Current e-Journal
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January 20, 2026
How to activate your community
In this week’s Systems Change Newsletter…
- Invitations and Announcements
- Catalytic Thinking Exercise: How to activate your community
- Resources to Further Your Practice
Invitations & Announcements
Your team’s decision-making in these uncertain times
If your team is struggling to confidently make decisions in these uncertain times, we are here to help. Let us know if you’d like us to spend some time coaching your team. We’ll provide some Catalytic Thinking tools that can help, and we’ll explore the particular issues your team is facing via discussion and Q&A. In the spirit of Collective Enoughness, we are offering these sessions by pay-what-you-can donation. Let us know how we can help…
Required IRA Distributions
If you have required distributions from your IRA, consider a donation to Creating the Future as part of your plans. You will be making a difference in the lives of thousands of people around the globe, supporting our efforts to help changemakers step into their power. Become a champion for changemakers!
Catalytic Thinking Exercise:
How to Activate Your Community
In the U.S., this week started with a holiday celebrating the life of Martin Luther King. However, this is not just a day for thinking about the legacy of one man, but about the power of people to make a massive difference. And right now, all around the world, there may be no more important topic for us to talk about.
What do the people in your community need
in order to take action and make a difference?
There is a big difference between an organization rallying around a cause, and thousands of people in your community doing so. That power of movements is perhaps the biggest lesson from the civil rights era.
This comes back to one of the core tenets of Catalytic Thinking: The most powerful condition for your success is the very people who will be affected by that success.
That is the power of movements. It is the power of people to change the conditions that affect their lives. Therefore, when we think about the necessary conditions for the success of your mission, the most meaningful will be all those people who will create the change.
What can you do to help the people in your community step into their power – to be the change they want to see?
Try this
The Radical Inclusion questions of Catalytic Thinking are tailor made for just this kind of effort.
Who will be affected by whatever you are considering?
If the Civil Rights Movement teaches us anything, it is that activating the folks who will be affected is key to movement building. Asking this question will get you beyond talking about “The community,” and will instead focus you on real people. Whose lives are being directly affected by the issues you care about? How are their lives touched by that issue?
What would it take for them to participate / lead the charge for creating change?
As you consider the conditions that need to be in place for folks to take action, here are some questions that can help:
Material & Intellectual Conditions
What would all those people need to know?
What would they need to have?
What would they need to understand?
What would they need to see or hear?
What would they need to experience?
Emotional & Spiritual Conditions
What would all those people need to believe?
What would they need to be assured of?
What would they need to be comfortable with?
What would they need to feel?
You might frame these questions as a fill-in-the-blank.
In order for ________ to be reality, people in our community would need to believe / feel / understand (etc.) __________.
What actions can you take to ensure they believe / feel / understand (etc.) that?
Asking these questions at your next staff meeting or planning session, ideas will overflow. Energy and a sense of possibility will grow.
Importantly, by including the people in your community in change efforts, you will be showing them a path to their own power. At a time when so many of us are feeling powerless, there may be no better gift you can give folks. And that power is at the heart of all the questions in the Catalytic Thinking framework.
Resources to Further Your Practice
- WATCH: What difference can just one person make? A LOT!! Watch this short video…
- LOOK: If a picture is worth 1,000 words, this picture says it all. See it here…
- LISTEN: Building relationships in your community can take all sorts of forms. Listen to Debra Jacobs tell stories of how the Patterson Foundation has done it. This is great stuff! Listen here…
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