I'm a "Service Enterprise"

Since July 2011 when I moved from a 501-c-3 structure to a LLC tax structure people who supported me in the past as volunteers and donors have struggled to continue to support me. I've struggled to find ways to ask for help, even though I can't do what I'm doing without the time, talent and dollars provided by a wide range of people.

Yesterday I attended a workshop at the National Conference on Volunteering and Service where the term "Service Enterprise" was introduced by an organization called Reimagining Service.

On their web site is this statement:
We believe that one way to increase the impact of volunteering is to encourage the creation of more service enterprises. A service enterprise is a nonprofit or for-profit organization that fundamentally leverages volunteers and their skills to successfully deliver on the social mission of the organization.

I've described myself as a social entrepreneur, a social innovator, and a network-builder. Others have called me a "thought leader".

If it helps you to understand me as a Service Enterprise, then please use this definition as you read the articles on this blog and browse the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC.

In the Chicago SunTimes today was an article showing the cost of violence in Chicago to be more than $5 billion annually. You can find the study here.

If you want to help reduce this cost then become a volunteer, donor, partner of the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC and help me support the collective effort of hundreds of different organizations who are working to reduce the negative impacts of poverty by providing better non-school and school-based learning and mentoring support.

This map shows talent I am trying to find

This graphic shows the type of platform for learning and collective effort that I've been building and need your support to continue. If we can make this work in Chicago we can share it with other cities. If you are from another city and help me develop this platform you can have it for your own city at a much lower cost than what it would take to build it from scratch.