Giving Tuesday, November 28, 2023

Next Monday is the annual Giving Tuesday event, which attempts to motivate donors to reach into their pockets and provide support for non-profit organizations in the USA and around the world.  Visit this page to learn more. 

Since 1993 I've maintained a list of Chicago area volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs and plotted locations of more than 100 on my map.  My goal has been to help programs in every poverty area get the support they need to connect kids and volunteers in on-going learning and mentoring, not just a few high profile programs.  

If you look through the list of programs and visit their websites, you can usually find a donations page.  I'm not sure you'll find a special GivingTuesday page.  A few years ago Forefront organized an ILGive campaign and provided a searchable list of participating non-profits. This graphic shows the 2017 campaign website, which is now only available as an archive. 

For the past couple of years I've been trying to find someone who was aggregating information about youth serving organizations who were promoting #GivingTuesday on social media, and hopefully, their websites.  So far, I've not found anyone doing this.

Below are a few promotions I have seen.

826 Chicago - website

Gads Hill Center - website 

Girls in the Game - website

Alive Center - Naperville - website

Project SYNCERE - website 

Polished Pebbles - website 

IEEE Foundation - Try Engineering - website

CBO 4 Success - website 

Chicago Scholars - website

I point to more than 100 Chicago area youth programs from my website, but while many have social media accounts, not many use them regularly, and not many have been posting Giving Tuesday campaign posts.  If I see more I'll add a few to this list.

That does not mean programs are not raising money.  Here's just one example, from Tutoring Chicago. This was posted on LinkedIn. 

While I try to maintain an accurate list of Chicago area youth tutor, mentor and learning programs I don't have the talent and/or help needed to do all that needs to be done to draw attention and resources to tutor/mentor programs throughout the region and in other cities.  

Yet someone should be building a website that shows fund raising campaigns of more than the few organizations I am able to highlight in a single blog article. 

Below is a graphic from a presentation I created nearly 10 years ago showing the type of fund raising platform I was hoping to build, as an enhancement to the Tutor/Mentor Program Locator that we built in 2008-9.  See it in this PDF presentation.

Unfortunately, I have not been able to recruit the team, find the investment, or the talent to build this, and I no longer am able to maintain the Program Locator which we built in the 1990s and 2000s to collect and share this information. If you visit this page you can see my vision about using maps to build program capacity.

It may be a bridge too far for me, but the need is as urgent in 2023 as it was when I created the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993. 

That's why I've been reaching out to universities (via articles like this) for many years to motivate one, or more, to create on-campus tutor/mentor connection type teams to duplicate my work, and carry it forward into the coming decade.

If you're reading this, thank you.  Please investigate the programs I've highlighted, or the programs in my library, and send a contribution next Monday, or during the year-end giving period. Continue giving through next year.

Then, look at your network (or your bank account) and try to find one or a few people who would provide funds to establish Tutor/Mentor Connection programs on a college campus.  I want to share my archives, and my history (what worked, what did not work, what we never were able to try, etc) while I'm still alive and able to do that.

Which leads me to this. I'll be 77 on December 19th. Since 2011 I've invited people to make contributions to support Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC, as birthday gifts to me.  You can use the PayPal at this page to do that. 

Or you can contribute to my on-going Fund T/MI campaign, using the PayPal on this page.