Resources
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Learn more about our clients, projects, and insights. Discover tools, case studies, news, and information.
When Fear Hijacks Creativity… Blow a Whistle!
When fear has unfettered access to our community, the first thing to go is our creative capacity. The ability to imagine and take action toward a just and equitable future is displaced by an obsession to get back to normal, to shelter and protect what we have, or get...
The Four Levers of New Capability
Building a new capability doesn’t mean learning a new skill. It means changing how we see, organize, and show up for the work. At Creation In Common, we’ve learned that four levers must be engaged to create lasting, liberating change. Whether we’re working with a...
The Freedom to Be and to Do
In the social sector, we often talk about capacity—do we have enough staff, funding, or time to deliver on our goals? But there’s a deeper question worth asking: Do we have the capability that this moment requires? At Creation In Common, we embrace...
Disruption Is Not the End—It’s the Invitation
There’s a moment we’ve seen over and over again: An organization’s budget collapses. A key partner disappears. A political shift makes everything suddenly fragile. You look around the table—your team is dazed, scrambling, or just flat-out tired. You know something has...
Creative Tension: The Only Way Forward
We define creative tension as the space between our greatest opportunity and our greatest challenge. It’s not just a stretch or a gap—it’s the living edge of change. The zone where possibility hasn’t yet hardened into certainty, and where the work of transformation is...
From Power to Strength: The Leadership Pivot That Changes Everything
Power is seductive. It feels like control, like certainty. And in nonprofit leadership, it’s easy to believe that if only we had more of it—more money, more connections, more influence—we could finally do the work we were meant to do. But here's the paradox: When...
Kindergarten Voices
In 2025, the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) engaged Creation in Common to lead a groundbreaking effort to learn directly from the voices and experiences of the state’s youngest K-12 learners—kindergarteners. Centering child engagement across Minnesota, this...
Four Practices That Move Us Toward Abundance
Shared creativity can move us from scarcity to abundance. Here’s how: 1. Seeing Together: Oxygen Over Urgency When organizations face pressure, the reflex is to act quickly. But fast decisions made in narrow frames often reinforce the very problems we’re trying to...
Project Showcase: The Power of Values in a Time of Reckoning
In the summer of 2020, as the world reeled from the pandemic and the shockwaves of George Floyd’s murder spread across the globe, a courageous group of artists, board members, and staff at the Penland School of Craft came together with one goal: to imagine the future...
Scarcity is Real—But So is Abundance
If you’ve ever stared at a spreadsheet wondering how your organization was going to stay afloat, you’re not alone. Many of us have faced the spiral of doubt: What can we cut? Who can we ask for help? Will this be the moment that breaks us? Scarcity is real. But it’s...
The Future Will Not Wait For One Leader to Save It!
History may credit Winston Churchill alone with leading Britain to victory, but real change depends on many leaders -- all showing up with courage, clarity, and care in the case of crisis. In a sense, there was never just one Churchill. Today, we need 10,000...
Connection Is the Strategy
There are very few nonprofits that can go it alone. Most of the field must rely on one another. Because of this, the most critical organizational currency is relationships: how we relate to our people, partners, and most importantly, how we connect with those we...