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
Even when the leadership of an organization has vowed to engage transparently in everything the organization does, occasionally circumstances will require that a discussion be held behind closed doors. Because Creating the Future is doing its best to engage openly in all its decisions and actions, this is a very real issue for us! At … Read more
What does a board need in order to lead? No, I’m not talking about what boards are supposed to DO. Leading is not about “doing” but about “being” and “thinking.” What do board members need in order to BE leaders? This is not just an academic question for us, as we are right now in … Read more
The post on Conflict of Interest earlier this week has led to some of the most interesting discussion about organizational leadership issues I’ve seen in a while. To all who participated, thank you! (And to all who missed it, read through the comments here.) Of the many issues that arose in that discussion, some have led … Read more
We’re excited to be launching a new program – a program that readers here, and colleagues at Facebook and LinkedIn all said would be a huge help. Board education in digestible chunks. 20-30 minute audio classes for listening in your car or with your board. Going deep into a narrow topic, with thought-starters to move … Read more
It’s official: Creating the Future is building its infrastructure and becoming a real live organization! Not that our efforts haven’t been “real” so far. It’s just that we have always felt like we’ve lived in two worlds. On the one side, we have always believed in our hearts that the Community Benefit Sector holds the … Read more
It’s time for us to do one of the most exciting things I can think of – recruit the founding board for Creating the Future! Yes, exciting. It’s exciting because a board means this organization is real (not that we don’t already have programs that are extremely real, and all the other stuff that says, … 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