram. In 2025, we pulled back on those spaces, and focused our efforts on LinkedIn. The response has been strong, especially to Hildy’s posts there. In 2026 we will continue to grow that audience.
Part of that effort has included publishing in spaces like Nonprofit Quarterly and Stanford Social Innovation Review, as well as in academic journals. That included…
- How to Not “Obey in Advance”—Actions for Resisting Authoritarianism: A Nonprofit Quarterly article that was so well received, it was listed as one of their top 15 articles of the year, and was NPQ’s 6th most-read new article of 2025.
- Listening for Possibility in Times of Crisis: The Fund for Shared Insight invited us to pen this piece, based on Catalytic Listening, for their audience of funders.
- Crisis Decision-Making: What’s the Worst that Could Happen? We were very excited about this one, shared at Stanford Social Innovation Review. Why excited? Because it is one of the most powerful parts of the Catalytic Thinking framework, and because it is so needed during this time of tough decisions.
- Focus on the “Why”: Using Catalytic Thinking to Reimagine the Future of Nonprofit Education: This article was written for a special edition of the Journal of Nonprofit Education and Leadership, Creating the Futrue’s first published piece in an academic journal, about the power of Catalytic Thinking.
- Reframing Nonprofit Organizations: Democracy, Inclusion, and Social Change. Creating the Future’s CEO, Hildy Gottlieb, was invited to write about the power of questions to create change, as the final chapter of this academic text.
As for speaking, Hildy was invited to speak at conferences as widespread as Alaska and Australia. The focus of those talks was all the same: What does it take to step into our power? The talks in the U.S. included the Foraker Group (Alaska’s statewide association of nonprofits) and NYCon (New York’s statewide association). From there, Hildy and Dimitri headed Down Under, for 5 weeks of events in Australia and New Zealand – 13 events in 6 cities in 2 countries. And in all, the same message: We have so much more power than we think we do!
Stepping into Phase 2
Stepping into 2026 will mean stepping firmly into work on Phase 2 of our mission – documenting the power of Catalytic Thinking, via the 30+ demonstration projects we’ve done. 2025 saw one of those projects come to fruition, a community-wide summit in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada to move beyond the status quo in alleviating poverty. We are excited to document that and all the other projects we’ve been honored to be part of in this past 10+ years.
We are kicking off that effort with the help of two academic advisors, both of them board members at Creating the Future – Dr. Angela Eikenberry (Director and Professor, School of Public Policy, University of Connecticut, Hartford CT USA) and Dr. Karl Wilding (Lecturer in Philanthropic Studies at the Centre for Philanthropy, Kent Business School, Kent U.K.). We are also excited to have a brilliant doctoral student who will be working closely with us, as she is basing her dissertation on the work we’ve been doing.
All of it is pretty exciting. And all of it is what’s on the docket for 2026. If you would like to be involved in this effort in any way, please let us know.
To those who have been part of making all this great stuff happen in 2025, we are grateful beyond words. And we look forward to your being part of these efforts going forward.