Creating the Future's board meeting will happen right here on Monday, May 12th at 1pm EDT. Scroll to the bottom of this post to watch it live. To share your ideas, questions, and observations, tweet to the hashtag #CTFuture.
Arms wide open, welcoming you to the May 2014 board meeting of Creating the Future.
It’s my pleasure to introduce myself to you: I’m Gayle Valeriote, and have just stepped into the role of chairperson of our amazing board of directors. I hail from Guelph, Ontario, Canada, and have been a part of Creating the Future since the first full immersion course in 2008.
You may be wondering, so I’ll share a small slice of my pathway to this place: I’ve been steadily shoving open doors and provoking conversations in communities since 1985, when I got active in the anti-apartheid movement, in my city and across the country. Since then, community & leadership development, global education, social justice and community inclusion have been the focus of my work. I began consulting with nonprofit organizations in 2006 and have been lucky enough to work with awesome people and programs since then. Hundreds of ‘em. Without fail, I fall in love with each organization, and have immense respect for the passion that drives people to create a great community.
Enough of that. You want to hear about Creating the Future!
Creating the Future has a board meeting coming up on Monday May 12 (1:00 pm Eastern time), and we want you to know about it, with the hope that you can join us! As you’ll recall, last summer the board of directors started a conversation related to the legal obligations of our board, intending to address each one in order of priority.
We began considering financial oversight last month, and will be continuing that exploration at this month’s meeting. You can watch the archived video here, and the financial conversation begins around the 1 hour 30 minute mark. We encourage you to participate with us, via Twitter and using the hashtag #CTFuture. We’ll monitor the Twitter stream and bring your comments, questions and thoughts into our conversation.
In the April conversation, board members recognized that deconstructing “financial” and “oversight” was imperative, if we are going to get our arms around what we will hold ourselves accountable for. We quickly agreed that we understand financial to include resources beyond money, and that we are stewarding the resources of the community itself.
As the dialogue is developing, here are some of the questions we’ll be considering this month:
· What does the board need to be or have, to ensure that the organization has everything it needs to succeed in its mission? What does it need in order to engage those resources that are around it in a way that gives life to that work?
· If we are ‘overseeing’ the community’s resources, how are we teaming up with our community in an intentional way, to activate those resources? [vs. “How are we doing at spending your (out there) money?]” And, how does that translate into the internal organizational realm?
o What do the board / staff / community need to be or to have, in order to engage resources in the community, and to deploy them effectively at the internal/operations level?
o If we don’t limit ourselves to conventional approaches, what alternative ways of looking at revenue does that introduce, especially as it aligns with our mission?
· Think about experiences you have had on other boards or in leadership roles, as it relates to “oversight”. What would you have wanted to be different within that oversight role? What would you have wanted, in that situation? How might these answers inform the deconstruction and re-configuring of Creating the Future’s financial oversight?
· How will we recognize when we’re successful? What will we see, hear, and experience that tells us we’re making the impact we seek?
We truly hope you will be able to join us on Monday, to help us consider these important questions.
Listen to the Audio Only:
or Download the MP3
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