#GivingTuesday - Ideas

It's the annual GivingTuesday (#ILGive) in Illinois and hundreds of non-profit organizations are using email, web sites, social media and a variety of other tactics to try to attract donors.

Good luck to all.

Below are a few thoughts for this day.

First, youth tutor and mentor programs are competing with a wide range of other important causes for limited donor attention and dollars.  My efforts for the past 25 years have been to create a greater daily frequency of stories talking about where and why tutor/mentor programs are most needed, ways to help them (time, talent and dollars), and ways to find out what programs are operating in different parts of the Chicago region.

I've been plotting locations of Chicago youth tutor and/or mentor programs on maps since 1993. In 2004 we were able to create this on-line search page, to help you find programs, based on what type of program (pure mentor, pure tutor, combination tutor/mentor), age group served (elementary, middle,  high school) and location.   Then in 2008 we created this interactive map that provided the same search feature but showed the entire Chicago region.

Those have not been updated since 2011 due to lack of funds, so I created the map shown above in 2016, to provide information about existing youth serving programs. Visit this page to see the map and my list of programs.

I've also created this concept map, to help people find youth serving organizations, based on the lists I maintain, and based on lists others are building.

If I had the talent, time and money, I'd create a #GivingTuesday map, showing which of the tutor/mentor programs in Chicago were running campaigns today via #ILGive or other platforms.

This map from 1990s

In addition, I'd be reaching out to schools, non-school organizations, faith groups and others, to teach them to create story maps, that follow negative news with maps showing where the news event occurred, and stories of why things like this keep happening, and ways tutor/mentor programs might help make a difference. Such stories would then point to existing programs in that area, and to assets, like businesses, colleges, hospitals and others who could help programs grow. Here's one example.

Instead of only myself, or a few others trying to increase attention and resources for all  programs in this sector, there could be hundreds of people doing this daily, which I think would help make events like #GivingTuesday much more effective for those who are trying to raise money today. 

Make this a year-long effort

While I use my blog as a teaching tool. I really don't have the money to keep the program locator on-line as a model for what others might build, or help me build.  Nor do I have advertising dollars and/or professional talent to help me reach more people with my articles.

Thus, as you decide who to support today, or tomorrow, or next month, click on this page and look for ways to help me do this work. 

One of the major challenges I'm facing is that since 2011, I've not operated as a 501-c-3 non-profit. I created Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC to keep the Tutor/Mentor Connection, which I started as part of a non profit in 1993, alive for Chicago and as a model for other cities.  I keep seeking partners, benefactors and/or volunteers to create a new non profit, but have not found any willing to take on the work done over the past 25 years, but have not found the few needed. 

So, I'm a social entrepreneur, with a wealth of ideas, seeking support to keep sharing these with the world.