🪩 August Monthly Mailer from Facilitator Cards
Hey Facilitators,
Welcome to August!
It’s always a little satisfying when the month starts on a Monday, isn’t it? Happy Monday!
🌎 We Became A B Corp!
Last month we officially got our B Corp certification. If you don’t know much about B Corps they are, ”businesses that meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose.” It’s a rigorous application process and it ensures a level of public and social accountability to our business practices, which we are excited about!
You can check out our score (105 baby!) and public B Corp profile here. We’ll be sharing more in the future about why we decided to pursue this, what the process was like as a small (tiny) business, and how we used the process to shape our everyday business decisions.
Fun fact! We’re the 52nd B Corp in the great little state, Vermont! Even more fun, VT has the most B Corps per capita in the country (and the most delicious B Corp - hat tip to Ben & Jerry)!
📆 Events Coming Up This Month!
🦈 Become a Card Shark - Tuesday, August 9 @ 12-1pm ET
Card Sharks is the session designed to help you get the most out of your deck of Facilitator Cards. In this 60-minute session, you will:
- Learn new cards and combinations you can easily implement in your next workshop or meeting
- Figure out how to find the cards you need (and not get overwhelmed by the rest!)
- Work through real-life scenarios and experience how to plan with your Facilitator Cards
It’s totally free, you’ll meet other wonderful facilitators in our community, and if you’ve got your deck of Facilitator Cards then you can RSVP right now!
And if you don’t have a deck yet, if you order them today they may still arrive in time for this month’s Card Sharks! Use code CARDSHARK for 10% off your deck.
🤸 Facilitator Cards Playground - Wednesday August 10 @ 3pm ET
The Playground is BACK! Join us Wednesday August 10th and get some new ideas and processes for your toolbox with our incredible facilitator community.
At The Playground, we go over two different facilitation processes. You get to experience them as participants, then we debrief & discuss with the entire group how and why it works!
Never been and want to see what it’s all about? Check out April’s recording below.
This session is totally free, you don’t need Facilitator Cards to attend, and it’s limited to 25 people, so snag your spot now!
🔮 Facilitating For The Future - Tuesday August 30 @ 2pm ET
Are you a social justice facilitator? BOY HOWDY do we have the event for you! We’re going to be running a one-hour event called Facilitating for the Future which is going to focus on two questions. What is Social Justice Education uniquely good at? And how do we as facilitators best show up to get the most out of that unique opportunity?
This session is free for our community and you can RSVP here (and we encourage you to share this event with anyone doing Social Justice Education who you think would be interested!)
If you’re like, “WOW this is amazing! I wish there was more than just a one-hour event to talk about this.” You’re in luck! We’re planning a cohort to meet once a week for 5 weeks starting in Oct and we’ve got an interest form for that cohort right here!
🔴 From the YouTube!
🧊 Our favorite (virtual) icebreaker
Want to see how peek-a-boo works on Zoom? Check out this quick video and watch it at work!
🛠 Facilitator Cards: the best facilitation tool (we’ve) ever made
Want to know how we packed our facilitation philosophies into every single card in the Facilitator Cards deck? We made a video going over how Facilitator Cards were intentionally designed to represent the core aspects of facilitation, work congruously with each other, and communicate your agenda back to you at a glance.
(Can’t get enough and want even more information? Check out our hour-long event recording What Are Facilitator Cards?)
🙅 What NOT To Do When Lowering Risk in Meetings & Workshops ****
Having hard/tricky/socially-loaded conversations during a session is always intimidating, but what if the things we’re doing to try and mitigate some of that risk are actually harming our participants?
👍 What TO DO When Lowering Risk in Meetings & Workshops
Want alternatives to listing out group norms before a hard conversation? We’ve got seven novel options to try instead!
📸 From the Insta!
Our summer social media break is still going strong, but with in-person sessions ramping back up we thought we’d share some pro tips to keep in mind when it comes to getting offline and back out into the physical world!
💥 Pro Tip: Important things to remember when facilitating in unusual spaces
📚 Pro Tip: How to get a read on a large group
✅ Pro Tip: Create an in-person checklist before the event
Psst—want a copy of our in-person checklist to personalize? Click here for your own Google Doc!
🃏Card Of The Month: 🔥🪑
Want to learn all about our Card Of The Month, Hot Seat? Check out our detailed explainer including when to use it, why we love it, and what it’s best for here!
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Alrighty then, that is going to do it for August. Thank you for being part of our community, and until next time, happy facilitating!
Meg & the Facilitator Cards Team