Focus part of your attention on kids in high poverty areas

The last few months have dramatically changed the focus of most Americans, as the new administration in Washington, DC is rapidly dismantling the Federal government and the many services and protections it offers, while also destroying long-term alliances with foreign governments.  Most of my social media is dominated with this issue.

Yet, in this section of the Tutor/Mentor library I point to articles like this, focusing on wealth inequality in America, or this blog, which focuses on breaking the cycle of poverty in America.  Another article describes "How the racial wealth gap has evolved -- and why it persists".   Many articles on this blog focus on these issues. Just open the tabs at the left and scroll through past articles. 

Many of the articles in my library are from 10 to 20 years ago. They demonstrate that the problems we face now are deeply rooted, and still need solutions. 

Helping kids to careers

The issue I've been focusing on is helping kids born or living in high poverty areas move through school and into adult lives with jobs and careers, and support networks, that enable them to live and raise their own children where ever they want.  The graphic at the right shows to teens who were part of the tutor/mentor program I led in the 1990s. One is shown at the lower right. She's now Director of Support Services for Housing Opportunities for Women.  I'm still connected to both of these teens, and many others, nearly 30 years after we first met.

My goal is that more youth from high poverty areas have similar support systems.

I've created a library of concept maps over the past 20 years that visualize commitments, strategies and resources, with this one showing that helping kids to careers means providing a wide range of needed supports at each age level as they move from first grade through high school, college/vocational training into jobs.

View Mentoring Kids to Careers cMap

In the bottom left part of this cMap I show the role that volunteer tutors, mentors, coaches, etc. take, as "extra adults" to help kids access these resources and as a form of "bridging social capital" that provides expanded networks and opportunities for kids living in neighborhoods defined by concentrated poverty.

Building such systems of support and making them consistently available for 20 to 30 years in thousands of locations will require a huge commitment of public will, something this country has little history of success in generating.

This is a graphic that I've used often over the past 25 years to show that the outcomes we all want for kids requires work done at the bottom of this pyramid.  You can find this graphic in this PDF.

Below I've created some images that focus in on different elements of this graphic.  The ideas apply in building systems of support for inner city youth, and for solving any other complex problem.

At the bottom of the pyramid is the knowledge that we draw upon to propose solutions to problems.   While we each have our own personal experiences, and some have studied an issue for their entire lives, most don't have a broad reference base that they draw upon to support where and how they get involved.  Building a knowledge base that supports the decisions of others who need to be involved in solutions to problems is an essential first step. Keeping this up-to-date is an on-going challenge.

That knowledge base is the web library and directory of non-school tutor and mentor programs that I've been building since the early 1990s. Initially I did this to support youth, volunteers and leaders in the tutor/mentor programs I led in Chicago from 1975 to 1992. As I formed the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 I began to share this information more consistently with others throughout Chicago.  The knowledge collection role is Step 1 of the 4-part strategy we created in 1993.  

Competing for attention.  Drawing users to library.  Building and sustaining a library of information and ideas is one thing.  Creating daily advertising and public education that draws a growing number of learners and users to the information is a very different challenge.

Most youth serving organizations don't have powerful marketing teams working to draw attention and resources to them on an on-going basis. Innovating ways that more people take roles in building public awareness and draw viewers to information in the library has been a priority of the T/MC since it was formed. This is Step 2 of the 4-part strategy.

I find too few conversations that focus on this step.  With the Internet we have a growing "Crisis of Attention", which is described in this article.  With the White House and Federal government now run by an unelected immigrant billionaire and a convicted felon, getting attention on social media for youth development issues is more difficult than ever before, especially when one has no money for advertising (that's me). 

I keep looking for conversations where people are thinking about challenges of competing for people's attention in an environment where so many others have far more resources.  I've written many articles focused on "creating attention". Take time to read through them.

Building the network. Part of my web library focuses on "who needs to be involved" which includes a directory of non-school tutor and mentor programs in Chicago and around the country and a data base and collection of more than 2000 links that point to others who are involved in some way in efforts to help kids move through school and into jobs and careers.

Getting representatives of these organizations and resource providers together to learn, share, build relationships and innovate shared solutions to problems is what I focus on in this stage of the pyramid.  Unless people in business, philanthropy, faith groups, media, politics, etc. are coming together on an on-going basis, for face-to-face and on-line learning, it will be difficult to create and sustain collaborations that help build and sustain high quality youth supports in all the places where they are most needed. I tried to do this through the Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conferences that I help in Chicago from 1994 to 2015.  

In this blog article I show that a "village" of people with different talents and networks needs to be involved helping every tutor/mentor program grow, as well as helping many programs grow in specific neighborhoods and entire cities.    This is part of Step 3 in the four-part strategy.

These first three steps need to be happening on an on-going basis, reaching people throughout Chicago, Illinois and the world. However, they are just the start.

Better information, read and understood by more people, creates a better understanding of what types of youth support programs have the best chance of having a positive impact on youth and volunteers. Better information also helps people understand the challenges involved, which are many.

This needs to lead to actions that support programs in more places. If more of the stakeholders, including resource providers, are looking at this information, they can develop a set of actions that generate a flow of on-going resources (talent, dollars, ideas, technology, etc) into every high poverty neighborhood, to every tutor and mentor program operating in those neighborhoods.

T/MC map created in 2008

It is essential that maps be used to support this process. With a map leaders can focus on all areas of a city where kids need extra help. At the same time, neighborhood groups can focus on their part of the city. Many groups need to be doing this.  With a map we can add overlays that show indicators of need, existing youth tutor/mentor and learning resources, and assets (business, hospitals, faith groups, universities, etc) who could be helping youth programs grow in different areas....because they are also invested in these areas!

I think this is the weakest link in this process. Most programs compete with others for scarce resources. Most foundations use requests-for-proposals and competitive grants and competitions to decide who gets funded. There are only a few winners and many losers. Often prizes and grants are one-time gifts, not repeated from year-to-year.  No business could grow to be great on this type of funding stream. Yet, I see few leaders using maps to show a need to draw resources to all poverty neighborhoods, and to all of the organizations working in these areas.  Few cities have a map based leadership effort, intended to help great programs grow in every part of the city. 

However, if we could solve this problem....

A better flow of needed resources to youth serving organizations (Step 4 in 4-part strategy) leads to more and better programs serving k-12 youth in more of the places where they are needed.  I can't tell you how often people ask about "outcomes" without talking about the work needed to build well-organized, mentor-rich non-school programs.

This leads to the final graphic.

It can take several years for a business to become profitable, or for a youth-serving organization to build the team of staff, leaders, volunteers, parents and youth that makes it a "great" program.  

However, that's only the start. If a youth enters a great program in first grade, or 7th grade, it will still take 12 years for the first grader and six years for the 7th grader, just to finish high school!  It will take four to six more years for that young person to move on into adult lives and roles, and to jobs and careers that enable him/her to raise their own kids outside of the negative influences of high poverty.

Long-term; many places

I used this birth-to-work arrow in many other articles, such as this one, which is a discussion of the costs involved in a program intended to create jobs for 32,000 young men in a few Chicago neighborhoods.

I created this 'race-poverty' concept map to illustrate the many other factors that influence life outcomes for kids born or living in high poverty areas.  

Here's the challenge. As a nation we're not very good at keeping the focus (and flow of resources) on problems and solutions to the time it takes to actually begin to solve the problem.  While this 1993 Chicago SunTimes article includes a map, very few leaders in 2017 are using maps to emphasize all of the places where kids, families and schools need help to aid youth as they move through school and into adult lives. Read more.   Read this article about "building public will".

I started this article with this graphic, and pointing to this presentation from my collection of visual essays.

Poverty is a complex problem, requiring many different types of resources in the same place at the same time.  If we want more youth to stay in school, be safe in non-school hours, graduate from high school and move on to jobs, careers and adult responsibilities, we need to do the work shown at the bottom of this pyramid.

Moving into spring 2025 the challenges are much greater.  While the nation still deals with a lingering Covid19 pandemic, bird flu, floods, hurricanes, wildfires, etc. We now face massive layoffs of government workers and drastic reductions of Federal funding of programs that help keep us safe and help those who need extra help get that help.  These are just a few of the problems that I see as I scroll my social media feeds each day.  

In my own work I've never been able to get enough people together for an on-going basis, just to talk about ways we create and share the knowledge I've been collecting with more potential users. From 2009 till now, I created lists on Twitter with accounts of many organizations in the Tutor/Mentor library, but very few of these are using social media to connect with each other, or discuss issues I address in articles like this. I'm now trying to build a similar network on BlueSky and Mastodon. 

If you're interested in learning more I urge you to read more about what I've been trying to do in this Tutor/Mentor Learning Network presentation.  The please read these articles about establishing a Tutor/Mentor Connection at one or more universities. 

I invite others to create and share their own versions of my articles, to build Tutor/Mentor Connection-based strategies in your own communities.  I'd love to help you while I'm still able.

You can find me on any of these social media platforms.  I'm available for an on-line conversation on a daily basis.

We need everyone's help.

Can you help me do this work? Visit my FUND ME page and add your support.  Thank you.

Protest music for these times

Last November I stumbled across The Marsh Family singers on Twitter, as they created parody songs to lambast Trump and encourage support for Kamala Harris. I've followed them since, and now find them on BlueSky, too.  This song is titled "Don't Abandon Them" talking about the war in Ukraine.  Listen to it here.
  

You can listened to more of their songs on YouTube.  I hope you'll share them with your network.

This got me thinking about other protest songs. Since I went to college in the 1960s, then the Army from 1968-71, I did a search to find some songs that had resonated with me.

This site has a list of "10 Significant Protest songs of the Viet Nam War".   This site  has a longer list, of 17 top songs. 

It included one by The Animals, titled,  "We Gotta Get Out of this Place" - 1965  click here    

I can remember many evenings when my Acacia fraternity brothers blasted out that song, as we strummed our tennis racket guitars late at night.  

Another on the list was the song by the Plastic Ono Band, titled - "Give Peace a Chance" - 1969 click here

As I thought of these songs I thought back to one that I first heard in 1970 while I was stationed in South Korea.  It was from the play "Hair", and titled "Let the Sun Shine in".   Listen to it here. 

Songs have power. We need them now, to mobilize attention and combat the negative impact of the current President, his Project 2025 backers and out-of-control billionaires. 

More than that, we need songs that mobilize attention and resources to save the planet and stop humans from destroying it and themselves.

So, what were your favorite protest and motivation songs from the past?  What about now?  Share links in the comment section and on social media.

Thanks for reading. Find me on LinkedIn, Mastodon, BlueSky, Twitter and other social media. Find links on this page. 

Maybe someone will even create a song that draws attention to my blog articles and websites and leads to a university adopting my archives and creating a Tutor/Mentor Connection study program on their campus. 

Until then, a song that draws a few more donors to this page would help!  

Happy Valentine's Day! Spread Hope & Opportunity to All.

This photo was taken more than 30 years ago. Yet it still symbolizes what volunteer-based tutoring/mentoring is all about. These are two kids who were part of the Montgomery Ward/Cabrini Green Tutoring Program which I joined in 1973. I became its leader in 1975. I was the primary photographer for the next 20 years.

What's great about this photo is that is shows the "love" that was represented in this program, and can still be found among alumni of the programs I led and in photos I see on websites of other volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in Chicago and other places.

It's love that connects kids living in poverty with adults who don't live in poverty.

 

It's Valentine's Day, so I'm pointing to these graphics which were created by two interns from South Korea during a a seven week internship in 2012.  I wrote about it and included a link to the animation in this article.

This article from the DePaul University Center for Writing-Based Learning includes its own message of Love.  Another article, by Simon Ensor, a professor in France, communicates the same idea and points to ideas I've been sharing at this Tutor/Mentor blog.

Here's another graphic, also created by the 2012 intern team. Song Me Lee wrote this article, to show how the graphic was created, and to show what she'd been learning during her internship.  I encourage you to look at all of the messages posted by Song Me during her internship.  

On this page of the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC web site I post a list of interns from 2006 till 2015, with links to articles they wrote to introduce themselves at the start of their internship, and then links to final reflection articles.  Some provide more information than others, but all show an intent that the intern learn new ideas and new skills from working on their projects.

As I've interviewed students for these internships I've emphasized that one of my goals is that these students continue to stay connected to the Tutor/Mentor Connection library of ideas and to each other, so that in future years they become a community of people who help each other, and who apply these ideas to making the world a better place.

In many of my articles I've encouraged universities to establish a "Tutor/Mentor Connection" so more students are looking at my archives they way interns did who worked with me in past years.

Forming a College-Based Tutor/Mentor Connection by Daniel F. Bassill

 

I created this presentation to show a goal of having student-led Tutor/Mentor Connection-type teams growing on high school and college campuses throughout the US and the world.  Anyone who takes a few moments to view my blogs and then shares what I'm writing about, as Simon Ensor has done on his blog, is providing inspiration and motivation for one or many people to take this roll.

I'm still waiting for the first university or high school to adopt this strategy, and for the first corporation or benefactor to endow it with 10 years of funding, but as they say "Rome was not built in a day."   

I created this concept map to illustrate this vision. If you start writing about my ideas and/or creating your own visualizations, share the link in the comment box and I'll add you to this map.

Better yet, create your own map, and add my blog articles to it.  

Through the collective effort of many, we'll gather the bricks needed to build the "Rome" of this vision.

Thanks for reading. Enjoy your Valentine's Day with friends and special loved ones!  

Please connect with me on any of the social media platforms that I show on this page.

And, if you are able, please visit this page and make a contribution to support the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC.  

Super Bowl. Today and Past Articles.

Today's the Super Bowl game. I'm rooting for Philadelphia, since that's where my dad was born and where I have many family members.  For the first time in 50 years I won't be watching the game on TV. I don't want to see images of the current President and his billionaire friends plastered on the TV throughout the game.  I'll listen on the radio.

I started this blog in 2005. The first time I wrote about the Super Bowl game was in January 2007.

Here's some of what I wrote: 

"As I watched this game, I saw men who would be great spokespersons for tutoring/mentoring. For many years I've wanted to get sports groups involved with the Tutor/Mentor Connection. Many athletes come out of poverty neighborhoods, and most have befitted from having many mentors and coaches in their lives.

While many athletes have foundations and do great things to help their communities, there's no strategy that I know of that enlists athletes and coaches in an effort to use their celebrity visibility to draw attention to a social cause, and to draw volunteers and donors to specific neighborhoods throughout a city.

For instance, on the Super Bowl broadcast Terry Bradshaw, a former star quarterback, and current TV broadcaster, made an appeal for viewers to stay involved in helping survivors of Hurricane Katrina. The TV footage focused at New Orleans and the Lower 9th Ward, but I heard him end a phrase with "and the other areas".

If someone created a map of the area that had been destroyed by the Hurricane, it would be possible to enlist athletes from many sports to adopt different communities, or zip codes, in the entire area. Then, whenever that athlete were to have a TV opportunity, he/she could draw attention to his zip code, as part of an effort to keep attention on the entire area of destruction. As the season moves from Basketball to baseball to football and back to hockey and basketball, different stars, in different cities, would have many opportunities to focus attention, and draw resources to the various parts of the entire geographic area where volunteers, donors, and all sorts of help will be needed for many years.

In the same way, I want to enlist athletes to focus attention on the high poverty neighborhoods of big cities. Instead of just talking about the Boys and Girls Clubs, or Big Brothers, Big Sisters, or other highly visible charities, we need to focus attention regularly on every neighborhood where kids need help, and the organizations in those neighborhoods who are providing help.

This is a strategy I hope athletes will adopt. If you read this, and you know a Bear, or a Bull, or a college coach, or even a high school coach, who might want to be a champion of this idea, please pass this on.

This is a team game too, just like football. We'll get to the Super Bowl of life if we can get more people to help us."

I've been using the graphic of a team on a football field in many of my Super Bowl and sports-related articles since then.  I encourage you to browse posts at this link and see what I've been writing.

Imagine seeing professional and college athletes standing in front of a map showing high poverty areas in the city where they play, or where they grew up, calling on people from business, philanthropy, faith groups and other sectors to help comprehensive, long-term, volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs grow in dozens of places.

I think many could be creating their own versions of my graphics and articles, and communicating the ideas better.  Because of their visibility as a celebrity, I'm sure more people will take time to look at what they share.

If you think this is a good idea, please share it with your network.  Connect with me on BlueSky, LinkedIn and other on-line spaces (see links here) and share your own strategies.  

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

Thank you!   Go Eagles!

Stay focused. Do what you can every day.

We've all heard the story of the "tortoise and the hare". The rabbit gets off to a fast start then runs out of gas. The tortoise just keeps plodding along, passing the rabbit as it keeps on its own journey."

Each one of us can be the tortoise, by what we do every day.

However, the "hare" in this case is the on-going challenges we and other social-benefit organizations face from events we cannot control without working with many others. Maybe not even then.

I've been posting articles on man-made and natural disasters almost since I began this blog in 2005. One section of the Tutor/Mentor library focuses on the man-made disaster of racial inequality and class divisions in America, which has brought us to the tsunami that occupies the White House and is taking over functions of the US Government. 

In September, 2005 I wrote an article titled "Disaster Challenges us All". What I said then is as true today as it was then.

We need to educate the world to create three pools of generosity and compassion, as represented by the chart below.

One part of this budget focuses on responses to disasters (the hare in my story). Another part focuses on personal/family disasters, such as a child with cancer. The final third, focuses on the on-going funding needed to solve complex problems that I describe in my articles.  

In March 2011 I wrote this article, using the tortoise/hare graphic, under the headline "Another War. Another Tsunami. Another Day".

In November 2015 I wrote this article with the headline "Keeping Focus Amid a World on Fire".

In November 2016 I wrote this article with the headline "Stay Focused. Do What You Can Every Day".  I used the Tortoise/Hare graphic in that article, too.

In August 2019 I wrote this article, with several versions of the graphic shown below. 

Then, last November I wrote this article, with the introduction shown below.

In each of these I showed complex problems facing each of us and shared strategies for learning and connecting with others, with the encouragement to do what you can every day to keep helping kids. 

But to focus on other problems, too. 

This graphic illustrates that while I focus on helping kids living in urban poverty have support systems of mentors, tutors and extra learning that helps them move from birth-to-work, I realize there are other issues that also require day-to-day attention. Focus on these systemic challenges is also disrupted with every natural and man-made disaster.

My heart bleeds and I shed tears every time I read about local, national and corporate corruption and greed that causes these problems or lets them exist.  Now with a felon President and an out-of-control immigrant billionaire dismantling the Federal government, and Project 2025 taking us back to the 19th century or earlier, the world no longer can count on the USA for leadership in time of crisis. The poor and marginalized in America not only can't count on help, they fear for their safety.

The "do what you can" message is more important than ever.   So is the 'tortoise/hare' message.  And the "connect with others" message. At some point those now in power are going to run out of steam. The people of America and the world need to be waiting with new solutions that undo the damage and build a brighter future for the entire planet.

I've used the Internet to connect with others since the 1990s. I've used a variety of social media platforms.  Due to the quality of interaction on some of these, I am finding it more and more difficult to find people who are sharing ideas, resources and solutions to the issues I focus on.  

I've started using BlueSky and Mastodon more than Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. I still use these, and LinkedIn, too.  (see links on this page).  Due to my health I've not been to many face-to-face gatherings in the past few years. That makes my dependence on the Internet even more of a concern to me.

But, I keep trying. I hope you will too.    If you've found an active on-line community where people are discussing some of the ideas I've been sharing in this blog and on the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC website, please share links to those groups with me. 

Thank you.  

Have you created visualizations like these?

 

I worked in retail advertising for the Montgomery Ward corporation from 1973 to 1990 and every day spent time creating visualizations, ads, that intended to show potential customers reasons to visit our stores.

I've applied that habit to my leadership of tutor/mentor programs in Chicago as a visual way to show strategic thinking and to convince donors to support our efforts.

If  you've read any of my past blog articles you'll see how I've embedded these in my posts.

I created a Pinterest page several years ago to share some of these graphics.  You can find it at http://www.pinterest.com/tutormentor

If you've a similar collection I hope you'll share it with me and others on social media.  You can find me on many platforms.  find links on this page. 

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.