Map the network to enhance connections

The 2025 National Mentoring Summit will be held in Washington, DC this week.  I won't be there but have attended and written about these over the past 20 years. Browse some of my articles at this link. 

I wish the organizers would create a participation map, similar to the one created by the Making Learning Connected cMOOC, which was first held in 2013 and repeated for several years. Participants are still connected in interesting ways. 

I had participated in an Education, Technology & Learning ETMOOC a few month earlier and was impressed by their participation map. I shared that in the CLMOOC conversation and they created their own. You can see the 2013 map below. Visit this page and see maps from 2013 to 2017. 

2013 CLMOOC participation map

cMOOCs are idea sharing events. If you can participate long enough you learn new ideas that might be applied to your own work.  You can also build friendships with people living in different states and countries, as I have over the past 12 years.   The Mentoring Summits have a similar purpose, but when there are 1000 people in the room, you really only connect with those you rub elbows with, if then. 

While the Summit has some features that encourage registered participant interactions, this is not open to the public and I'm not sure how much it continues after the summit.  I certainly have never found a #MentorSummit discussion group on any of my social media channels that operated in a similar way the connected learning cMOOCs have.

This is more important in 2025 than ever before. Just this past week the President issued an executive order ending Federal grant funding for thousands of organizations.  Youth serving programs, including mentoring and tutoring, will be hit hard.  

I started leading a volunteer-based tutor/mentor program in 1975 (see history) while I held a full time job with the Montgomery Ward company. While our program grew to include over 300 pairs of youth and volunteers by 1990, funding was not an issue because all of the leaders were volunteers.

However, in 1990 when I converted this program to a 501-c-3 non profit and needed to raise money to pay salaries for myself and others to stay involved, the funding of non profits began to become a real issue. Over the years as my personal frustration grew, I've built a library of articles that show the challenges small non profits face in finding consistent operating funds, and I’ve built a library of articles that show how others think on this topic.

I no longer lead a direct-service non-profit. Finding consistent funding has always been a challenge.

I can only imagine the anxiety and fear taking place among staff, leaders and clients as they try to navigate the Federal funding cuts announced this week by Executive order.

I created the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 and the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC in 2011 to influence how youth serving programs are funded.  I've posted many articles tagged 'philanthropy' on this blog that show my thinking. I hope you'll take time to look at them.

The goal is to reverse the process, at least a little. Teach donors to seek programs to fund, based on who they serve and what they do, and what the donor can learn about the need for that type of service provider.  By building lists of Chicago volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs and a library of research articles, and sharing that on my website, I enable this process. 

We created the Tutor/Mentor Connection while we were launching a new direct service program to help teens in the Cabrini Green area of Chicago move from 7th grade through high school.  The graphic below shows an on-going commitment to help EVERY tutor/mentor program in Chicago as a strategy to help our OWN program.  

I've constantly encourage other programs in Chicago to do the same, and other cities to duplicate the Tutor/Mentor Connection strategy.  

I illustrate my thinking visually so let me show some maps that I think many of you will find interesting, and useful.

This is a map showing nearly 400 foundation (corporate and private) in the Chicago region and Eastern part of the United States who I put on my mailing list between 1993 and 2005.

This map shows a close up of the Chicago region so you can get a better sense of how many foundations I was reaching out to.

My organization never had more than 3 or 4 people on staff, and never had a full time professional development officer. I was CEO, chief innovator, chief marketing officer, newsletter writer, grant writer, janitor. Yet every year I was challenged to write letters of introduction, letters of inquiry, grant requests, grant reports, each with different requirements and different questions.

This map shows the Chicago LOOP area.  Imagine how much time went into reach out to these organizations every year. Or how much frustration resulted from countless rejection letters. 

Every year I sent copies of my printed newsletters to these people, showing why tutor/mentor programs were needed and what I was doing as a direct service provider, and as leader of the intermediary Tutor/Mentor Connection.  By 1998 I was using web sites to show the work I was doing and what I was trying to do.

The green icons on the map are foundations that funded my organization at least one time. Few funded me more than 2-3 years in a row. Some, like Montgomery Ward, funded me for seven consecutive years, then went out of business, and thus were not able to continue their support.

None of the grants was larger than $50,000 and most were in the $1,000 to $10,000 per year range. Some were for general operating expenses, which I could use flexibly to build the organization, while many focused specifically on activities of the Cabrini Connections direct service program or the Tutor/Mentor Connection.

In total I raised more than $6 million between 1993 and 2011, with a peak of $500,000 in 2000. This money split with 40% funding the Cabrini Connections direct service program, 40% the Tutor/Mentor Connection, and 20% funding operating and fundraising expenses. With no multi-year commitments, each year since about 1998 I started from zero in raising $300 to $400,000 from a wide range of donors.

None of this was from Federal grants.  A small percent came from a State of Illinois Department of Human Services grant provided from around 2000 to 2011.  

The graphic below shows the intermediary role I've piloted over the past 30 years. It aims to connect "those who can help, which includes donors" to information showing where help is needed, which should include comprehensive lists of youth serving programs in every city and state.

Events like the National Mentoring Summit, and their websites, are part of a number of organizations who take on the role visualized by the blue box in this graphic.  They collect and share information and bring people together to learn from each other. They advocate for public funding of youth serving programs.  Many have directories on their websites that people can use to find places to get involved.

So far, I've not found any that are trying to connect private sector funders with programs in their directories. The "Donate" button on their website usually points to themselves.

What's the point of this article?

With more than 200 youth serving organizations in Chicago offering various forms of tutoring, mentoring and non-school support, we can have 200 development officers and/or Executive Directors reaching through resource lists to find foundations who will give them funds each year, which is a tremendous redundancy.

Or we can build strategies that educate and motivate donors and business partners to reach out and build proactive support systems for tutor/mentor programs in neighborhoods that need such programs.

Imagine if every youth program shared their funding and prospect lists with maps like this.  What if each were educating donors to fund multiple programs, not just their own?  That's what I was doing.   

As I look at what the National Mentoring Partnership offers I wish they hosted their own resource map showing foundations who provide grants to mentor-based programs across the USA, sorted by city and state and by type of mentoring programs they fund. Workshops at the annual Summit, and throughout the year could show youth programs how to use this data in on-going marketing campaigns.

That would make it easier for youth program leaders to find donors.  And, for donors to find programs!

Hopefully this will be discussed in face-to-face events, like the January Mentoring Summit and in statewide gatherings.  And in on-line events like the cMOOCs that I've described.

We can do both. We can do better.

If you're looking for a current map of foundations visit the Foundation Maps by Candid website. Unfortunately,  you'll need to pay a fee to access the data, or be a member of a local network that subscribes.  

Building these on-line communities, encouraging people to connect and share ideas, sharing lists of programs and resource providers, are just some of the responses that should be developed to counter a loss of Federal funding, and a potential decline of critically needed services.  

If you know of such platforms, reach out to connect and share this information with me on these social media pages. 

I turned 78 last December so don't know how many years I have left to write articles like this.  Articles in the About T/MI, History, and A New T/MC sections that are intended to help others understand what I've been trying to do, and to learn how they might duplicate this work in different places, or rebuild it in the Chicago region.

While I'm still here, you can help me keep sharing these ideas by visiting my "Fund T/MI" page and sending a small contribution.