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. 

Celebrate and support mentoring - National Mentoring Month

It's National Mentoring Month, when mentoring in all its different formats is celebrated across the world. I led two different volunteer based tutor/mentor programs in Chicago between 1975 and 2011 and that's what motivates me daily to try to raise visibility and draw operating resources to all of the youth serving programs operating in Chicago and other cities.

The graphic below shows a range of young people and volunteers who were involved in these programs. In the lower right corner is a photo of me with Leo Hall, who was in 4th grade when we were first introduced in 1973. We're still connected on Facebook and Instagram. 
 

Every January since the early 2000s I've written an article that highlights National Mentoring Month. I sent my January newsletter out this week and included links to Mentoring Month resources.  You can read the newsletter here.

Last January I wrote this article, showing the Mentoring Stamp released by the US Postal Service in 2001, and introduced at our spring Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference. 

It's one of many articles where I use graphics like the one below to focus on the research needed to segment our understanding of all the different groups of people being served by various types of organized and informal mentoring.

During 2024 I shared several articles with maps like the one below that show areas where persistent poverty is concentrated in the USA.  These are places where organized, volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs are most needed. 

As you celebrate mentoring this month, and hopefully throughout the year, I encourage you to use the graphic shown below as a reminder of your ability to draw people from your network to my library of programs and to the websites of individual Chicago area tutor and/or mentor programs. Use the information to build your understanding of the work being done and of ways you can use your own time, talent and dollars to help.

You can create your own versions of this graphic, showing your city instead of Chicago, and pointing to lists of youth programs in your city, if someone is collecting and sharing that information.  If no one is doing this, share my articles with people at your local college and university, and with wealthy alumni. Encourage them to fund a multi-year Tutor/Mentor Connection type research and action program that involves students, faculty, alumni and the local community.  View these articles to see what's possible.

Thank you for reading.  I hope you'll connect with me on BlueSky, LinkedIn, Instagram and Mastodon. See links on this page.

I also invite you to make a contribution to help me pay the bills in 2025 and continue sharing this information. Visit this page. 

National Mentoring Month - Infrastructure Focus

Below is a photo from 2001 when the US Post Office issued a mentoring stamp to help celebrate and draw attention to mentoring in America.  My organization (Tutor/Mentor Connection, 1993-present) introduced it during the Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference in Chicago, which I began hosting in May 1994 and continued hosting every six months until May 2015.

The conference was part of an on-going effort to help volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs reach K-12 kids in high poverty areas of Chicago and other places and help those kids through school and into jobs and careers, with the help of adults they met through these programs.

I began my volunteer involvement in 1973 when I joined the tutoring program at the Montgomery Ward Corporate Headquarters in Chicago. I was matched with a 4th grade boy named Leo and we met every Tuesday after my work day ended.  We're still connected over 50 years later!

During mentoring month much of the focus will be on the "act" of mentoring, which could be workplace mentoring and could be mentoring of youth with disabilities.  

I want that to expand to focus on the infrastructure of mentoring.  I demonstrate this below.

I created the graphic below several years ago to visualize the many different reasons mentoring and/or tutoring are needed and the different types of organized programs needed to meet each category.

Below is an another graphic, showing this information in a different way.

I've posted several articles in the past few years (here, here and here) talking about building a "segmented understanding" of what types of mentoring and tutoring are needed based on "who" is being mentored.  During National Mentoring Month I urge you to read some of these.  

While the above graphics visualize the different needs of youth in America, they don't show where these kids live and/or where organized tutor/mentor programs are most needed.  I've been trying to use GIS maps since 1994 to do this.  Below is a concept map that shows my history of using maps.

Between 1993 and 2010 the Tutor/Mentor Connection was able to collect and maintain information about organized volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in Chicago, which could be sorted by type of program (pure mentoring, tutor/mentor, pure tutoring), age group served (elementary, middle school, high school), time of day (school day, after school, evening/weekend), and location.

While we shared this information in a printed directory from 1994 to 2003 that rarely reached more than 1000 organizations (non profits, foundations, media, political, universities, etc.)  In 2004 a program locator was created that made this information available to the world. In 2008 a map-based program locator (shown above) was created that had the same search features as the 2004 program locator, but reversed the process, starting with a map of the Chicago region, then enabling a process of searching for programs and program supporters in specific zip codes, community areas or neighborhoods.

Visit this page to learn about our efforts to build the program locator and to find ideas for building your own version. 

Unfortunately, I've not been able to raise money or find partners since 2011 to systematically collect and segment information about Chicago programs or maintain the program locator directories. They are now only available as archives.  

That brings me back to National Mentoring Month.  

While most efforts will focus on the act of mentoring I hope leaders will step forward to build Tutor/Mentor Connection-type learning programs at one, or more universities in  Chicago and other urban areas, where students will duplicate the work my organization did from 1994 to 2010 and what I've tried to continue since then, through the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC.

I urge leaders to build a segmented understanding that not only shows what types of programs are needed and where they are most needed, but shows what programs already operate in these areas and are constantly searching for volunteers and donors.  Here's another page that shows uses of geographic information systems and data. 

Use this blog, the MappingforJustice blog and the http://www.tutormentorexchange.net website as a text book to build your understanding of what a Tutor/Mentor Connection strategy might be and how you might build it as part of a degree program on a college campus. 

Share what you are learning through your own blog articles and on social media so others can learn from you, just as I've been sharing so you can learn from me.  

Thanks for reading.  I hope you'll share this article with your network and connect with me on social media platforms (find links here). 

Finally, I want to give a special thank you to those who sent contributions in 2023 and in previous years to help me continue to do this work.  Please continue in 2024 and help me find a benefactor who will bring this strategy into a university. 

Visit this page to make a 2024 contribution. 

Mentoring Summit - in Tweets

 The annual National Mentoring Summit was held this past week, in a virtual format due to Covid19.  I've attended the summit in past years and I really like this format, because of the low cost (no travel or hotel expense) and the ability to get up close with speakers.  The link above points to the Summit website, but since  there was a registration fee, I don't think others can view the presentations, at least not yet.

However, the Instagram page for the Summit does have some of the videos.

As I watched Summit presentations I shared some via Twitter.  Below are just a few Tweets that I posted. Visit this link and scroll through all of the posts for #mentoringsummit. 

The opening session provided many reasons organized youth tutor/mentor programs should be supported. 

I attended past two or three past #mentoringsummit in DC but as one in a crowd of a thousand I was never as close to speakers and others as I am today in this virtual summit. One of the positive outcomes of #covid19 pic.twitter.com/7HwnNSHBXu

— Daniel Bassill (@tutormentorteam) January 28, 2021

I enjoyed the workshop of the Million Women Mentors.

Now listening to workshop by Million Women Mentors, focused on getting women and girls involved in #STEM careers. Getting volunteers from STEM fields connected to youth in organized programs is needed strategy. #mentoringsummit pic.twitter.com/49yGPfymiz

— Daniel Bassill (@tutormentorteam) January 28, 2021

In this workshop Jay Flores shared ways he is engaging youth in STEM learning. His videos could be used by anyone. 

@jayflores2032 shares ideas for inspiring kids to #STEM learning with videos at https://t.co/3X7iR7nVne If you're a volunteer, or staff, in any youth #tutor #mentor program, or an educator in #clmooc, share the videos to give others these ideas. #mentoringsummit pic.twitter.com/nNwN3PYYaY

— Daniel Bassill (@tutormentorteam) January 28, 2021

I shared some of my own ideas.  I did not see any discussions talking about availability of mentor-rich programs in all high poverty areas, nor platforms where the types of programs are separated into specific categories as I've tried to do since 1994. 

Who are all of the volunteer-based #tutor #mentor programs in your city or state? What age group do they serve? What type of program? Where are they located? Are you using #maps? Are people using this to help existing programs & form new programs? Share. #mentoringsummit pic.twitter.com/vAyeP7k6Md

— Daniel Bassill (@tutormentorteam) January 28, 2021

Then, the four speakers in this panel shared thoughts that could be part of any tutor/mentor program orientation and on-going training of volunteers. Thank you @AricHamilton @aniyaspeaks @_GabiBello_ and ⁦@ClintSmithIII  

Mentoring program leaders should save this video and present it to new mentor & tutor volunteers every year. Make it part of your training curriculum. #mentoringsummit https://t.co/jeYCkGEt7x

— Daniel Bassill (@tutormentorteam) January 29, 2021

Then, two youth leaders from HeartsSmiles in Baltimore demonstrated the potential of youth as spokes persons and leaders of any program. 

Love hearing youth talk about Winning Wednesday and Thriving Thursday at @heartsmilesmd #MentoringSummit
Visit their website: https://t.co/7MREvDHwyE pic.twitter.com/9A4c5KfTmz

— Daniel Bassill (@tutormentorteam) January 29, 2021

This last Tweet shows two professional basketball players talking of the importance of mentors.

The foundations athletes lead can be the #gameplan & #playbook that others use to build and support mentor-rich programs supporting youth throughout a community. Is anyone aggregating links to their websites? #mentorsummit pic.twitter.com/yygjmbj9gW

— Daniel Bassill (@tutormentorteam) January 28, 2021

There was much more. On Twitter I responded to a question raised by the America's Promise Alliance.

Build libraries of existing youth programs w/in city, w maps showing where they operate. Donors learn to shop directory, pick zip code, view websites of programs in that area, then decide who to support & how much. Then send check. Make website the proposal. #BuildBackBetter pic.twitter.com/hNQkL2fHd8

— Daniel Bassill (@tutormentorteam) January 29, 2021

This is my final Tweet

Pointing people to websites and encouraging them to learn about issues & challenges & how some people are already solving these problems is on-going role we all can take. https://t.co/JE9Z5170OR pic.twitter.com/dz064yINWZ

— Daniel Bassill (@tutormentorteam) January 28, 2021

There's much more. Browse through the Twitter thread yourself, or visit the Instagram page. When there is a release of all of the Summit workshop videos I'll update this blog.

I would love to find blog articles by other people who attended the Summit and are talking about "what we need to do"  

I'll close with this question:  "How can we do this better?"  How do we take what was shared in the Mentor Summit and use it to help existing youth tutor, mentor and learning programs constantly increase their impact and how do we help new programs form where more are needed?  How do we influence donors to make more flexible, long-term funding commitments, reaching every program, and every high poverty zip code. 

I don't have the answers but if the conversation is not taking place, we'll never get to where we need to be. 

Thank you for reading.  Good luck as we move further into 2021.  

Focus on Youth Tutor Mentor Programs in High Poverty Areas

It's the annual January National Mentoring Month, where thousands of organizations are drawing attention to mentoring, of youth, and of adults.  If you do a Google search for National Mentoring Month, you'll find the images shown below. Mostly logos, with a mix of photos showing a mentor and mentee.   

Do web search for National Mentoring Month, then look at images

Now use "tutor/mentor"  and repeat the search. Look at the images and you'll see what's in this graphic.

We search for "tutor/mentor National Mentoring Month"

On this image I've circled graphics from posts I've made over the past 10-15 years, which focus on marketing and resource building strategies needed to develop well-organized, non-school, mentor-rich programs that reach kids in all high poverty areas of Chicago and other cities.

In both sets of graphics, you can click into a web site to see how it is used. Maybe you'll find maps and graphics like mine on the sites of many of the mentoring programs shown, but usually that's not the case.

I think the Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC), which I created in 1993 and now lead via the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC, is fairly unique in how it hosts and information base and shares ideas focused on building the programs needed to make on-going and long-term connections with youth possible in more places.

One of the graphics you'll see is this one, that shows the Logic Model, driving why the Tutor/Mentor Connection was created.

From the left -

a) youth in high poverty areas benefit from support of mentors and extra, non-family adults

b) because of the size of big cities like Chicago, organized programs are needed to facilitate weekly involvement of volunteer tutors and mentors with inner city youth

c) using maps of Chicago and other cities, with demographic overlays showing indicators of need, you can see that there are many areas, and thousands of youth, who would benefit from well-organized programs.

Thus, leaders are needed to help such programs start and grow in all of these places.

Take some time to view this presentation. If you agree with the logic, support the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC, and form a team to duplicate these ideas and strategies in your own city.

Expanding Network Of Adults... by on Scribd

I've been creating visual presentations like this since the late 1990s.  On this page you can find a complete list of the presentations I've created, along with links to places where you can view them.

I wrote a post last week under the "What the heck am I doing?" title, which contained a few of my graphics. To really understand what I've been trying to do,  you need to spend time looking through my complete library of presentations and past blog articles.

Here's another way to get involved.

On this page you can find visualizations created by interns between 2006 and 2015 to communicate ideas in my blog articles, web sites and these PDF presentations.

Anyone can duplicate this!

Anyone can use my presentations for personal learning, or to stimulate a group discussion.

Use these ideas.

As you go through January, and the next 12 months, I encourage you to use these ideas and resources to help build and sustain on-going, mentor-rich programs in all high poverty areas of your community. 

My hope is that some of  you will reach out to help me update and maintain this resource, and pay the bills. Click here if you'd like to do that.

I'm on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIN if you'd like to connect and start a conversation. I look forward to helping you dig through this extensive library.

National Mentoring Month - Time for Reflection

During the month of January local and national organizations will celebrate mentoring in media and events held throughout the country.  Visit the National Mentoring Month web site to learn about national events. Visit the Illinois Mentoring Partnership web site to learn about events taking place in the Chicago area.

While all of the attention is focused on mentoring, I think it's a good time to dig deeper, to  understand the different types of mentoring strategies that exists, and the different youth and adults who are the intended beneficiaries of mentoring. Furthermore, let's once again look at roles volunteers can take beyond being a mentor, or without being a mentor.

Let's look at this graphic first:

All youth and adults would benefit from mentors helping them journey through life. However, much research shows that youth living in high poverty, segregated, and/or isolated, areas need more help to move from first grade toward their adult lives.  Here's a concept map that illustrates this differently. People living in more affluent areas have more resources to help them overcome challenges.  This page on the YEARUP web site illustrates this "opportunity divide" effectively.

Through the Tutor/Mentor Connection, started in 1993, and through the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC, started in 2011, I focus on youth living in high poverty areas of big cities like Chicago, where a wide range of mentoring, tutoring and learning supports are needed, in the lives of thousands of young people.   Ideally, such programs should reach youth early and stay connected for many years, if the end result is a life out of poverty with a network of people to help achieve that goal.

The above graphic illustrates this long term commitment.  It shows kids I connected with when they were in middle school, who I'm still connected with nearly 20 years later. Several have college degrees, including advanced degrees. These are just a few of the teens who were part of the tutor/mentor programs I led between 1975 and 2011.

While some children might join a tutor/mentor program when in elementary school others might not have access to this type of support until much older. Many mentoring formats focus on youth age  16-24 who have been involved in the juvenile justice system, or have dropped out of high school before graduation.  Such program require many different types of support to help a young person get his/her life back on track. 

Other mentoring formats, such as school based mentoring, are not structured for long-term connectivity. Many forms of involvement are "motivational speakers" or short duration classes. These are all part of a mix of needed services, but without at least one organization in a child's life offering a long-term support system, are the others enough to overcome the challenges poverty places in front of kids and families?

Regardless of when a tutor/mentor program first connects with a youth, the responsibility should be that the program, or other partners, provide a continuum of age appropriate learning, mentoring, experiences and work and skill-building opportunities that result in youth having the skills, education, network and opportunities needed to find work and build careers beyond the grasps of poverty.  Here's a concept map that illustrates this differently, showing that at each age groups youth need a variety of supports. Few tutor/mentor programs can provide all of these. 

Above is another set of graphics to stimulate your thinking. The middle one includes a map showing high poverty neighborhoods in Chicago.   It also compares operating a tutor/mentor program, or being a teacher, to Thomas Edison. Each child is different, and constantly changing. Thus, leaders, volunteers, parents and educators must be constantly learning ..and experimenting, in order to offer the greatest benefit. 

The question we should be asking ourselves, if our focus is on youth living in poverty, is "How can we fill all high poverty neighborhoods with organized, age specific programs, that can build and sustain long-term connections with children as the grow to become adults?    How do we pay for it? Where do we attract and retain talented leaders? How do we keep volunteers involved for multiple years?  

These are just a few of many questions to be asked an answered...in many places. For instance, of all of the organizations that offer mentoring, which focus on children living in high poverty poverty areas? Which have long-term strategies? Do cities have  maps showing what neighborhoods are being reached with existing programs? Do they use that information to expand the number of kids reach every year?

Furthermore, who's providing the money and talent to collect, organize, analyze and share this information on a continuous basis?  

So what role do volunteers, and people who don't  have the time to meet directly, and regularly, with youth, take to make this happen?  Here's one presentation titled "Mentor Role in a Larger Strategy".  I hope you'll look at it.

Mentor Role in Larger Youth Development Strategy by Daniel F. Bassill

The questions I've posted here just scratch the surface of the questions that might be asked.  Visit this section of the Tutor/Mentor Web library and read the research articles. Visit this section and read the blog articles.

During this month, and throughout the year, I invite volunteers, program leaders, media, donors and policy makers to dig into this and other articles I've posted since 2005 on this blog, and in my library on Scribd.com.  Do a Google search for "tutor mentor", then look at the images. You'll find dozens more intended to stimulate your thinking.

Build a deeper  understanding of what types of  programs serve the different needs of youth from different age groups and different social/economic backgrounds. Talk about proactive roles business, volunteers and donors can take to help strong, long-lasting tutor/mentor programs reach youth in more places. Create a "learning organization' where many are involved in this effort.

Every child is special. Every child deserves a support system that offers hope and opportunity. Some have this when they are born. Others won't have this unless many adults who don't live in poverty make a consistent, heroic, on-going effort to make such supports available. 

If you're writing similar articles on your own blog, or host on-line forums where people are discussing these questions, use the comment box to share a link to your web sites or forums. I hope there are many leading this discussion.

Help me continue to write and share articles like this. Visit my FUND T/MI page and add your support. 

Making Great Tutor/Mentor Programs Available to More Youth

It's a new year, and and it's National Mentoring Month. I've shared ideas for the past 20 years that I hope are used to help make constantly improving, mentor-rich programs available to youth in more high poverty neighborhoods of Chicago and other cities. Here's one.

Expanding Network Of Adults Involved in Helping Inner City Youth - Logic Model by Daniel F. Bassill

I have two requests.

First, if you're a leader, advocate, funder, or have a similar role, share your own logic model, tipping points, etc. in presentations like this, and on your own web site. Collectively these ideas have more power and potential to influence change than if just myself and a few others are doing this.

Second, if you are committed to helping young people from high poverty areas get the extra adult support and learning opportunities I write about, consider becoming a sponsor of my work. Put your name/logo on these presentations and help me hire the talent needed to upgrade them, make them move effective, and share them with more people.

There are several million young people across the US, and in cities around the world, who could benefit from this support.

Mentor Summit Workshops. Take a Look.

Yesterday I posted an article with some quotes made by mentoring leaders at last week’s National Mentoring Summit. I also posted a map showing people I met. I do this to draw attention to the need for operating resources and to try to connect with others who will add their time, talent and dollars to building a year-round public attention and resource generation strategy that supports tutor/mentor programs in every neighborhood of Chicago and every city with flexible, constantly flowing operating and innovation resources.

I was able to attend only one workshop in each time frame out of six or seven offered. Thus, unless others are sharing their reflections from the workshops they attended, most of us will only benefit from a fraction of the ideas shared.

I’ve been part of an Education Technology MOOC since Jan 13, in which more than 1600 people are sharing ideas with each other. My hope is that on-line learning events like this can grow in the youth development, mentoring, tutoring fields.

All of the workshops I attended were full of value. Visit this page on the MENTOR website for workshop descriptions, downloads of handouts, and bios of all speakers.

One workshop and one keynote offered a unique new perspective on mentoring opportunities.

The workshop was The Rudd Adoption Mentoring Partnership at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Renee Moss and Jocelyn Nelson of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Hampshire County, MA and Dr. Harold Grotevant and Jen Dolan from the university, described a mentoring partnership in which college students who had been adopted were matched with middle and high school students who had been adopted.

This project focused on a specific population of special needs youth, matched with college mentors who had the same life experience (adoption) and who met the BBBS stringent guidelines for match compatibility.

Dr. Grotevant provided an overview of some of the issues adopted youth face that only others who have been adopted themselves can really understand. Today he sent an email with links to two presentations that tell more about this unique program.

Mentoring Partnership PDF and PPT of presentation from Summit.

A couple of highlights: The university gave class credit to the mentors, who were required to participate in bi-weekly feedback sessions. Thus there was tremendous coaching provided by the university. Dr. Grotevant reported that the unique program has begun to attract students to the university who have an adoption background.

Renee Moss, the BBBS leader, has been in her role for 27 years! We need to find ways to encourage this depth of experience in thousands of programs. A needed research project might develop information showing tenure of leaders and staff of tutor/mentor programs.

The second special needs program was Eye to Eye, a mentoring program focusing on LD/ADHD youth, which was featured during the Friday lunch time session. This project matches college and adult mentors who have overcome learning disabilities with LD/ADHD youth still in middle school and high school. Visit the web site and see how volunteers serve as Think Different Diplomats to share this program with others.

As with the adoption model, the mentor having the same experience as the mentee was the basis of the match, and the population served cuts all economic levels. Neither of these programs focus primarily on youth living in poverty.

I would expect both models to expand rapidly since affluent parents of adopted or ADHD youth will be more than willing to provide personal philanthropy and fund raising leadership to make such programs available to their own kids.

The second morning workshop that I attended was titled: NYC Mentoring Investment – The Young Men’s Initiative Click here to view workshop description and down load power point presentation.

The most impressive thing about this initiative is the number of organizations involved and the huge financial commitment behind the initiative. The New York City public school population is close to 1 million and the number of youth at risk of drop out in New York City is huge – 532,434! I've written in the past about the unique challenges of big cities with school-age populations over 100,000 youth.

One of the partners in the Young Men’s Initiative, is the department of Probation, which operates the Neighborhood opportunity networks (NeON) among other programs.

I would like to have seen a use of maps in this initiative, to show where the drop out problem is concentrated, and to support marketing efforts aimed at building a flow of needed operating resources, volunteers, ideas, etc. to all of these neighborhoods, and all of the partners in the initiative.

On Thursday afternoon I attended a workshop that described the Coaches Mentoring Challenge

I wrote about this in an article last month. Since I’ve wanted to unleash the power of coaches and athletes to mobilize volunteers and dollars to support tutor/mentor programs in all part of the Chicago region, this was a workshop that I really wanted to attend.

Mentoring network leaders from Iowa (Sarah Hinzman and Chad Driscoll), Kansas (Nicolette Geisler) and Nebraska (Suzanne Hince) described how head football coaches at Iowa, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State and Nebraska were leading a competition to see which state could recruit the most mentors between September and December.

The planning was broken down to “pre season” “game day” and “post game” with lots of information on the web site. See details here and here.

A lot of work goes into this and the mentor leaders deserve a lot of credit. They did a great job of showing the challenges of working with high profile coaches and universities.

This puts a bit of a damper on my own hopes because 99% of the work comes from the Mentor Partnerships while the coaches and universities lend their names and get credit for the good will generated.

I’m idealistic. I want coaches and other leaders to spend quality time trying to make mentoring and tutoring available, just as other volunteers do. If we do all the work for them, the commitment is not really there, nor are we benefiting from the talent and creativity these leaders might apply to building tutor/mentor infrastructure in their cities and states.

I don’t have the manpower, or brain power, to do all of the thinking that is needed to ensure the coach’s involvement has the desired impact. Will need partners to help with this.

On Friday morning I attended a workshop titled Recruiting Policy Advocates to Support Inspiring Program Innovations. An Urgent Call.

This was probably the most valuable workshop of all that I attended. Why?

The facilitator was Janet Forbush, a consultant supporting mentor program growth. We’re both part of the mentoring email list hosted by Dr. David DuBois of UIC. Janet set the stage for the workshop when she said: “You can’t run mentoring programs without money” as part of the introduction to this workshop.

That’s my own view and the efforts I’ve led for past 20 years have attempted to increase the flow operating resources to all tutor/mentor programs in the city.

Trudy Perkins, Office of Congressman Elijah Cummings, MD, was the first speaker on this panel, and provided valuable insight for reaching out to elected officials. I’ve not been very effective in this myself.

Heather Harvison, founder of My Sister’s Circle, , described a girls mentoring program that she formed in 2000. I appreciated this program because it focuses on helping girls from 5th grade through high school and college, and keeping volunteers involved for all seven years. In addition, Heather has been reaching out to build networks with other tutor/mentor programs in Baltimore, similar to my efforts in Chicago since 1976.

I think that there is too little effort to determine the different types of mentoring programs in each city, based on who they serve, and based on how broad-based and long-term their support of young people extends.

Conference speakers said “MENTORING Absolutely Works” but they did not say what that means or that it works when programs are able to support youth and volunteers effectively and sustain youth and volunteer involvement for multiple years. In the rush for “numbers” many programs are not designed to keep youth involved for multiple years. I’ve been trying to build a distinction between different types of tutoring and/or mentoring programs in Chicago since 1993, but never have had the resources to go beyond creating a database of providers which breaks down by age served and type of program. See http://www.tutormentorprogramlocator.net Connecting with leaders like Heather who also are trying to build a connection with peers, is one step toward gaining more attention and support for this intermediary role.

The final member of the panel was Lynn Sherman, Baptist Health Center in Jacksonville, Fl. Lynn described the Tipping the Scale mentoring program lead by the hospital with partnership from a local CBO. It includes a mentoring and a workforce development component.

This program seems very similar to the programs in the Hospital Youth Mentoring Partnership network, which I connected with in late 1999. Members of the network attended one of the T/MC conferences in 2000 and I was a speaker of a HYMP conference in Baltimore in 2001. As it turns out, Lynn also attended that conference!

I’ve written many articles on the role hospitals can take in building networks of mentor-rich programs in their trade area, but have failed to find a champion who would rebuild the HYMP and expand its focus to one of community network builder from just innovative mentor program operator.

This article describes the partnership and the program at Vanderbilt Medical Center.

This is a press release from Ceasar’s Siani Hospital, which also was part of the partnership

This PDF includes a Commonwealth Fund Report on Hospital Youth Mentoring Partnership from circa 1999

2001 Hospital Youth Mentoring Partnership Conference and list of member hospitals.

My vision of hospitals in intermediary roles, supporting the growth of tutor/mentor programs in their community. I've written about this often since 2005.

The final workshop I was able to attend on Friday before heading to the airport was one focused on Mentoring Central, an on-line training resource that can be used to provide pre-match training to new volunteers. Mentoring Central includes research-based, pre-match blended learning mentor training curriculum; post-match Web-based mentor training on special topics; post-match mentor support resources; and many tools to support mentoring program staff. I was impressed with the creativity and quality of the training modules that were shown during the workshop.

Visit this link to see other workshops I attended and people I connected with.

Summary: For the past 20 years I’ve built a database of Chicago area tutor/mentor programs and a web library with links to research, editorials, programs in other cities, “how to” info, etc. Through the Internet I attempt to connect with representatives of these organizations with a goal of getting help in maintaining the library, and in building public will needed to support tutor/mentor programs in thousands of locations with public and private dollars and volunteer talent. I have hosted a Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference in Chicago every six months with invitations to those in my network to come and share their own ideas and build relationships with others who they may not know.

There are dozens of conferences and events around the country that have workshops and speakers with equal value to the MENTOR Summit. Due to financial restraints I’ve never been able to participate in many of these. While I try to get to as many events in Chicago as I can, I’m so committed to connecting people who attend these conferences via the Internet because with more the 650 attendees, no one is able to connect with more than a few other participants.

You never know who you will meet and what will happen. At the end of the first day of the Mentor Summit as I was collecting my coat a man introduced himself and handed me a book that he was sharing at the Summit. I said thanks and stuffed it in my bag with everything else I picked up to read. Since my flight back to Chicago was delayed, I had time to read the entire book. I found it uplifting, and maybe you will to. It’s titled Mentor: The Kid and the CEO and was written by Tom Pace. Learn more about this book and Tom’s work at http://www.mentorhope.com/

This Forbes article was in my email today. It talks about the need to support the program infrastructure connecting many different programs in efforts to help young people succeed in school and life.

The Tutor/Mentor conference in Chicago in May/June and November is part of an on-going effort to build a collective commitment that supports tutor/mentor programs in all high poverty neighborhoods of the Chicago region. It will be held on June 7 and I hope some of you will help recruit speakers and workshop speakers, as well as a few sponsors. However, the next opportunity we have to connect and share ideas is today, tomorrow and any time you’re motivated to reach out to me on Facebook, Linked In, Twitter, Skype or via email or the traditional telephone.

Support Mentoring in Your Community

During January National Mentoring Month a variety of national events will attempt to draw greater attention to mentoring strategies in different cities and states. Visit the Mentoring Month web site and see a list of 10 things you can do to support mentoring.

Then take a look at this graphic and past articles I've written about National Mentoring Month.

Start a discussion in your company, faith group, family and social network, using maps like this to focus attention on all of the high poverty neighborhoods where mentor-rich programs are needed to help youth connect with people, ideas and opportunities beyond what is available in their own community.

Start a discussion about ways you can help raise dollars and recruit talent to support programs throughout the city, or in different zip codes. While there are some really great and well known programs, even the largest only serve a small fraction of all of the k-16 youth in Chicago or any other city who need such programs in their lives.

If you don't have a group to connect and share your ideas, join groups I host on Facebook, Linked in or at http://tutormentorconnection.ning.com

While we need to recognize and celebrate the role mentors are taking, we need to think of ways to support the infrastructure that enables long-term connections of mentors and youth to take place.

General Powell does a great job as spokesperson for Mentoring. Let's help him build the logistics needed to make great mentoring programs available in more places.



During January start this discussion. Keep it going throughout the year. Next January celebrate what you have accomplished and build new activities to add greater support in 2014.