How to keep stakeholders involved for many years.

I posted this article yesterday showing how I think events like #ETMOOC can provide a learning process connecting authors of books in a library, or links in a web library. Today, I’m headed out to Washington, DC for the Mentor Summit, but wanted to post this follow up.

While natural disasters like the Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina and the earthquake in Haiti motivate millions of dollars in disaster relief, after a while the attention turns to another tragedy, and the donations dwindle. Yet the work of rebuilding still needs to continue. Sean Penn, a famous actor, is still on the ground working to re-build Haiti. Visit this web site to see how he is “keeping the spotlight on Haiti”.

Every day the media remind us of urban tragedies, but few leaders are making enough of a commitment to bring needed resources to ALL of the high neighborhoods where poverty is a root-cause of violence and mentoring is a strategy that can help young people choose not to be part of the drop out crisis and culture of violence.

Thus, while yesterday I talked about how we need to connect all of the people in the movement with each other, and with ideas that can be used to constantly improve and finance their efforts, today I want to stimulate thinking about “ways to keep the attention focused” on a continuous way….the way corporate advertising keeps attention focused on their stores, products and services every day.

Thus, as we talk about MOOCs, let’s think of who we need to get into the learning network and how we keep them engaged.

This map is one I’ve created after attending events like the National Drop Out Prevention Conference. It shows people I’ve met in workshops, at the trade fairs, and through networking --- and it provides links to their web sites. While I’ve connected with all of these people, it’s unlikely that each of them have connected to everyone else on this map.

While the MENTOR Summit may have more than 500 attendees, few participants can ever connect in face-to-face learning and relationship building with more than a small fraction of the people and ideas that will be represented at the conference. MENTOR has created a Facebook page and a Twitter feed -- #NatlMentoringSummit -- to encourage people attending the conference to connect with each other.

This chart is one of many I’ve created visualizing the “birth to work” pipeline and emphasizing that it takes 12 years for a youth to move from first grade to high school graduation, and then more years to move through college or vocational school. Hopefully by his mid twenties he’s found work that can become a career, with income that allows him to raise his own children out of poverty.

What are all the challenges a young person faces if he grew up in poverty? What are all the challenges an organization that connects youth and adults needs to have on a continuous basis to keep youth and volunteers engaged for more years?

Here’s an article showing a planning process.

Here’s an article showing infrastructure needed to support on-going tutor/mentor programs.

Here’s a site showing learning done by interns who have been focusing on the role intermediaries like Tutor/Mentor Connection need to take.

A map can work like a blueprint. What are all the things we need to know, and all the resources we need to provide to help a youth move from birth to work? Mentoring to Career cMap

By using maps to show where participants come from, or what issues they are interested in, or what talents and resources they have, we can show what part of the knowledge galaxy someone is from, or what part of the library they specialize in. Applying such data analysis might provide a form of navigation for anyone sailing through this ocean of knowledge and networks.

We can also see what groups are not yet involved in the conversation. In most on-line discussions we have providers talking about the benefits of mentoring or tutoring, but we don’t have resource providers, business, philanthropy or government consistently involved. They are the ones who need to be working to make high quality mentoring, tutoring and learning programs available to youth in more places.

Without the network analysis it’s difficult to know if we’re getting these people involved. Without the MOOCs its difficult for busy people to expand their depth of understanding and thus grow their involvement.

What do you think? Can we do this?

1) How do we mobilize people in MOOCs into volunteers, donors, leaders who work together to solve complex social problems?

2) How do we know we’re connecting people from the many different segments of business, philanthropy, government, community, etc. who need to be part of solutions to problems?

3) How do we keep people involved.

I hope that through the MOOCs and conferences I attend I’ll not only find people who share the same vision and strategy, but who will use their talent to help communicate these ideas in more creative, thoughtful and meaningful ways.

Connected Learning. Collective Action.

How do we turn a participation map into a “collective impact” map?

I’m one more than 1600 people who have joined the Education Technology Mooc (#ETMOOC) since last Monday. I’ll be participating in the National Mentoring Summit in Washington, DC this Thursday and Friday where more than 500 people will be connected in the same building and for the same purpose.

This article aims to tie the two events together.

I have participated in several ETMOOC events since last Monday, including a session Sunday morning hosted by Dave Cormier, one of the first people to use the term MOOC. Visit this page to find the recording of Dave’s session, along with additional links to his ideas.

As part of the #ETMOOC, participants have written more than 850 blog articles and posted over 1000 Tweets. Most of these have focused on how MOOCs enable personal learning and introduce members and their ideas to each other. You can follow what you want. You can spend as much time reading blogs and taking part in live sessions as you want. You can share your own ideas and you can interact with others. Each participant controls their own learning experience. You can follow some of the blogs at this link.

I’m interested in going beyond personal learning. My goal is to help build and sustain networks that use their learning, and the network, to innovate new ways to solve complex problems.

The ETMOOC network analysis map shows “who’s involved” based on history of participation. If you’ve followed previous articles on this blog you can see how I’ve been trying to map participation in Tutor/Mentor Conferences, the Ning group, and my Facebook and Linked in groups.

You’ll see how I focus on actions that grow the network, while growing the composition of the network at the same time. If we agree that It Takes a Village to Raise a Child, we need to get the business community strategically involved.

With this post I hope stimulates a couple of different streams of thought.

1) How do we connect people participating in MOOCs with places where they become volunteers, donors, leaders who work together to solve complex social problems?

2) How do we know if people from all sectors – e.g. business, philanthropy, government, community, religion, youth, etc. – are participating in our MOOCs or community of practice?

When I started the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 I could have just focused on sharing ideas I had developed since 1975 when I first started leading a volunteer-based tutor/mentor program in Chicago. However, I did something different. I made a commitment to try to collect, organize and share experiences of others involved in this work. My goal was to collect “all that was known” about volunteer-based tutoring/mentoring, where such programs are needed, why they are needed, what it takes for them to have long term impact, how to support them, how to connect business and philanthropy to them, etc. This represents a vast library of knowledge and literally millions of people.

I’ve used Concept Maps to diagram my strategies, and the sections of my library. The diagram below shows the research section of the Tutor/Mentor Connection links library.

If you click on any of the nodes you’ll go to a specific section of the web library which points to a variety of web sites with information related to that topic. Many of the web sites I point to have similar lists of web sites they point to. The collective knowledge that this represents is constantly expanding.

Every time I’m in a conversation, conference, or MOOC, I add sites I’m interested in to the library, which makes them immediately available to anyone else who visits the site. There’s an entire section of links in the Library to Knowledge Management articles, which is what I’m doing.

I realize I’ll never have “all that is known” but with 2000+ links, the library offers a massive pool of content for that could support a variety of MOOCs

By participating in ETMOOC and events like the Mentor Summit I hope to connect with others who will help with this process. I hope to find partners who will help organize future “tutor/mentor” MOOCs that draw people from the many different sites in my library into an on-line community that offers all of the personal learning and relationship building values that Dave Comier is describing in his presentation.

I hope to focus on strategies and actions that make mentor-rich programs available in more of the neighborhoods where they are most needed.

As that is happening, network analysis can show who’s participating and geographic maps can show what parts of the geography are represented. Such maps could demonstrate the growth of the network over a period of years, while enabling people from different sections of the library and/or different parts of the country or a big city like Chicago, to connect more easily with each other.

In one of the ETMOOC blogs I read last week the author told of how he feels others do a much better job of communicating ideas than he does. Then one day someone said “gee that’s really unique”.

I think others can communicate what I’m describing far better than I can. That’s one role interns have been taking. You can see some of their work here.

I hope that through the MOOCs and conferences I attend I’ll not only find people who share the same vision and strategy, but who will use their talent to help communicate these ideas in more creative, thoughtful and meaningful ways.

I’ll write more about this tomorrow before I head to the airport. I think this post is long enough already.

Expanding, Sustaining Funding – New Thinking Needed

I’ve been part of an Education Technology MOOC (#ETMOOC) this week where more than 1000 people from around the world are connecting on-line and sharing ideas about uses of technology in education, learning, media and network building.

I’ve been trying for the past 20 years to build this type of learning community, connecting all of those who are concerned with the gap between rich and poor in America, the education system, workforce diversity, social justice, violence, public health, and a number of other reasons to be involved. Some people talk about the "village" it takes to raise kids. I write about it and try to bring members of the village together.

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 I’ve aggregated a wide range of personal frustration on 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 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.

Every year I send 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.

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.

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.

Yet we all were focused on helping expand the network of non-school hours support for inner city kids. By 1998 I was using web sites to show the work I was doing and what I was trying to do.

This map shows the Chicago LOOP area.

When I begin using maps I started following media stories about kids being killed in Chicago with maps showing where this was happening, and with links showing what tutor/mentor programs were operating in those areas,

and what knowledge was available to community leaders, business and foundations so they would work to build programs that would provide more mentoring, tutoring, learning opportunities. Visit this Map Gallery to see a collection of maps created in the past.

This week I attended a Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. celebration at the University of Chicago, where panel members were asked to talk about their experiences with mentoring.

They each talked about mentors who “helped them stay in school” and who provided life lesions, such as “never, ever forget where you come from”. Here are some other quotes from the event:

“Who ever is talking to them and showing an interest is a mentor.”

“We need to mentor each other’s kids since our own don’t listen to us enough”

“Foundation of mentoring is caring.”

“Mentoring is a two-way street. Mentors learn from youth.”

“Students who are successful have great networking skills.”

“Since the middle class has left the inner city, how are we going to connect mentors with youth living in inner city neighborhoods” “How do we reach those kids.”

“The politicians don’t care. These kids and parents don’t vote.”

“Why are there only 30 people attending this event when this is National Mentoring Month?” Why don’t more people care?”

I handed out business cards to each of the participants and said “Let’s find ways to change this.” I share these ideas on my blog, and in MOOCs so that people in more places will come together to find ways to support the growth of mentor-rich programs in more places where they are needed.

I host a Chicago Tutor/Mentor Program Locator with maps that show where tutor/mentor programs are needed. Why can’t leaders in these foundations use my maps, or similar directories, to adopt neighborhoods, then adopt tutor/mentor programs in those neighborhoods and make long-term commitments to help each program become the best in the world by borrowing ideas from each other and using a constant flow of operating/innovation dollars and volunteer talent to implement these ideas.

Here’s an interactive version of the map of foundations. You can enlarge the map and zoom in and see the name and location of each. Some no longer exist since this list was last updated in 2005. (2023 editor note: this map may not show up in your Chrome browser. It does show up when I view it from my phone. It also can be seen if you use Microsoft Edge browser.)
  

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 this list 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.

We can discuss ideas like this in face to face events, like the May and November Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conferences. We can also connect in on-line events like the Education Technology MOOC.

We can do both. We can do better.

Update on ETMOOC, Network Building

It's been a busy week. I've continued to reach out to people who are involved in volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs, or who could support the growth of such programs with their time, talent, dollars, etc. I've also continued to expand my own knowledge and network by participating in the EductionTechnology MOOC, the JellyWeek event, and my Facebook, Linked In and Ning networks. I even made time to create a January newsletter and send it out to about 3000 people (only 12-16% will open it).

I participated in a couple of Blackboard Collaborate Sessions hosed by the ET MOOC and I've been following the Twitter chatter on #etMooc. There's also a Blog Hub, aggregating blogs posted by participants. As one writer said, "it's frustrating because there is so much info and too little time."

If you don't know what a MOOC is, this "What is a MOOC?" article is useful.

I'm participating in these as part of my efforts to connect with others who share the same goals and strategies for making k-12 volunteer-based tutoring, mentoring, learning and career focused programs available to youth in more places. At any given time I'm connected to a diverse base of people from all parts of the world. This Twitter Mention Map from yesterday visualizes who I was connecting with on Twitter.

You can see from this map that while I'm learning from these events, I'm also connecting people I know to others who they might want to know or learn from. My hope is that I can find help from people in the mentoring, tutoring world who will want to organize MOOCs focused on building and sustaining mentor-rich programs in more places, drawing from articles that I've written, research that others have generated, and ideas from many people in many places.

The MOOCs are free and you can participate at your own pace, learning what you want, when you want. This is a long-term learning process not something that you can master in a day or a week. I hope to see you on-line.

MOOCs - Worldwide Learning - Starting Monday

I've posted numerous articles about MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) in the past year or so. These are on-line, no-cost, events that connect thousands of people from many parts of the world with ideas of people also from around the world. These are part of a larger category of articles under the heading of LEARNING and NETWORK BUILDING.

Starting Monday, January 13 I'm going to be trying to participate in three different MOOCS. These are

Education Technology and Media which you can read about here.

I'll also be participating for the second week in the international JellyWeek event, organized by friends on Facebook and connecting more than 200 groups around the world. While I'll be interacting on-line and on Twitter, I'll also try to attend events hosted by The CO-OP, here in Chicago.

Finally, I'll also plan to connect with my Webheads friends in the EVO (Electronic Village Online) event. You can see the schedule here. One event that I'm definitely going to try to take part in is the Sun, Jan 20, 2013 - 14:00 GMT event where Dave Cormier discusses cMOOC and MultiMOOC, connectivism, and openness in learning.

One of my long-term goals is to connect leaders, volunteers, youth and supporters of volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs, along with people focused on violence prevention, public health, workforce development, education, diversity, etc. in a year-round schedule of MOOCs that not only share ideas, but lead to actions that increase and distributed resources needed in every high poverty neighborhood in order for constantly improving mentor-rich organizations to exist.

Since January is National Mentoring Month and I'm participating in the National Mentoring Summit on January 24 and 25, this would be a good time for mentoring leaders to connect and begin thinking of ways to use MOOCs to build participation, collaboration and capacity. For the next two weeks you can connect with me and other mentoring leaders on Twitter using #NationalMentoringMonth

I'd particularly like to find partners and sponsors to build an on-line MOOCS in the May-June, Aug-Sept and Nov-Dec time frames which are time frames when I host conference in Chicago and support Back-to-School Volunteer Recruitment efforts in the fall.

My Twitter handle is @tutormentorteam so I hope that during the coming weeks I'll connect with many of you and your own networks as you join in these MOOCs.

100% of Seniors Graduate. What does this mean?

Over the past couple of year’s I’ve seen statements from several different organizations saying “100% of my seniors graduated from high school”. Some added “and went to college”.

With the emphasis on outcomes I can see how this would be a meaningful statement. But is it also a misleading statement?

Here’s a chart I created several years ago showing the 20-25 year role of business, family, non profits, educators, etc. in helping youth move from birth to age 20-25 when they should be starting jobs and careers.

When someone says “all my seniors graduated” they are not telling you at what age level those seniors were when they joined that mentoring or tutoring program. They are not telling the demographic background. They are not telling the academic history.

Thus, you could imply that this organization that claims to serve several hundred young people has built a strategy that gets those young people involved at an early age, like middle school, and keeps 100% (ALL) of them involved through high school and they ALL graduate and they ALL go to college.

If someone working with young people living in high poverty is telling you they accomplish this, I think they are leaving out some important information. There’s too much transition of families in poverty for all youth to be able to stay with a program located in one neighborhood for 4 to six years. There are too many diseases that affect youth in poverty, such as Asthma and Diabetes, or gang violence and/or teen pregnancy, and too many young people getting caught up in the juvenile justice system for programs to be able to keep 100% of youth enrolled for four to six consecutive years. And, if a program starts with youth in elementary school, this is even more of a challenge.

I’ve asked some program leaders what they mean when they claim 100% graduated and they tell me that this really is a measure of those who survived to become seniors, who then stayed with the program through the year, and were accepted for college in the spring. Depending on the level of support a program is able to offer, at what age students join, and what the demographics and family support of the youth is, programs should show different levels of year-to-year retention, but seldom 100%

I may be wrong. However, I don’t see attendance charts on many program web sites. I don’t see “theory of change” strategies with graphics like the one above that shows when a youth joins a program and what they do to help them through high school, then through college, vocational school and into jobs.

I also don’t see information showing the demographics and academic background of young people when they join a program. Using maps to demonstrate where youth in a program live is one way to show this. Providing an overview showing the percent of youth in a program living under the poverty line is another way. Showing what percent of youth in a program attend private schools would be another indicator that would differentiate the youth served by different programs in different places.

That does not mean there are not lots of programs who do have these strategies and this information, but do not share this information on their web sites. Thus, when some leaders boast “100 percent of seniors graduate” we’re making assumptions about what these programs are really doing and what impact they are having.

If you’re evaluating programs and/or choosing between different programs to make funding decisions, it makes a huge difference in the work required if a program starts working with teens when they are juniors or seniors in high school vs if they start working with youth when they are between 7th and 9th grade, or in elementary school.

It makes a huge difference in the services a program needs to provide if a program has recruited youth who already have great academic credentials or potential and/or are already attending private high schools vs serving youth who have not yet navigated the difficult transition from adolescence to high school.

As we head to the National Mentoring Summit and beyond through the rest of 2013, I encourage programs to talk about this topic in blogs, social media and webinars. I encourage you to apply graphics like this (seem more here) to show what age range youth are when they join the program, and what retention they have from year to year, as well as what number then graduate and enter college as a result of the support a program and its volunteers provide.

It would be great to see MENTOR or other leadership groups take on this topic.

If you’re a business, college, or local media, you can help by asking for this information, and by offering your time and talent to help programs create graphics, theory of change documents, and measurement tools that they can use to track year to year participation and retention for their own process improvement evaluations, and for building a more uniform way that all programs demonstrate what they are accomplishing and who they are serving.

I’m hosting the next Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference on June 7, 2013 in Chicago. I invite programs to organize a workshop or panel discussion to talk of ways they demonstrate impact and show their theory of change. I invite consultants to volunteer to facilitate a discussion of what metrics programs could show that would attract more consistent support from business leaders and volunteers. The web site for the conference is http://www.tutormentorconference.org

This is also something that can be discussed in online forums such as the ones I host at http://tutormentorconnection.ning.com and on Linked in and Facebook.

If others are hosting such discussions please post links to them so others can find you and participate.

Mapping Conference Participation - Nov. 08

I've just found a simple tool to use to map participation in an event. This shows the people who attended the November 2008 Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference held in Chicago. I've been hosting these since 1994 but have not been able to attract consistent funding or sponsorship from business, foundations or city of Chicago leaders (political or public schools).



I've been trying to create an mapping and analysis capacity for many years. Today I learned about a free application called MapAList, which I used to create the above map in less than 20 minutes!

Over the next few months I'm going to try to map participation of all past conferences. I'd like to find volunteers, interns, etc. to help.

In addition, I'm hosting the next conference on June 7, at the Metcalfe Federal Building in Chicago. I'm looking for sponsors, speakers, partners, etc. Join the Tutor/Mentor Forum Conference planning group or email me at tutormentor2@earthlink.net if you'd like to become involved.

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.

Keeping Attention Focused Throughout Year

I worked in retail advertising for a big company in the 1970s and 1980s and we spent millions of dollars every week to keep potential customers coming to our stores. If we want to do more to help kids in poverty we need to find ways to keep expanding the number of people who are offering time, talent and dollars to support schools and non-school tutor/mentor programs in thousands of locations.

In the social sector we don't have millions of dollars for advertising, thus we need to find other ways to build and sustain public support and the flow of needed operating resources to all of the places where people are working to help kids move through school and into careers. I created this video to illustrate the need for 12-month strategies that repeat from year-to-year. I hope you'll find time to view it and share it with others.



As you view the video, keep in mind the following two images:

Birth-to-work is a 20 to 25 year journey. It's difficult for most kids, but much more difficult for kids born into neighborhoods of highly concentrated, segregated poverty. Kids only grow a day and a year at a time. There are no quick fixes. Thus, we need to find innovative ways to keep attention focused and support available in thousands of locations.




Instead of focusing on single solutions, focus on the big question: "What are all the things we need to be doing to assure that youth born in 2013 are starting jobs and careers by 2038?" This question needs to be asked over and over, by leaders in business, politics, universities, faith groups, philanthropy, and by individuals who are concerned with the future of our democracy, our economy, and the millions of young people born in high poverty neighborhoods every year.

As you talk with others, read books and articles, and come up with information that supports this "birth to work" goal, find a way to share your thoughts by posting links or ideas in web libraries, blogs or social media forums. Below is a map of the information library of the Tutor/Mentor Connection, which has been growing since the late 1970s.

You can find this graphic here.

Collecting, organizing and drawing attention to this information on a regular basis is a huge job. It cannot be done by a single person, or a single small organization. Other owners are needed to support this strategy. Sponsors are needed to keep it going in 2013 and 2014.

View this page to learn more of ways you can help.

Interview from 2009 shares my ideas

This is an interview of me done in 2009 by Paul DiPerna, who was based in Indianapolis at that time. The goals are the same although my structure has changed since then.

Dan Bassill Interview by Paul DiPerna | Blau Exchange from Paul DiPerna

Merry Christmas. Happy Holidays!

Goals the Same. People Change. Read Newsletter of Jan 1996

Below is the front page of the printed Tutor/Mentor Connection newsletter of Jan-Feb 1996. I've been meaning to put PDF copies of past newsletters on-line for a while and started doing that today. On the front page you can see a photo of Paul Vallas, CEO of Chicago Public Schools, who addressed a 1995 Tutor/Mentor Conference.

If you browse through this archive showing other newsletters written in the 1990s and in the past couple of years you'll see that my goals have not changed, but the people in business, philanthropy, politics and Chicago Public Schools have. So have many of the leaders in volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs who I first started connecting with in the 1990s and even earlier.

In this image from the Summer 1999 newsletter, you can see a photo of Barack Obama, who was a speaker at the May 1999 conference, along with Congressman Luis Guitierrez. I wish I could say that "Appearance at a conference translated into on-going support for the strategies represented by the conference".

I will add more copies of past newsletters to the archive and hope you'll read and share them.

As you browse these you'll see uses of maps and graphics that I piloted in the 1990s. I'm still using maps and graphics for the same purposes today. If you're asking "Why hasn't this had a greater impact?" the answer is that this strategy has never had consistent support from business and civic leaders, and never has had more than $150,000 at its peak to operate. Initial sponsors such as the Montgomery Ward Company went out of business. Others changed their giving strategies. Others gave once, and never again.

While many people have been touched with these ideas, the printed newsletters only reached 10-12,000 people three times a year at the maximum circulation in the 1999-2000 school year. In 1994-95 the distribution was to fewer than 4,000 people per issue. In a metropolitan region with more than 8 million people, that's like whispering in a tornado.

If more leaders from the past had adopted some of these ideas perhaps we would have a wider range of mentor-rich programs in Chicago today and perhaps more of the kids who had joined programs in the 1990s would now be in jobs and volunteering to support programs now operating in Chicago and other cities.

We can't change the past. We can change the future. Adopt these ideas in your own organization and stay committed to them for the next 20 years. Become a sponsor and help create a new printed version of this newsletter, along with an email campaign to share these ideas with thousands of people every day, starting with the people in your own personal, professional and faith networks. Become a sponsor of the conferences and help build participation back to over 300 as it was in 1999.

This strategy requires leaders from every sector, not just leadership from one small organization, or one elected official. Leadership can come from youth and from adults. The strategy can be adopted in any city, not just Chicago.

I'll post more of these throughout the year. Merry Christmas. Happy Holidays. I hope you'll find some time to read these newsletters and browse other articles on this blog and the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC site. I look forward to hearing from you.


2-24-2021 update - the value of organizational memory - click here   I have more records showing the history of the two tutor/mentor programs I led from 1975 till 2011 than do the current leaders.  I draw from this archive in my efforts to help others build and sustain similar programs.

New Year's Resolution for Helping At-Risk Youth

I've been sharing ideas and strategies on this blog for the past 7 years and via web sites since 1998. I was sending a print newsletter to nearly 10,000 people during the 1990s prior to learning to use the Internet. Not much has changed in our goals except the way we communicate.

Here's two articles I hope you'll read and share as you, your family, co-workers and friends begin to make resolutions for 2013.

Problem solving strategy . In order to solve a problem we should first collect as much information as we can that helps us understand the problem and shows us how others in different places are already working to solve the same problem.

Year round communications and leadership strategy. This blog article and the video below show ways to keep attention focused on the problem you are trying to solve so more people get involved and more resources are generated to support your efforts.



These are just two of hundreds of articles like these. If more people in business, philanthropy, media, politics, etc. take lead on these strategies, more people will become better informed, more involved, and at some point in the future our efforts will begin to have more collective impact on solving the problem we are focusing on.

In the year-round strategy I show May and November Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conferences. I've set the date of June 7, 2013 for the spring 2013 conference. It will be held at the Metcalfe Federal Building in Chicago. Now I need help organizing the event and help financing it. Visit the conference web site to read more. Become a sponsor and demonstrate your support for this strategy.

Happy Holidays and may 2013 be the year you embrace these ideas as your own!

Complex Problem - Helping Youth from Birth to Work

The shooting last Friday in Conneticut demonstrates again how many different challenges our world faces as we look for ways to keep all kids safe and help all kids develop their full potential and become contributing adults.

I've used maps in the past to point to high poverty areas, and point to research and media articles showing that kids living in areas of big city and rural poverty face greater challenges because there is less community wealth and too little social capital linking these kids to live beyond poverty.

Yet we're reminded over and over that kids who live in middle class and affluent areas have their own social and emotional problems, need extra help in school and need the extra attention of adults beyond the family.

I have collected so many ideas over the past 35 years that when I meet with people in one-on-one meetings I'm overflowing with information to the point that I overwhelm and confuse. Thus, I've begun creating a handout that people might use following a meeting to look at the ideas I am talking about, with some degree of sequence and growing depth of understanding.

In the four-part strategy essay I've posted on this site, I show a need for facilitators to help other people find, understand and use this information. The graphic below shows many actions that need to be supported by many people and by a wide range of resource providers.

I think this entire strategy should be duplicated to focus on kids who live in affluence, as a parallel system to one that focuses on kids living in poverty. If I can find resource providers to continue to build the strategies I describe above, I would find it an honor and a tremendous opportunity, to connect with those wanting to build this parallel system.

In the Bible there is a story about how Jesus was asked "how do we pray?" and he answered with the Lord's Prayer. The "lead us not into temptation and deliver us from evil" part is a prayer we each start each day with and hope that at the end of the day we and none of our friends and family have fallen victim to tragedy or evil doings.

I pray that we all find peace and deliverance from evil in the coming days, weeks and months. I also pray that more people will step forward with generous amounts of time, talent and money to intentionally make this safety available to more kids in both rich and poor parts of this world.

Planting Seeds. Nurturing Growth

This is one of the graphics that I've created to wish all of my family, friends and connections a happy holiday and a joyous 2013.

It's using an image from an animation created by one of my interns to show how a volunteer grows into a leader as they stay involved in a tutor/mentor program over many years. You can view this at http://www.tutormentorexchange.net/images/flash/rebuild_real.swf

My own growth illustrates this. I started tutoring in 1973 when I joined the Montgomery Ward Corporation as an advertising copywriter. I became the volunteer leader of the company program in 1975 and for the next 36 years I've spent time every day trying to figure out ways to attract youth and volunteers and keep them engaged. When I left Wards in 1990 I also had to figure out ways to attract donors and keep them engaged, too. The original program did not need to work about this because I and other leaders had full time jobs. We could afford to lead the program as volunteers.

In 1990 this became my full time job and I had to raise money to pay me a salary and to pay others who became part of our staff over the past 18 years. This map shows my journey over the past 38 years.

To do this I've tried to educate volunteers, youth, donors, and every other stakeholder by pointing them to information showing where and why tutor/mentor programs are needed and to stories showing the impact of these programs on the lives of kids and adults. This video is one that tells this story.



Since this is the season of religious holidays I would like to compare my work to the Parable of the Sower from the Bible.

Over 35 years I've spread many seeds inviting others to become involved as tutors, students, leaders, donors, advocates, and have tried to nourish them weekly so that some take root and grow.

I met a young man at the Chicago Police Department yesterday who told me he had used the Program Locator Maps in a college research project, to demonstrate the need for more youth programs in the Englewood neighborhood. That's an example of the seeds beginning to take root. A few years ago I received a $2,500 donation from the Women's ProGolf Association. By tracing the donor in my database I found it was a person who I had first started sending newsletters to in 1994. He had changed jobs but it was not until many years later that he could provide financial support. If you log in on the OHATS documentation system (user name Guest; password Visitor)you can see other testimonials and actions I've documented since 2000.

Thousands of seeds have been planted. Every time I send a newsletter, such as this one, I'm asking people from my past to become active in supporting the work that needs to be done in the future. Every time someone has visited this blog or one of my web sites since 1998 a seed is planted.

As some of these seeds take root we should be able to show workers and leaders in every node on this map who are working to support the growth of tutor/mentor programs in every high poverty of Chicago and other cities, and who are providing talent and financial support to help me continue to spread seeds and nourish their growth.

I'm not a non-profit, so you cannot get a tax deduction for helping me. You can look in the mirror and tell yourself how much you are doing to help kids living in high poverty have systems of support that tutor/mentor programs can provide.

Click here to add your support to Tutor/Mentor Institute.

Click here if you'd like to give your support in the form of a gift for my 66th birthday.

Click here to find a list of tutor/mentor programs in Chicago that you can choose to support even if you cannot support my own efforts.

Coaches Compete to Recruit Most Mentors

I received an email yesterday from David Shapiro of MENTOR, telling of a competition between high profile college football coaches in Kansas, Iowa and Nebrasa who were competing between August 1 and November 30, 2012 to see who could sign up the most mentors. This page on the Volunteer Iowa web site shows how the challenge was used to mobilize volunteers.

A few years ago at Cabrini Connections we attempted to launch a competition between alumni at the University of Illinois and Northwestern to see who could raise the most money during the football season for the program. Teams were headed by former quarterbacks at each school. We raised almost $10,000 during the campaign but could not gain support to grow it the following years.

I've been writing articles promoting involvement of college and pro athletes in on-going campaigns to recruit not only volunteers, but donors, to support volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in the cities where each team operates. This PDF outlines the intermediary role athletes might take to support programs throughout a city, not just one or two high profile programs, or their own charity.

Coaches can support this with their own efforts. This wiki page outlines the idea that coaches could teach athletes and leaders to become proactive in building strong tutor/mentor programs throughout a community. Perhaps the example of the Coaches Challenge in Kansas, Iowa and Nebraska will help others see their potential.

Did the Good Samaritan Get a Tax Deduction?

I’m sure most people are familiar with the Bible story about how a man saw another person in need along the side of a road and gave him all the help he needed to recover. This story is over 2000 years old, but it brings up an important question. See Good Samaritan images like the one shown in Pinterest.

For many years a debate on reductions of tax deductions for charitable giving has been going on in Congress. Will people still give to social causes without a tax deduction? See this article in the Chronicle of Philanthropy , Changes in Charitable Deduction May Have Mixed Impact on Giving.

Where did we get off the road of giving aid because it’s needed and the right thing to do, to giving aid only when we get a tax write off?

I operated as a 501-c-3 non profit from 1993 to 2011 and solicited donations from a wide range of individuals, corporations and foundations over that period of time. More than $6 million was raised, partly to support the site-based Cabrini Connections program, and partly to support the citywide strategy of the Tutor/Mentor Connection.

I’ve been operating without the 501-c-3 tax status since July 2011, focusing on the Tutor/Mentor Connection's goals. I am doing exactly the same work of supporting the growth of volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs (see 4-part strategy), yet find it much more difficult to ask for help due to not being classified as a charity. Based on the number of people who gave in the past but not in the last year, I think others find it more difficult to give help because I’m not a charity and they don’t get a tax deduction. Read "Why I'm not a Non-Profit"

I don’t think the person that the good Samaritan helped was a 501-c-3 charity. He was someone in need.

I have been trying to improve the flow of talent, dollars and technology into high poverty neighborhoods for over 18 years. I’ve piloted a unique use of maps and interactive databases to do this, yet have not had the capital to keep these working, updated and expanding in how they connect resource providers with the different tutor/mentor programs operating in Chicago.

Over the next couple of weeks I’ll outline two strategies that I've been developing. I think any city could support these in its own efforts to help youth in multiple neighborhoods have the extra learning and mentoring supports needed to move more successfully through school and into jobs and careers.

One is an information-based community mobilization strategy. The second is a 12-month calendar of events and collective efforts intended to dramatically increase the number of people to look at the information and take actions that support the growth of one, or more different tutor/mentor programs in Chicago or other big cities.

As you read these I encourage you to browse past articles on this blog, review the sections of the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC site, and review the wiki that shows what I've been building and where help is needed.

If you’ve read these and agree with what I’m trying to do, then look in the mirror and ask yourself if you’re a Good Samaritan and if you can provide some of the financial support needed in 2013 and 2014 and beyond to do this work properly. Click here and find a  PayPal link that you can use to offer help.

Impact of income inequity and wealth gap

As we in the US begin to gather with family and friends for the holidays, I encourage you to take a few moments to view and reflect on this discussion of "How economic inequality harms societies." The speaker is Richard Wilkinson, a public health researcher.

I support volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs because they are a bridge that connects people from beyond poverty with young people and families from within high poverty neighborhoods. Learning takes place on both sides.

Last spring I talked about "empathy" with Edwin Rutsch and described how I feel the on-going involvement of volunteers in tutor/mentor programs builds a greater understanding of the problems facing youth in poverty, creating empathy and a commitment to devote personal time, talent and resources to closing the gaps between rich and poor by helping young people have more of the support they need to succeed in school and life.



As you review these videos over the holiday I hope you'll become more willing to support a tutor/mentor strategy in your own community, and to dig deeper into the ideas shared in these videos so that we can create a more equal America that has a benefit to both rich and poor.

I hope you'll also read this Holiday Letter and send a contribution to help me continue the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC and Tutor/Mentor Connection in 2013.

CNN Article Questions Quin's Anti-Violence Program

I saw this article on CNN today, titled "Questions surround $55 million program to cut violence in Chicago"

As I read it I was reminded of a video one of my IIT interns did a couple of years ago to illustrate the need to build infrastructure to support mentoring and tutoring and extra learning programs so they could sustain long-term connections with youth and have a greater impact. You can play the video at this link. Below I've posted some images.

This project was created by Sam Lee during the May/June 2011 internships. I support interns on this portal and provide some articles for them to look at and convert into new visualizations. Sam did several visualizations over a six week period. This graphic is the introductory frame on the animation.

This next image is the beginning of a sequence where some of the things that you expect to see in a tutor/mentor program are shown as "building blocks".

One of the most important points I try to communicate through the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC is that it takes a tremendous level of support and infrastructure to connect inner city youth with volunteers who live in more affluent areas and can model different jobs and careers as well as college and other education achievements that are not frequently modeled in high poverty neighborhoods. Introducing the youth and volunteer is just the start. Keeping them connected for multiple years so that strong mentoring relationships develop is the on-going challenge of any tutor/mentor program.

It's the piece most often overlooked by planners, evaluators, and donors.

Thus, the second part of the animation uses a cartoon figure with a magnifing glass to encourage viewers to think of the infrastructure needed to support high quality, long-term tutor/mentor programs.

The image Sam started with was this one of an iceberg and these articles. You see a bit of ice above the water but the mass of an iceberg is below the water line. It's invisible. That's the case in a tutor/mentor program. When you see a youth and volunteer

sitting together you're not thinking of all of the costs and talent required to make that happen.

If the Governor and others who launch quick fix, highly expensive, prevention programs would think about this perhaps we could innovate better ways to support the infrastructure and on-going operations of tutor/mentor programs and get better impact over a period of years.

The January-February 2013 internship will include two new students from IIT and Korea. I've posted an introduction here. I'd like to encourage youth from other colleges and high schools, and other cities, to join in on this project, working from where you live, and parallel to the students who will be working at my office in Chicago. If more people are spending time thinking of the details of building and sustaining youth tutoring/mentoring programs, we can build a network of new leaders with a deeper understanding of what it takes to make them available in more places, and make them have a greater impact.

Building Network of Support - 2013 and beyond

Since 1975 I've been leading a volunteer-based tutor/mentor program connecting inner city youth in Chicago with volunteers from many different companies. I did this as a volunteer from 1975-1990 while I held full time advertising jobs with the Montgomery Ward headquarters. I did this from a non profit structure from 1990 to June 2011 and was able to raise more than $6 million from friends, family, believers, local foundations, etc. I've been trying to continue this from a LLC structure over the past 18 months, but have not yet found a strategy that generates enough to earn a salary of pay the costs of operating.

If you've read some of the articles I've posted since 2005 you'll see that I'm aggregating a wealth of information and trying to build a growing network of people who will take some time to read, reflect, discuss, then apply that information in actions that support the growth of programs that enable inner city kids and workplace volunteers to connect on an on-going basis.

You'll also see articles about geographic mapping, which enables us to look at all of the high poverty areas in Chicago where tutor/mentor programs are needed. And, you'll see articles about network building and social network analysis, which enables us to understand the growth of the network over time, as well as the talent and diversity of the network.

You'll see that this problem of concentrated poverty and the ideas I share affects every city in the country, not just Chicago. Thus help can come from many places and the tools and ideas can be applied in many places.

I created a page on the Tutor/Mentor Institute site with articles about social capital and social network analysis. I added the graphic below to one of these articles today. This shows my Facebook network and was created using a new SNA tool called FriendsGraph.

Today I found an article on The Chronicle of Philanthropy site titled 5 Qualities That Bring About Social Change

Here's a quote from the article: Alberto Ibargüen describes five common qualities in people who produce social change: figuring out what needs to change and then showing the vision, courage, knowledge, and tenacity to make things better.

Of those qualities, tenacity is the most elusive—and the most valuable, says Mr. Ibargüen, chief executive of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

"Social change takes time," he says. "It's one of the biggest problems I find with the cycles of philanthropy. We tend to work as organizations that have calendar years or fiscal years, and social change doesn't work on those schedules."

Over the past 20 years I've been trying to create change in how tutor/mentor programs are supported and thus the distribution of high quality programs in more places. I've had many people support me in the past, but need that help even more as we head to the future.

I hope that over the next 30 days a growing number of people in my Facebook, Linked in and Twitter networks will take a look at the work I'm trying to do and will provide some financial support to help me do it. Over the next 12 months I hope you'll add talent and time to the financial support so we can enter 2014 with a new organization that is better able to generate revenue and has more owners to carry this vision forward for the next 30 years or more.

Visit this page to find a PayPal where you can add your financial support.

Leadership from Pro Basketball Team

I've written a series of articles showing how sports teams can mobilize volunteers and donors to support tutor/mentor programs in all parts of Chicago.

This video by the NBA Memphis Grizzlies Foundation is a fantastic example of how a sports team can promote mentoring.



I hope to work with college and pro teams in Chicago to help them create videos like this and add into them a "chalk talk" where they show how others need to take on roles that support mentoring programs in different neighborhoods, just like the front office, boosters, fans and owners support college and pro teams.

If you're with a team in Chicago or another city and want to help develop this strategy please contact me.