Future Focus Program: What Are We Asking Ourselves?
In 2022, the Rozsa Foundation, Calgary Arts Development and the Calgary Foundation jointly developed the Future Focus funding program to support organizations as they tackle big foundational questions and develop forward-focused strategies. To help facilitate these often challenging conversations, the funding group engaged Jennifer DeDominicis of Distill Consulting as Organizational Strategy Advisor and offered her expertise to arts organizations at no cost.
Of late, many organizations have been in the thick of reporting back to funders about the work they have undertaken as part of a Future Focus-funded project. Let’s be honest — reporting is typically thought of as a requirement, something a funded organization has to do for compliance and something necessary for future eligibility.
Funders are generally clear that reporting helps them to better understand your experience and impact, but also learn about what continues to be a challenge and what else may be needed. Often, a reporting organization, caught up in the everyday operations of existing and solving the next problem, misses out on the opportunity to engage purposefully and creatively as part of reporting. It is work that I know I have avoided, or prepared hastily or well past the point where I could engage with the words or numbers differently. Sometimes arts organizations get tangled up in this idea that reporting is for someone else, faltering because they get stuck looking to share what they think funders want to hear. It is easy to get lost.
Future Focus reporting is deliberate in seeking to challenge the assumption that the act of reporting is for someone else, and reframes reporting for funded projects as a practice for learning and designing action.
“Sometimes arts organizations get tangled up in this idea that reporting is for someone else, faltering because they get stuck looking to share what they think funders want to hear.”
— Jennifer DeDominicis, Organizational Strategy Advisor
Cassa Musical Arts, who recently completed an Investigation Phase project, observed the benefit of the “guidance embedded in the Future Focus framework, particularly the emphasis on asking the right questions, not moving too quickly, and approaching change in a phased and intentional way.” The Investigation and Exploration phases make space, on purpose, for what Donald Schön describes as problem setting, a way to “name the things to which we will attend and frame the context to which we will attend to them.” If we hold reporting as a process to problem set instead of problem solve, we have a better chance of engaging in a learning process for ourselves.
Future Focus is designed to support what Schön calls reflection-in-action, enabling “practitioners (who) frame problems, devise and experiment with solutions, and reframe as the situations talk back.” Artists and arts organizations are experts in observing and listening for what is emerging, and pausing to reflect and consider new ways to frame problems and experiment forward.
So how can we shift this expertise to reporting, to let go of old stories about what and who it is for? My appeal is simple: be selfish. Centre the act of reporting on your organization’s own learning needs. Make time (I know, time is in short supply) to problem set, reframe and find new ways forward.
Need a thinking partner? Let’s connect!
___
Schön, D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. Basic Books.
Learn more about the Future Focus Program and how to apply here. To book a time with Jennifer, you can access her calendar here.
