Creating the Future's Board / Community Meeting:
Monday, February 10, 2020
10am - 12pm Pacific time
Topic:
Writing BYLAWS that actually matter!
or LISTEN TO THE MEETING HERE
or Download the MP3
(To download to your hard drive, right-click {or click and hold on a Mac} on the link above and select "Save Target As".. or "Save Link as"... depending on your browser)
Background:
Creating the Future's board has spent the past several years designing an organizational structure that feels more aligned with accomplishing our mission. (Click on the Category Link for "Organizational Structure" to see the history of these discussions.)
Redesigning the work of the board is a big part of that organizational design.
Within that new structure, we have defined our board's work as "upholding the integrity of the organization, ensuring we are walking our talk and meeting the expectations of anyone who has expectations of us." You can see summaries of those discussions at this link.
During our January meeting, the board started discussing the form our bylaws will take, to codify how decisions will be made at Creating the Future, to ensure we are walking our talk, and to address the legal expectations inherent in our being a tax-exempt corporation in the United States.
As we continue to navigate this new path, we hope you will come along on February 10th to be part of that discussion!*
How to Prepare
To help you feel as up-to-speed as possible on this meaty topic - the "doing" stage of a 4-year effort to determine the structure that will best accomplish our mission - you can read more about this journey in this summary post here.
You will find a post about what we envision the board to be - the "Integrity Board" - by reading this post. You will get a strong sense of what we began building at our November meeting. We strongly urge you to review these links so that we can all hit the ground running at the February meeting.
In addition, this PDF graphic of the Catalytic Thinking Framework (with red circle indicating where we are in the process) will provide context for our discussion, and an understanding of the flow of the conversation. We recommend printing it out or having it otherwise available during the meeting, to spark your thinking during the discussion.
How to participate
If you have never been part of Creating the Future's work, all our strategy and board meetings are open and participatory, for anyone who wants to be part of the discussion. You can see more about that at this link.
Where we meet:
The board meeting will take place right here at this post. If the video does not appear precisely on time, please be patient – we are probably just running a few minutes late.
There are 3 ways you can participate in our meetings.
- If your familiarity with and commitment to Creating the Future’s work - or your own experience with re-imagining organizational systems - is calling you to be actively involved in the meeting discussion side-by-side at our online “meeting table,” let us know, and we will send you an invitation to join us online.
- If you want to participate but are unable to be in the meeting itself (perhaps you’re at work, or maybe at home with kids running around, etc.), watch the live-stream in real time and tweet your questions and ideas to us via the hashtag #CreatingTheFuture. We read those tweets aloud during the meeting, just as if you were there. This is a great first step for those who are not as familiar with our work, but want to get more involved.
(Please note: We will only see your tweets if you use the #CreatingTheFuture hashtag. In addition, during the meeting, we will not look at blog comments here at this post. While we will check those comments later, during the meeting we will only be following the #CreatingTheFuture hashtag in the Twitter stream.)
- Lastly, if you want to simply watch, or you want to think about what you’re hearing and respond later – or if you will be watching the recording after the meeting happens – please add your thoughts into the comments here at this post. We will include that thinking into the mix of things.
We look forward to your being part of our discussion on Monday, February 10th!
* All Creating the Future's board meetings are open for anyone to participate, or to watch afterwards. To learn more about the thinking behind this openness - and our experiences with being open - click here.