Current e-Journal
-
August 05, 2025
4 Assets You Can Build Upon RIGHT NOW
In this week’s Systems Change Newsletter…
- Invitations and Announcements
- Catalytic Thinking Exercise: 4 Assets You Can Build Upon RIGHT NOW
- Resources to Further Your Practice
Invitations and Announcements:
Using AI for Nonprofit Evaluation
At the next meeting of our Integrity Team (aka our board), we will focus on the next stage of our mission – documenting all we’ve learned in the 30+ demonstration projects Creating the Future has completed since our inception. And we’ll be talking about using AI to help with that process! Details will be coming soon, but if you’re interested, mark your calendar now. Monday, September 8 at 1pm Eastern time via Zoom. Hit reply to let us know if you’d like to be part of that conversation.
Nonprofits and Partisan Politics
Per the National Council of Nonprofits (NCN), “The public’s trust in charitable nonprofits is rooted in one simple principle: nonprofits exist to serve the public good, not partisan politics.” The U.S. Internal Revenue Service is seeking to eliminate the law that protects nonprofits from partisan politics, by allowing churches to endorse candidates. “Without this protection, politicians may try to pressure charitable nonprofits to endorse their election campaigns, and exert control over nonprofit organizations’ mission and the services they provide.” For actions you can take right now to push back against these efforts, NCN has information at this link.
Catalytic Thinking Exercise:
4 Assets You Can Build Upon RIGHT NOW
In this week’s podcast episode, Nebraska Community Foundation CEO Jeff Yost shares example after example of asset-based successes in small towns across the state of Nebraska. The foundation’s work is inspiring. It is exciting.
But like so many inspiring stories, many of us feel, “That can work for them, but we don’t have anything to build upon.”
We hear this a lot. We hear it from organizations who seek strength from external saviors like major donors and foundations. We hear it from communities where leaders court large corporations from outside their community as their economic development saviors.
This feeling of dependency and fear is even stronger right now. Groups who have relied on funding from the US government, both inside the US and around the world, are scrambling to replace that funding. Other organizations are afraid of economic uncertainty even if their work is not being directly targeted.
In the nonprofit world, weakness is built into the fabric of our budgets. Zero-based budgeting starts each year at zero, requiring that our organizations figure out how to fill that hole. Zero-based budgeting embodies the assumption that WE. HAVE. NOTHING. From there, deficit and scarcity become the way we think about pretty much everything.
Given Catalytic Thinking's roots in brain science, we know that scarcity can lead us to the most twisted of logic. (See the Resource section below for a brief video on brain science and social change).
In an organization, that can look like this: A recovery organization’s huge annual fundraising event was a Kentucky Derby watch party. Their promotions for the event highlighted “Beer, Wine, and Mint Juleps” as the very first line of their flyers and posters. A drinking event. For a recovery organization.
In a community, it can look like a desert community doing back-flips to court a data center that will use massive amounts of water - in a desert city that needs every drop of water for the very survival of its people.
Consider the many sports arenas that now stand vacant around the world. Once touted as the economic saviors of those communities, those arenas are now massive eyesores that continue to cost their communities thousands of dollars - if not millions of dollars - to maintain every year. (There is actually a whole Wikipedia page dedicated to those shuttered arenas!)
That is what scarcity does to our brains. Reason is replaced with desperation. Because we start at zero and have to fill that hole.
There is a better way. Because strength builds upon our strengths, not our weaknesses. We just need to recognize the immense strength that we do have, and start building upon that.
Try this
Radical Strength begins with recognizing the 4 types of assets and resources that every organization (and every community) has in some form. Instead of starting each year at zero, we can start by asking, “What do we have to build upon?” and start leveraging those assets to build strength into our work from the beginning.
That may mean a new way to look at raising money, or it may mean sharing resources that don’t require cash. In all cases, it is a path to building strength into our efforts, while building community along the way.
The 4 types of assets are:
- People assets and resources
- Mission assets and resources
- Stuff assets and resources
- Community assets and resources
People assets are the people you know, and the people those people know. We used to think we were six degrees of separation away from people we want to know. These days, it is more like two or three degrees.
The simple exercise of listing everyone you know often leads to all sorts of ideas about how to build upon that strength. Suddenly you realize the sources you already have for volunteers, possible donors, allies, people who can make connections for you - just by listing all the people you already know. The Life List Generator in the Resource section below is a great tool for this (and yes, it’s free).
Mission assets are about what you do - the work you do, the lessons you’ve learned, the expertise you’ve gained.
We have seen environmental organizations develop ecotours of their region, building on their knowledge of their unique ecosystem, and charging locals and tourists to come learn with them – increasing revenue while accomplishing their education mission.
We have seen music education groups form ensembles that play at local events, spreading their mission and raising money via fees. We have seen a food bank where, faced with a shortage of tomato sauce during the pandemic, they used their expertise to start canning and selling their own tomato sauce at local supermarkets.
When we think of our missions as an asset to build upon vs. an expense line item, all sorts of possibilities open up!
Stuff assets are literally the stuff you have. Buildings and parking lots and cars and computers.
We’ve seen an after-school program with a whole room-full of computers that are not used until 3pm when the kids arrive, contracting with a seniors group to have their folks use the computers in the morning. We’ve seen housing developments lease out their rooftops for cell towers. And of course buildings with extra space, that have rented out their offices.
And then there are community assets. Those assets are the stuff assets, the people assets, and the mission assets of everybody else in your community.
We’ve seen so many examples of this! Sharing vehicles, office space, and expertise. We’ve seen organizations share their volunteer managers – and their volunteers – when other organizations had a special event.
There is so much we can share with other organizations! This is at the heart of Collective Enoughness, the economic theory that together we have everything we need.
The simple act of identifying all the resources you have to build upon is empowering. Brainstorming ways to leverage those assets is inspiring and energizing. Within moments you will find yourself moving from “We’ve got nothing,” to “We have so much. Where do we start?”
That is what you are doing when you build on the assets you already have. That is why asset-based resource development and Collective Enoughness are built into the Catalytic Thinking framework. Because strength builds upon our strengths. And together, we really do have everything we need.
Resources to Further Your Practice
- WATCH: Brain science is just one of the scientific disciplines that Catalytic Thinking is built on. See it all here…
- SIMPLE TOOL: The Life List Generator is a simple tool for identifying all the people you know who can help your cause. Find people here…
- LEARN: Dive deeper into the different ways you can build on the assets you already have. Step in here…
- SIMPLE TOOL: Once the ideas start flowing, how do you decide which to work on? This simple tool makes it – well – simple! Decision-making made simple here…
Help Keep Our Programs Freely Available
Creating the Future’s eJournal is free. And there are no financial barriers to our classes – tuition is whatever folks can afford. Because we never want money to stand in the way of people learning.
If you value our content and our approach, please donate here – and please consider becoming a monthly supporter of our work.
eJournal Archives:
If you’re new to our eJournal, or just want to remind yourself of past practice exercises we’ve shared, check out our eJournal archives here.
SUBSCRIBE
to get this e-Journal
Creating the Future is a 501(c)(3) tax exempt organization in the U.S.A