Creating the Future's
Board / Community Meeting:
Monday, July 13th from 10am - 12pm Pacific time
Topics:
1) Bylaws Guiding Documents for Accomplishing our Mission
2) Ensuring Racial Equity as an "Integrity Board"
Logistics: The meeting will happen right here at this post. Details are below.
Watch the meeting HERE on Monday. Just scroll to the very bottom of this post.
Note: if the meeting does not start on time please be patient as we may be running a few minutes late.
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.)
Given that Creating the Future is a corporation, which requires that we have a board, we have also been working to redesign the work of our board within that organizational design. To that end, 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.
This month, we will celebrate the completion of all that work, and the board will step into its new role of "ensuring our values" with the issue of racial equity.
Item 1: Our Guiding Document
We are finally ready to codify our approach to managing the affairs of this organization with a document formerly known as bylaws! (Why "formerly known as"? Because the word “bylaws” suggests that the document is “law” rather than a document to guide self-governance.) This Monday, we will review that guiding document, making final adjustments and adopting it. Download the draft of that document here. The document references our Articles of Incorporation, which are at this link.
Item 2: The Role of our Integrity Board regarding racial equity
As our board takes on its new role of monitoring and ensuring our integrity, what will that role look like regarding the issue of racial equity? This will be the beginning of one of the most important questions we can be asking - not just our board, but every board.
With both these meaty issues, we want YOU to be part of both that discussion!*
How to Prepare
First, please let us know if you plan to attend by sending a note at this link. In addition to accessing the proposed Guiding Document at this link and Articles of Incorporation to which that document refers (at this link) we will directly send you a copy of those documents. You will want to especially review the Guiding Document prior to the meeting.
In addition, you can read more about this journey in this summary post here. And you will find details about the role of our "Integrity Board" by reading this post. We strongly urge you to review these links, to ensure you have context for both items on this month's agenda.
This PDF graphic of the Catalytic Thinking Framework will give you 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, July 13th!
* 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.
Watch the meeting HERE
* Note: In our excitement to adopt our new bylaws / guiding document, we forgot to adopt a necessary change to our Articles of Incorporation that would permit the board to delegate decision-making authority as permitted by Arizona law. A quorum of the board gathered at a phone meeting the next day, voting to authorize our attorney to seek that change. The minutes of that meeting are here. When we receive the proposed amendment language, we will post those changes.
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)