Boards have so much to accomplish during the few hours they are together at their meetings. Whether it is a corporate board, a traditional “nonprofit” board, or the board of a social enterprise, there is the work it takes to aim the organization at accomplishing its mission, and then the work it takes to ensure … Read more
Imagine if your board members were more deeply engaged in your organization’s work had all the information they needed AND read it / understood it each month had critical documents such as bylaws at their fingertips (without having to haul around a 3-inch-thick policy binder). knew each other as people (rather than as “Bob – … Read more
True confession time: the members of Creating the Future’s board of directors love our board. We lament when meetings are over. In fact, long ago when our meetings were only 90 minutes long, our board requested that we meet for 2 hours – yes, they wanted a LONGER meeting, not a shorter one! Now that … Read more
In plain English, the word “mission” doesn’t mean “something we do forever.” A mission is either accomplished or impossible. We either get the job done, or we go home. Which means the most powerful question any change effort can ask is, “If we intend to accomplish our mission and actually change conditions in our communities, … Read more
In Creating the Future’s immersion courses, one of the posters that greets participants is the one to the left here – Values as a Verb. Put simply, values are merely empty words if they are not put into action. At its August 2012 board meeting, the board of Creating the Future therefore discussed the talk … Read more
If we want to see communities where people are fully engaged, participating in their own lives and their own futures, what would it look like if that was modeled everywhere – starting with our own organization? This is a question that has been in the making at Creating the Future since the initial decision, before … Read more
Research and Development is a big part of Creating the Future’s mission. After all, for the combined impact of all social change efforts to be successful in creating the world we want, we will need to find the most effective ways of accomplishing that! And there is no more important place to focus that R&D … Read more
We are excited to officially begin seeking someone who loves governance and wants help Creating the Future’s board as our Recording Secretary / Documentarian. And while we will be posting this to our website in the next few days, we didn’t want to waste a moment before posting it here. If you find boards and … Read more
Last month, Creating the Future passed a huge milestone – the one year anniversary of our first board meeting. You can see the minutes of that first meeting here (as well as all the minutes of all our meetings here) Like most people, our board members tend to focus on the long list of what … Read more
When most nonprofit leaders think of “board development,” they think of formal, group-based training events – usually held outside of regularly scheduled meetings. If the board has brought in a consultant, members want to make the most of that fee-based time; so they direct that person to cram as much information into as few hours … Read more