LIBRARY RESOURCES & BLOG
This area is filled with how-to articles, engaging conversations, and tons of examples of Catalytic Thinking in Action including actual planning sessions. Much to explore and learn from!
Most of us have had the experience of sitting by the sea, or on a mountaintop, looking out over the vastness of everything. Sitting there quietly, breathing in and out and in and out, the world seems to all make sense. We feel small, we see the inter-relatedness of everything. For a moment, we get … Read more
On August 1, I embarked on a month of “semi-sabbatical,” writing and exploring and planning and reading. I say “semi-sabbatical” because I only decided mid-July that the time was right. So there are still some tasks to be done, some projects with timelines that won’t allow me to simply abandon ship. This post is about … Read more
A thought occurred to me today, as I was reading a post from yet another well-meaning business person wanting to donate his skills to a “nonprofit” because those “poor nonprofits” so badly need business skills. Well-meaning. Patronizing. Maddening. We all see varying degrees of this in individuals and institutions who speak from their self-appointed place … Read more
Last year, as we planned to incorporate the Community-Driven Institute as its own tax exempt organization, we considered all the steps new organizations take in the beginning – build a board, apply for tax exempt status, build sustainability (financial and otherwise), and a whole line-up of tasks beyond that. As we began that planning, the … Read more
An organization Dimitri and I love is about to die. Everyone says it is a casualty of the economy. We know that is not true. Even when times were good, the ABC Group was struggling. And so five years ago, when we were teaching an earlier version of our “Building Engaged Support for Your Mission” … Read more
What a ride we’ve been on! As you all encouraged in the blog post that started all this, 30 days ago we set out to raise $9,500 to purchase the domain names CreatingTheFuture.org and CreatingTheFuture.com. And I confess that when we started this final week of the campaign with just $3,500, we were more than … Read more
After all the discussion that led to our name change, it’s here! What do you think? Dimitri has been working to create a logo that matches the name you all helped us find. We are pretty excited about the simplicity, the sense of action, and the connection to the thing that matters most – creating … Read more
Yesterday I lamented that we all feel we don’t have time to think. And that the reason we don’t have time to think is that we don’t make time to think. Which is to say that we don’t value thinking near as much as we value doing. Nowhere is this more evident than in the … Read more
The conversation I shared yesterday, with a young social change agent trying to find his path, brought up for me an issue that is glaringly absent in almost all discussions of “best practice” in the social change arena. Put simply, we devalue thinking, exploring, experimenting. What we value is “doing.” When individuals take time for … Read more
Just a quick update for those who have been helping us raise money to purchase the domain names CreatingTheFuture.com/.org. We have almost doubled last week’s total – a huge leap forward! After some last-minute giving via Facebook and Twitter, the total in the Domain Campaign fund is (drumroll please…) $3,000 exactly! (Thanks to some folks … Read more