Mapping the Ecosystem

For more than 50 years I've attempted to connect leaders and supporters of volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs in an on-going effort to help constantly-improving programs reach K-12 youth in more high poverty areas of Chicago and other cities.  I did this from my role as leader of a single program from 1974 to 1992, then through the Tutor/Mentor Connection, which I still lead today, through the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC.

My secret. Build a list. Use it to invite people to gather. Use it to share information about individual programs and why they are needed.  

We launched our first formal survey to learn about tutor/mentor programs in Chicago in January 1994. 120 organizations responded. We used that list to organize the first Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference in May 1994.  We held additional conferences every six months until May 2015.

I've been trying to map participation, showing "who's attending" and "who's missing" since the late 2000s.  Visit this page and you can find many examples. 

Visit this page and see work done by IVMOOC students at Indiana University to show 1994-2015 Tutor/Mentor Conference participation, using Kumu and other visualization tools. Below is just one view created using the visualization created by one Fall 2025 IVMOOC team.  See it in this article. 

While I've attempted to explain why mapping participation is an important part of network-building, I did not have these resources pre-2015 when I was still hosting conferences, or pre-2011 when I had funding and a small staff to help me do this work.  

Plus, the tools available to map and analyze participation in networks have dramatically improved in the past few years.  Thus, I've been pointing to work done by others to emphasize what I've been trying to do.

Below is a screen shot I from an article I found today on LinkedIn.  This shows the Black Home Initiative Network, which is working to increase Black homeownership in the Washington/Oregon states.  Read their description of why this is important and then open the map and look around. 

Read more articles showing use of Kumu.io. click here

View my page on "Mapping Network Growth" and follow the links. 

On this page of the Tutor/Mentor Library I point to many intermediaries working in the youth-service field. I've been connected to some of these, such as America's Promise and MENTOR since the late 1990s.  Yet, I've not found examples of any of these organizations mapping their networks, like you see done in the examples that Kumu.io shares. 

Maybe it's being done. If you have examples, please share the links and point to blog articles that show how they are building an understanding of their ecosystems and how this is helping them to more to help kids.

I no longer have the resources or energy (I will be 80 in December and had a heart attack in August 2026) to do the work I'm describing, yet for comprehensive, on-going, youth tutor, mentor and learning programs to reach K-12 youth in more places, that ecosystem needs to be built, and operating in Chicago and every other urban and rural area of the USA (and the world).

The articles I share can hopefully spur the innovation of many others.  

Please connect with me on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, BlueSky, Twitter and/or Mastodon. (see links here).

And, if you value what I'm sharing, visit this page and make a contribution to help me pay the bills.