Board Meeting – August 2013

Our August board meeting will be Monday, August 12 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.

This month's agenda item comes out of our discussions of the past few months – discussions to prioritize what the board intends to accomplish by year-end.  The result of our June meeting was the decision to focus on the board's legal obligations. As a young org, that means getting bylaws and budget processes and annual meetings in order. What do we want those normally boilerplate (and frequently ignored) things to accomplish? What could each of those tools make possible?

As a living laboratory for the power of everyday practices to completely change the impact any group can have on the world, we know that it is these seemingly mundane pieces that actually determine what the organization can accomplish.

We also know that these issues are not limited to "boards of community benefit orgs" but apply to any group trying to do good in the world – from a small business to a social enterprise to a family.

With that as our guiding light, what more important discussion could we possibly have?! 

At our July meeting, we then considered all those legal issues, and prioritized the order we will discuss them. (The matrix we used in that discussion is here). 

The board agreed that the most important thing for this young organization to discuss is the budget process, and that will be the subject of this Monday's meeting.

This will NOT be a discussion of the budget itself. Instead, we will be discussing the process by which the board and the organization will develop budgets and approve them. Which means we will be asking questions such as…

• What can the budget process make possible, and for whom?

• What would a budget process have to encompass / ask / embody / take into account in order to accomplish those goals?

• What will it take to be mindful not to just focus on budgeting dollars? To ensure our process reflects our values and the frameworks we teach, what would a budget process have to be, if it is focused on budgeting for ALL the assets the organization has to work with (high on that list being people!!)?

If you have found budget discussions to be tedious; if you have found that the only question boards and enterprise leaders ask about budgets is "Does it balance?"; if you have been frustrated that there has to be a better way… join us by watching the video below, and tweeting to #CTFuture.

We look forward to "seeing" you right here!