We’re getting ready for the February meeting of Creating the Future’s board of directors on Monday, February 9th at 10:00 am Pacific Time. You’ll be able to watch our board meeting live at this post. Before describing the guts of the meeting, let us offer a bit of context. Like many boards of community benefit organizations, we find ourselves occasionally asking if we are doing enough to support and sustain the organization? Is our leadership actually achieving anything?
To find at an answer for this, have a look at a sample of what came out of our board work in 2014:
- By-laws re-framed in January and February (not yet complete, but basic groundwork laid)
- Selected our inaugural board Chairperson and conditions for their success (April)
- Determined the board’s role and function in financial oversight of Creating the Future (April)
- Developed an approach for “Resource Stewardship” (June)
- Created a leadership approach to risk (June)
- Set a compensation policy for Creating the Future faculty (August)
- Reviewed and continued support for conducting our board meetings in an open forum (August)
- Developed policy for ensuring a vibrant workplace (September)
- Created an organizational approach for financial accountability (October)
- Established a workplace evaluation policy (November)
- Developed an organizational approach to evaluation (December)
Lastly, in May the board determined that its core role lies in framing and exploring questions and looking for answers to those questions outside of Creating the Future itself.
This is an impressive achievement, given that board members are in dialogue for a scant 1.5 hours per month (after our traditional “awesomeness” opening exercise).
So, what might the board be working towards in the upcoming year? Before embarking on this question, we will consider the achievements made by the board in 2014, and we will review the Strategic Objectives which were created in late 2014.
On the basis of that information, questions we will consider:
- What are our reflections on the achievements and accomplishments of the board in 2014?
- A look at the list of achievements indicates what the board has been doing. As we reflect on the past year, what do we notice about how the board is being?
- Our Strategic Objectives document includes five conditions required for Creating the Future to successfully accomplish its mission in 10 years. They include
- Creating an overall plan
- Developing partnerships
- Creating ways to for people to participate
- Developing organizational infrastructure
- Being succession-ready.
- We agree that it will take the effort of a tremendous network to achieve this goal within our desired timeframe, but we also sense that it is absolutely possible to do. In the face of these five priorities, what questions arise for us?
- What more might we want to know about this?
- What does the board want to make possible by 2016? For Creating the Future? For the board itself?
- What does the board wish to accomplish over the next 12 months? What are the most important questions for the board to consider in 2015 that will ensure that we achieve these priorities / objectives?
- On the basis of those achievements, what roles and/or functions can we see emerging for board members?
- What would it take for the board to achieve those functions? What would members need to have? To be? To know?
We hope you will join us at our meeting on Monday February 9th. Please let us know when you arrive! Follow the hashtag #CTFuture to join the conversation.