Our October board meeting will be Monday, October 14 at 1pm ET(NA) right here.
To join in the conversation, watch for the video stream to appear at the end of this post. (There will be no video there until the meeting begins. If it's 1pm or a few minutes after, and there is no video, please wait for it – we may just be starting a few minutes late).
To ask questions, to share observations, to participate as part of our community – tweet to us using the hashtag #CTFuture.
Coming Up to Speed
There are two items the board will be discussing at this month's meeting.
- Bylaws: Updating Creating the Future's bylaws
- Form 990: Creating the Future's annual regulatory filing
If you're participating via this blog post, you can find the board's prep materials here:
- Agenda (click here)
- Form 990 (click here)
- Summary of 2012 Successes (click here)
- Video report of the past month's activities (Video includes our new Convening Space! Click here)
Agenda Item: Reviewing the 990
The board will be reviewing our 2012 filing to the US Internal Revenue Service – the form 990. The IRS requires that boards review this form, but in truth, most boards don't discuss what it is the form is telling them. They look at the numbers, ask a few obvious questions about this or that, and move on. Often it is not even the board that looks at the form, but a committee – the treasurer, the finance committee, the audit committee, etc.
Being a living and learning laboratory, Creating the Future's board will be asking a different set of questions:
- What stands out as we read this form?
- What can this filing make possible, and how can we ensure the form accomplishes that?
To best understand what is in the form – and the discussion the board will be having – a critical piece of information will be what is NOT in the form – that is this summary of our accomplishments for 2012. In prior years, that was provided as an attachment. That is no longer possible, and so that will be part of what the board will be discussing.
Agenda Item: Creating the Future's Bylaws
Like many new organizations, Creating the Future's bylaws are, for the most part, boilerplate. It's hard for a new org to document how it does its work when they haven't really done it yet!
Now that our board has been meeting for 2 1/2 years, we are ready to have bylaws that reflect our values in action. And so this month, the board will begin a discussion we wish every board would have…
- What might an organization's bylaws make possible? And for whom?
- What would bylaws need to be in order to accomplish that?
If you have found bylaws discussions to be tedious (or nonexistent) and you want to explore a more effective way of using that tool to codify a board's work, join us by watching the video below, and tweeting to #CTFuture.
We look forward to "seeing" you right here!