Communications & Engagement: Choose Wisely (Summary: Mtg #4)

Last week, Creating the Future had its 4th meeting to create our communications / engagement strategy. For background, the following are discussion summaries from the meetings that led up to this one: Meeting #1: Who will see our messages (whether the intended audience or not)? What do we want those messages to make possible for … Read more

Community Engagement: 5 Tips

This post is the 4th in a series describing Creating the Future’s first “Road Tour,” a two-month community engagement effort that saw our founders connecting with people in communities across California and Nevada in late 2018. You can read these posts from the beginning here. Last fall, we set out for two months on the road, … Read more

Collective Enoughness in Action at Creating the Future: Real-time case study

Creating the Future is in build-out mode! Having established a track record in our start-up years,  the 10-year clock towards “Mission Accomplished” officially kicked off last year – full steam ahead to a world filled with systems that bring out the best in us all. As we asked, “What will it take to accomplish the … Read more

Seeking Partners at Creating the Future: Meeting #2

The next meeting of our Sleuthing-for-Partners design effort will be Wednesday, February 14th from 1pm-4pm Pacific time. The meeting will happen right here. For details on how to participate, head to the bottom of the post. For a summary and the video / audio of the first meeting, head to this post. That first meeting … Read more

Catalytic Thinking: A Framework for Creating and Scaling Powerful Results

NOTE: This post is Part 2 of Creating the Future’s “Theory of Everything.” You will find Part 1 – the theory – at this post here. Catalytic Thinking is a set of practices that make explicit the simple factors that create positive results, so those results can be consistently replicated and scaled. The Back-Story In 1998, … Read more

Our Funding Approach to Build Out Our Mission

Ever since our founding, everything about Creating the Future has been an experiment to discover and share systems (i.e. “the way we do things”) that bring out the best in everyone. With that mandate, one of the systems that has repeatedly cried out for change has been the variety of systems for funding social change. … Read more

Partnerships Rooted in Shared Values

What does it take for true collaboration and partnership to succeed? What conditions would lead to that success? One thing is for certain: Those conditions will not be about the stuff (the product, the program, the money, the paperwork). They will be about the people. Because when things fall apart, it’s not about the stuff; … Read more

Gratitude and Generosity: An Online Conversation

This week is Thanksgiving in the U.S. To celebrate, we want to share one of our favorite Making Change broadcasts. What would it look like if gratitude and generosity were the touchstones at the root of everything we did – business, government, community benefit work? This conversation with Christy McGill and Rhonda Lorch focused on just … Read more

“You better keep on pressing. There are people who need us.”

The day after Election Day 2016, Creating the Future hosted an online conversation for people who were struggling with those election results. You can find that recorded conversation here. Through the many expressions of sadness and disbelief, there was also immense optimism. The longer we talked, the more each person began to realize that the … Read more