National Conference focuses on Volunteering and Service

For the next three days, volunteer and business leaders from around the nation will gather in San Francisco for this year's National Conference on Volunteering and Service.

This year's conference is using blogs and other social media to connect with people who cannot be at the conference. I'll be connecting from here and on http://www.twitter.com/tutormentorteam.

As leaders talk about volunteering, I'll focus on the on-going operating support volunteer-based organizations require to achieve the goals of individuals and leaders from around the country.

I'll point you to our Cabrini Connections and Tutor/Mentor Connection web sites, our maps, and other blogs that T/MC staff, and innovation leaders, are writing. Hopefully this expands your own library and network of ideas, and between now and the 2011 conference, you'll use these to help one or more tutor/mentor programs get the resources and ideas they need to stay connected to kids and keep volunteers involved.

Here's one chart I hope you'll think about. It shows the goal of helping kids through school and into careers. On one end is business and industry, who need to be strategically involved in using their resources to support programs and provide activities that help more kids through school and into jobs.

Here's another chart, which illustrates that we need leadership from every industry, not just one or two, so that dollars, and volunteers are flowing into every tutor/mentor program in a big city like Chicago, from every industry and social/civic sector.



Chris Warren wrote some cause marketing blog articles last week that illustrate roles business can take. I hope some of those attending the National Conference will read these, and reach out to us with cause marketing strategies that help populate maps of Chicago with constantly improving, volunteer-based tutoring and/or mentoring programs.

These articles and maps are intended to motivate, inspire, and lead people to actions that result in dollars flowing to non profits like Cabrini Connections. Read our fund raising blog and we'll add you and your company to the list if you send a donation or become a sponsor.