Building a Network of Purpose

I've written many articles showing how expanding your network can help increase the ideas you have, as well as the people who are helping you use those ideas in your work.

I've also written articles showing how we can connect with others through blog exchanges where we use our blogs to introduce other people we meet.

I started using Twitter last year after a workshop at the May 2009 Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference presented by Community Media Workshop. As a result, I connected with Valdis Krebs, and he did a workshop at the November conference, and donated his inFlow software so I could begin mapping the networks of the Tutor/Mentor Connection.

This week I met Lalia Helmer on Twitter. She pointed me to a new report that has some great information on the benefits to business that can come as a result of strategic philanthropy.

We talked about finding ways to connect and share more information like this. I suggested linking our blogs. So today, I encourage you to read this article, where Lalia shows how a baking company, Full Bloom Bakery, in Newark, CA, is helping first generation immigrants go to college.

If you know the CEO or owner of one or more Chicago area bakeries, please forward this article to them, and encourage them to become a sponsor of the Tutor/Mentor Connection, and use our maps to reach out to local programs in the neighborhoods where they do business. They can duplicate what Full Bloom Bakery is doing in Chicago and other cities.

This is the value of blog exchanges, Twitter and other networks of purpose. We can share ideas from one part of the world that can be used in other places, by people who do similar work.

Thanks Lalia. Please keep sharing ideas about what businesses are doing to help kids. Maybe we can generate this type of helping from many industries.