Future Focus Stories

by Jennifer DeDominicis

If you’ve met with me recently, you may have heard me describe Future Focus Funding work as opaque. I don’t know if that’s the best or most helpful description, but I’m hoping to convey that the work of transformation isn't always visible in the way our brains prefer. We crave certainty. It is hard-wired.   

A good example of how we have built this into our work comes from our colleagues in marketing for live performances. If you’ve attended a show at any number of venues, you may have noticed details for audiences about what to expect, not only about the production itself, but also advance information about where to park, how much time to give yourself, what’s ok to wear, and more, to mitigate the unknown and invite people into what may be an uncertain experience more comfortably.  

Future Focus Funding is different in that it aims towards clarity over certainty. It presumes that you don’t have an answer at the ready. It isn’t asking for organizations to reverse-engineer a question from a presumptive outcome. It doesn’t recognize that giving yourself 45 minutes to park and get to your seat is the best or most successful approach. Instead, it invites you to frame your challenge in a way that allows you to see something different.  

This means you will need some time to develop a working hypothesis about how you might approach your challenge and ideally, be willing to spend time inside the unknown, get curious on purpose, and shift your gaze towards new possibilities.  

Designer Saul Bass once said that ideas come “from looking at one thing, and seeing another.” For organizations that have accessed Future Focus Funding, this may ring true.

 Jenny Austin from Sleeping Giants in Cochrane, Alberta, shared how their recent Investigation Phase project enabled them “to take a step back and see the potential for our organization without the constraints of what we have done in the past. Just by switching my perspective to viewing how the organization could work with partnerships, I was able to see a clearer path forward and realize that it is okay to let go of the parts of the organization that have not been working." 

What emerges inside that unknown isn’t always comfortable. “The conversations, the moments of friction, the questions that didn't have easy answers...it was all generative. We're a stronger, more self-aware organization for having done it, even where the work has more or less just begun,” shared Chandra Kastern of the Red Deer Museum. 

For Canmore Arts Place, permitting yourself to be in the unknown can open other possibilities. Becky Lipton Fournier shared that “our thinking about the project has evolved, and ultimately our objectives…have deepened significantly. It has given us the time and space to explore that complexity, understand who we are as an organization and how that influences the processes that are critical for success, and ultimately, develop the next phase of the project.”

 Just a few weeks ago, Artemis II swung towards the far side of the moon in hopes of seeing things we’ve never seen before. It’s not lost on me that at their maximum distance, the greatest distance astronauts have ever ventured from Earth, they were in a communications blackout. As we look at those first images from this unprecedented vantage point, I invite you to ponder: what journey are you willing to take to see something differently? 

Questions about Future Focus Funding? Let’s connect! 

Jennifer DeDominicis of Distill Consulting is the Rozsa Foundation's Organizational Strategy Advisor and is available to discuss potential Future Focus Funding projects and applications with organizations in Treaty 7 Territory at no cost.

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