Interaction Institute for Social Change

06/15/2026

Ok so your 3-year strategic plan didn't survive contact with reality...but then again, neither did anyone else's.

And that's not a failure of planning, rather, it's a failure of the model. Remember that traditional strategic planning was built for stable, predictable conditions, and that's just not the world most organizations are operating in right now.

This is where strategic direction setting comes in. It's an approach where your North Star stays fixed, but the path remains flexible. At the center of it is a practice that organizations need to be doing more: scenario planning.

With scenario planning, you're not predicting the future, but you are preparing for multiple versions of it.

In her latest post, IISC Senior Associate Amy Casso breaks down what scenario planning actually looks like in practice, why it matters right now, and what it makes possible for organizations trying to stay grounded and adaptive at the same time.

A few questions worth sitting with from the piece:

- What do we know, what can we imagine, and what remains uncertain?

- What remains essential no matter the conditions?

- What happens if funding decreases significantly?

A more nimble planning process and the readiness to adapt might just be what you and your org need right now.

Read the full post here: https://interactioninstitute.org/planning-for-multiple-futures-staying-grounded-while-preparing-for-uncertainty/

05/28/2026

Friends, we're looking for an Interim President who believes in the power of collaboration, racial equity, and social change ✊

For 30 years, IISC has been at the forefront of collaborative transformation: helping organizations, networks, and movements build the capacity to create a more just and equitable world. Now, as we step into our next chapter, we're looking for someone to help us get there.

This is a rare opportunity to step into a role where your greatest strength won't be directing from above, but leading alongside a team deeply committed to our mission, shared power, and collective decision-making.

What you'll bring:

- 5+ years of experience as an Interim Leader, Executive Director, or nonprofit consultant

- Strong racial equity, diversity, and inclusion values and practices

- Roots in capacity building, social change, or organizational development

- A track record of building relationships and raising resources

What we offer:

- 12 - 18 month full-time engagement (fully remote)

- $131,700 - $151,600 salary

- 4-day workweek + full benefits (medical, dental, vision for you and your family)

- A team that leads with love - seriously!

❗ Application deadline: June 11, 2026

Learn more and apply at https://interactioninstitute.applytojob.com/apply/keBUuy8Mdn/Interim-President

Know someone who would thrive in this role? Tag them in the comments!

05/11/2026

The 2026 FSNE 21-Day Racial Equity Habit-Building Challenge officially wrapped yesterday! ✨

Over the past 21 days, participants reflected, learned, questioned, practiced, and built community together across sectors, geographies, and lived experiences. We had folks join from across the U.S., including participants from rural communities, major cities, universities, nonprofits, food system organizations, faith communities, and grassroots networks.

The reflection in this graphic captures part of what continues to make this Challenge so meaningful year after year: it's a space for deeper learning, collective practice, accountability, and connection across difference.

Deep gratitude to everyone who participated, contributed, facilitated, organized, and shared this space together! 🌱

For those who want to continue learning, we’ve gathered Challenge resources here: https://interactioninstitute.org/21-day-challenge-resources/

UVM Institute for Agroecology

05/07/2026

Friends, we’re excited to launch the new IISC Resource Hub! ✨🛠️

It's a growing collection of FREE practical tools for facilitation, collaboration, and strategic direction setting that you can use right away in your teams, organizations, networks, and communities.

These resources came directly out of conversations, trainings, and audience feedback over the past couple of years. Again and again, we heard a version of the same thing: people are navigating increasing complexity and need tools that are adaptable and immediately usable.

So we created resources designed to support real-world practice, including:

- Facilitation tips for common meeting challenges

- How to move from ideas to decisions (Open → Narrow → Close)

- Making decisions with the right voices and level of involvement

- Strategic direction setting tools and conversation guides

These are not meant to be rigid frameworks, nor are they perfect solutions. They’re meant to help people collaborate better, navigate uncertainty, make clearer decisions, and move work forward together.

We’ll continue adding new resources over time, so please let us know which ones you'd like to see next! 💡

Explore the new Resource Hub: https://interactioninstitute.org/resource-hub/

04/20/2026

“We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” - Martin Luther King, Jr.

Today marks the start of the FSNE 21-Day Racial Equity Habit-Building Challenge.

This week, we're exploring how to shift from “me” to “we”: what does it actually mean to see ourselves as part of something larger and to act like it?

Each day offers learning, questions to reflect on, and some things you can act on. Not overwhelming. Just enough to stay in relationship with the practice.

And if you’re seeing this and thinking, “I missed it”- well, you didn’t! There’s still time to join, and you can start whenever you’re ready and catch up at your own pace.

🔗 Register here: https://bit.ly/21day-2026

UVM Institute for Agroecology

04/14/2026

Love makes us more intelligent, more open, and better able to see each other clearly. So why isn’t it built into our systems?

In this recent blog, our own Curtis Ogden explores what it would look like to treat love as something our organizations actually need.

Drawing on the work of Richard Barrett, Humberto Maturana, and Barbara Fredrickson, he reminds us that love shapes how we think, relate, and navigate hard moments.

A few takeaways:

- Most systems weren’t built for today’s complexity

- Under pressure, the most important things often go unsaid

- Our structures either support care and honesty, or block them

So the question is:

What would it look like to design systems where people can stay human, even under pressure?

Where do you see that happening (or not)?

🔗 Read the full blog here: https://interactioninstitute.org/for-the-sake-of-justice-support-loves-flow/

04/13/2026

If you’ve been wondering what the FSNE 21-Day Racial Equity Habit-Building Challenge offers, this reflection from Rev. Dr. Sara Garrard says it better than we could:

"The Challenge has been transformative, both personally and in the communities in which I serve...Each day offers concrete practices that build habit and courage, moving us from awareness to accountability. It doesn't shy away from complexity, yet it invites participation at every level. It has deepened my capacity to lead with equity, transformed how I engage systemic issues in my work, and equipped me with tools to accompany others on this essential journey toward collective liberation."

You’ll deepen your understanding of racial equity. You’ll build the habits, language, and awareness to engage it in your everyday life. And you’ll join a community of 300+ people across 32 states, learning and growing together!

If you’ve been thinking about joining, there’s still time. Register to start the challenge on April 20: https://interactioninstitute.org/fsne-21-day-challenge/

04/09/2026

No surprise - the most clicked resource in our April newsletter was an articled called "How to Re-Resource Ourselves" by Ben Greene.

Many of us care deeply about social change work, and a lot of us are running low on what we need to actually follow through 🔋

The piece pushes us to think more broadly about what "resources" mean outside of time and money - like energy, safety, attention, community, and joy. When any of those are depleted, even those of us most committed can feel stuck because there's simply not enough left in the tank.

A few quotes from the article that stayed with us:
- If guilt and shame were going to work as motivation, wouldn't they have worked already? It's time to try something different.
- Our lives have started, we are living them, we are not waiting for a start line, and it is never too late (but always at least a little urgent) to decide to claim our own lives.
- You are not a worse or useless advocate because your cup cannot be as full as someone else's.

What would you need more of to keep showing up the way you want to?

🔗 Read the full article: https://www.goodqueernews.com/p/how-to-re-resource-ourselves

Empowering ourselves to heal, grow, and *actually* make the difference we want to see in the world.

04/02/2026

When we have uncomfortable conversations at work, our instinct is often to redirect and move on. But what if we didn't? That's often where something important is trying to surface.

Inspired by our magical facilitators, who often utilize "the pause" and lean into the tension, we're sharing a few ways this can look in practice:

- Ask yourself: What might be important about what's being said, even if it's hard to hear?

- Ask questions that keep the door open instead of closing it

- Name what’s true, even when it feels vulnerable

None of this is dramatic, but it does change the quality of how we work together.

What helps you stay present when a conversation gets uncomfortable? What tends to pull you out of it? 🤔

📬 Want more facilitation tips like this? Subscribe to our Love in Interaction newsletter for monthly tools, resources, and reflections: https://interactioninstitute.org/contact/

03/31/2026

We talk a lot about building a bigger "we." But what does that actually look like in a hard conversation, with someone you don't fully agree with?

A recent story from the Othering & Belonging Institute offers one answer. In Chicago, organizers knocked on thousands of door to create space for honest conversation, across tension, difference, and real scarcity. And what they found is something most of us already know but don't always practice - that when people feel genuinely heard, they begin connecting their own experiences to others'. They see some of their own story in the journeys of people they'd been told were their competition. They become less vulnerable to fear and more open to imagining solutions together.

That's the kind of practice the FSNE 21-Day Racial Equity Habit-Building Challenge is built around. Not big gestures or abstract commitments, but small, daily practices that reshape how we listen, relate, and show up with one another.

Building a bigger "we" doesn't happen in theory. It happens when we choose connection over retreat, again and again.

What does it mean to shift from “me” to “we” in your daily life?

Join the challenge now: https://interactioninstitute.org/fsne-21-day-challenge/

Read the full OBI story: https://belonging.berkeley.edu/impact-story-hard-conversations-can-help-us-bridge-toward-bigger-we

UVM Institute for Agroecology