Athletes doing good. What's the game plan?

I have used this graphic since the 1990s to visualize a role athletes and celebrities might take to support the growth of on-going, volunteer-based, tutor, mentor and learning programs in every high poverty area of the cities where they play, or where they grew up.  You can find it in this article.

Another graphic that I've used since the late 2000s is one showing two teams on a football field, along with fans, owners and media in the stands surrounding the field.  This graphic aims to motivate sports supporters to become youth development supporters, too. See it in this article.

In February 2024 as I watched the National Football League's (NFL) Man of the Year Award ceremony, I began to wonder if anyone was creating lists showing all of the good deeds athletes were doing, and sorting that by geography, and by cause. I wondered if anyone was using concept maps to show this information.   I shared those thoughts in this article and in this article.

I was reminded of this again a few weeks ago while watching the Major League Baseball (MLB) All Star Game, which profiled many players doing good deeds in their communities.   Below is a graphic from the home page of the MLB Together website.

Since no one has responded to my posts about sports involvement in support of youth tutor, mentor programs, I decided to search the Internet and see what I could find.

In less than an hour I found 16 websites that showed causes MLB and NFL athletes support.  What these show is that there is a massive amount of sports-related marketing of charitable causes.  And that some websites are doing some interesting work in aggregating and sharing this information.

Some of those are listed below:

My Cause My Cleats - this is an official NFL event and the website shows what causes players from each team are supporting - https://www.nfl.com/causes/my-cause-my-cleats/2024/

My Cause. My Cleats - Philadelphia Eagles - https://www.nfl.com/causes/my-cause-my-cleats/2024/eagles  They have this for every NFL team.

NFL charities Inspire Change campaign - https://www.nfl.com/causes/inspire-change/    This site shows Education, Economic Advancement, Police-Community Relations, and Criminal Justice Reform as the issues they support.

Athletes for a Causes - https://auprosports.com/athlete-causes/  This site has a list of causes, with a drop-down menu showing athletes who support each cause.

MLB Together - https://www.mlb.com/mlb-together

MLB Charities - https://mlbcharities.auctions.mlb.com/

MLB Players Trust Charity Auctions - https://mlbcharities.auctions.mlb.com/  The left side of this site lists teams and shows player involvement.

MLB Players Trust - supports player initiatives -  https://www.trust.mlbplayers.com/

Baseball charities - https://probaseballinsider.com/baseball-charities/  This site has list of player foundations and shows geographic area of focus for each. 

Big League Impact - https://bigleagueimpact.org/players/  This site features a few players and has a lists of players involved in past years. On this page causes are shown, with a list of charities that benefitted. 

MLB Together - list of causes https://auprosports.com/athlete-causes/  There is a list of teams/causes on this site

Stores about sports marketing

Causes players support - https://nielsensports.com/sports-fans-are-looking-to-sports-leagues-and-athletes-to-support-social-causes/

Exploring charitable work of MLB players - https://sportstars.blog/real-mvps-exploring-charitable-work-of-mlb-players/

Sports media - https://www.sportpositive.org/reports/

I posted this list on this page in the Tutor/Mentor library.

It's not the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC's intention to be the most comprehensive resource for athletes and celebrities supporting causes. Instead, I seek to point to websites that are aggregating and/or mapping this type of information. If you feel your site should be on this list please introduce yourself to Dan Bassill on LinkedIn, BlueSky, Twitter and/or Facebook.  I'd be happy to add your link to this list and feature it in future blog articles. 

What's missing?  The maps.  

The links I've aggregated show that many athletes are doing important work.  However, I only found one site (Inspire Change) with any type of map showing all the places athletes support, or of the causes athletes support in specific places.   

The map below is from an article I posted in 2017 following a "Sports and Violence in Chicago" series of articles in Chicago papers.  The article focused on Orr High School's basketball team, so I mapped the location of the high school and showed non-school tutor/mentor programs in the same area. 

In my article I emphasized the need to provide support to all of the existing tutor/mentor and learning programs in the area, for many years, and to help new ones grow where more are needed. I showed a map-based tutor/mentor program locator that my organization built in the 2000s to help people do this analysis and find individual programs in specific areas.   

View this visual essay to see the layers of information that were built into the program locator (which is now only available as an archive). Imagine being able to create a map showing athletes and/or foundations that supported youth programs in specific places.  If someone were aggregating and sharing the data, that might be possible.

Below is another graphic that I've used since the 1990s.  It shows that violence-prevention and youth development should be part of one long-term strategy, that reaches kids in early years before they get involved with negative habits, but also provides support to those same youth if they become part of the 16-34 age group of "out of school, no job, often gang involved" youth.   I used it in this article. 

There are hundreds of articles on this blog with similar graphics, posted for the same purpose. 

When I post a story, a few people might see it, and maybe one or two will share it.  If the same story is posted by a professional athlete, thousands will see it, many will share it, and some will get involved in solutions.  What if every college and professional athlete were the "you" in this graphic?

In the late 2000s we had several professional football players involved with the tutor/mentor program I was leading.  They came to the program site and talked to the kids and were speakers at conferences I organized. That was good for our program, and the people who met them at our conferences, but did little to support other programs in Chicago. 

So I created a visual essay showing a goal of athletes supporting entire neighborhoods of programs, while they also support favored single programs.

I'm sharing these because I want the ideas to be adopted, duplicated and improve upon, by athletes and teams in every sport, throughout the world.  The primary challenge nonprofit organizations face of attracting attention and retaining donors can be greatly reduced if high-profile people are connecting those they influence with lists of youth programs in neighborhoods and/or cities that they adopt.

Such videos and social media posts could be featured on team websites and during special events, like All-Star games and championships. 

If you click on the map at the top of the page and enlarge it, you'll see this text in the lower left corner, showing how the "Adopt-a-Neighborhood Program" would work.

Imagine star athletes getting awards and bragging about all the ways they drew attention and resources to tutor, mentor, learning and workforce development programs in the neighborhood they had adopted.  Imagine this information being collected and aggregated and made available as "game plans" that other athletes could use to "win" recognition in future years.

That never happened, but it's not too late for someone to see this idea and make it a reality.  PS. while you're thinking about this, take a look at the "Business School Connection" idea posted on the Tutor/Mentor wiki. 

Combine these two ideas and grow them over a 10 to 20 year period and see how much impact that has on reducing violence while providing opportunities. 

Furthermore, this may influence donors to support researchers to do a systematic process of collecting, sorting, categorizing and mapping this information, providing a wealth of knowledge, a game plan, and play books, that the world can use to help those who need extra help for a long time.

Thanks for reading. Think of this article as a "coaches clinic".  Use the ideas to build and sustain long-term strategies that help reduce poverty by providing paths to opportunity.

Connect with me on LinkedIn, BlueSky, Mastodon, Facebook, Instagram or Twitter to share links to the work you're doing.  See my social media links on this page.

Finally, if these ideas appeal to you, consider making a contribution to help me keep doing this work.  click here.

What's your problem-solving process look like?

While I've tagged over 130 article on this blog with #planning, probably most of the one-thousand plus articles posted here since 2005 focus on the planning needed to help great, on-going, mentor-rich programs reach K-12 youth in all areas of persistent poverty. 

I show planning steps and information mapping below.  Do you have visualizations like these to show your problem-solving process? 

This concept map highlights steps in an on-going planning process which aims to influence what resource providers, businesses and policy-makers do, not just what kids, educators, program leaders and parents do.  click here to open

Below is another version of this planning process. click here to open

On both concept maps you'll see geographic maps used at the beginning of the planning process.  Unless you define what places you want to help, using a map, you could get a lot of people together, spend a lot of money, and still miss a lot of the places that need help the most.

On both concept maps I show a next step, of gathering available information about the problem, who's already working to solve it, who should be involved in planning and action steps, etc. 

Using that information the Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present) began creating maps to show locations of non school, volunteer-based tutoring and/or mentoring programs in 1993 and to follow media stories about shootings, gangs, or poorly performing schools, with map stories that talked about the availability (or lack) of tutor/mentor programs in the area surrounding the incident.  

My goal has been that maps and the library of programs and research be used by leaders in business, government, colleges, hospitals, faith groups and government to fill high poverty neighborhoods with a wide range of  youth development and workforce development based tutor and mentor programs.
(Read more in this article)

The map below is another example of my use of maps. 

I used these maps in this article. It shows how maps can be used in planning, to identify stakeholders who should be involved in the process.  It should lead to questions such as, "Do we invest in helping existing programs grow?  or, "Do we invest in new start-ups?"  The planning process should provide answers.

Here's another article, titled "Use Maps for Understanding and Serving Areas of Need."

In the concept maps at the top of the page I include links to the research section of the Tutor/Mentor library. It's shown in the map below. click here to open

The small boxes at the bottom of each node contain links to external websites and pages of my library, and to additional concept maps.

My goal has been to expand the information planners had available when developing new solutions to persistent problems.  A research team could dig into my library and the websites I point to when starting a planning process.  Ideally they already would have spent many hours learning what's in the library, so when a grant opportunity or new policy initiative is being discussed, they already know where they can find large amounts of information.

Concept maps can help people navigate this vast library.  Here's one of many articles I've written showing uses of concept map. 

I added two new resources to the research section of the library today.  Below is a view of one page from an extensive "Poverty & Wealth  Inequality" project created by Gene Bellinger, a systems thinking pro who I've learned from for more than a dozen years.  You can see his influence in the planning map shown at the top of this article.  

Open this link to start your journey.  Gene has used AI to create a series of stories and relationship maps, that show a not-to-distant future where the rich and powerful have taken full control. His stories show how people have built a resistance that ultimately overthrows that government and replaces it with one more fully committed to the welfare of all people and the planet. Open the link to start reading the stories and open more and more pages.   

You won't see the interactive graphic shown above until you open the html file that Gene points to in the upper right of the page.   If you open that file you'll find an interactive map. That means you can zoom in to look more closely at different elements. You can click on nodes to read the text. You can create and share your own versions, as I'm doing. 

There's a load of information.  When you open the link to start your journey you'll see a list on the left side of your screen, which I show below.  

Each link on this page opens to a story, with additional maps.  As my #CLMOOC friend Terry Elliot would say, it's like "going down a rabbit hole" of learning. You just keep going deeper and deeper.

View this short video to see Gene Bellinger's introduction to AI Modeling.

Which leads me to the map shown below.  At the top of the third column from the left is a "Project 2025" link.  Click here to open that page. 

If you don't go any further you'll be lost because the concept map shown with the article has so many nodes that it's impossible to read.  However, if you open the html version, as I did, you can zoom in to look more closely at the elements on the map.  For those concerned with the direction the USA is going, this is a valuable map. 

Last week I wrote an article titled "Solving problems? Know the Network."  I pointed to a Power Mapping article that provides steps for learning who you should be connecting with to be able to solve the problem you're trying to solve (or to build the business you're building).  The Project 2025 map is an example of Power Mapping. 

All of this is just part of the first stage of a planning process.  It's really on-going because problem solving is cyclical. As you solve the first problem you face new problems, which require new information, and new people and resources.   Furthermore, this process is at different stages in thousands of places where people are trying to solve the same problem.  If information showing what each group is doing is available in web libraries, planners should be able to learn from each other, and not be constantly "reinventing-the-wheel". 

One of your challenges will be to build this network, then sustain and expand it over many years.  That's Step 1 in the concept map shown below. 

However, it's Step 2 and Step 3 that are more difficult.  Step 2 focuses on generating on-going attention that draws a growing number of people to the library and blogs like mine.  Step 3 focuses on helping people find what they are looking for, understand what they find, and apply what they learn in actions that help solve the problem you're focused on.

If the process works, it leads to Step 4, where planners find lists of organizations to support, or tools to fill voids where new organizations are needed.  The public awareness generated in Step 2 aims to motivate people to volunteer time, talent and dollars supporting youth serving programs in the area planners are focused.  In my case, that's been the Chicago region since 1993.  My list of tutor/mentor programs can be found here. 

I've never had much money for any of this, particularly Steps 2 and 3.  So I've focused on motivating other people to share the message and help build understanding.  It's what faith leaders have done for over 2000 years.  

How might athletes and celebrities support this process?  In February 2024 I wrote this article after watching the NFL annual awards presentation.  I wrote this article in 2023.  These show how athletes in major sports and many celebrities could go beyond the individual charity efforts they support to call greater on-going attention to the needs of entire neighborhoods and cities.  I wondered if anyone was aggregating information about all the foundations and causes athletes and celebrities support, so a  library and Power Map could be created that planners could use to better understand who is, or is not, being served, and who might be able to help draw greater attention to specific issues.   

Is anyone doing this?

7-23-2025 update - read this post by Dave Snowden and you'll see the same thinking as in my planning maps.

Thanks for reading.  Share your thoughts about mapping information libraries with me on LinkedIn, BlueSky and other social media platforms (see links here). 

If you value what I'm sharing please make a contribution to help me pay the bills.  Click here

Solving problems? Know the Network.

Below is a graphic that I shared in my July newsletter, and in my library.

This article is part of an on-line library hosted by an organization called, "The Commons".  Its title is "Power Mapping to Design a Winning Campaign Strategy".  Read it here. 

In its introduction, the article says, "To win a campaign, you need to correctly identify who has the power to fix the problem you want fixed. Then you need to pressure them to make the right decision. Power mapping is a tool to not only identify who holds that power, but, crucially, who holds influence over that person, and, therefore, who to target with your direct actions and campaign activities."

This is a strategy that I've followed, and shared, for more than 45 years.  The graphic below is a page from a visual essay showing the "operating principles" I followed in leading volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in Chicago from 1975 to 2011.

This lists nine skills/abilities needed in planning and leadership teams to operate an effective program.  I used this to try to find volunteers to help me lead a program that grew from 100 pairs of youth/students in 1975 to over 400 pairs by June 1992.   Initially I used an Excel spreadsheet to list all my volunteers, their jobs and where they worked, then used this to sort for skills I was looking for. I could choose from three or four names based on where they worked, and how this might impact that company's support for us if the volunteer took on a leadership role.

In the 1990s I started using a FileMaker Pro database to collect information that I used to support my print and email campaigns, and used to invite people to networking conferences that I held in Chicago every six months from May 1994 to May 2015. That grew to about 13,000 people by 2003.  That's when we were forced to stop sending print newsletters due to lack of money.

I continued to use the database to recruit volunteers and donors for Cabrini Connections until I left in 2011. And, I used it to invite people to conferences until the last one in May 2015.  However, it did not translate very well to our email campaigns that began in the early 2000s. I estimate that we lost regular contact with more than half of the people we'd been sending print newsletters to. 

It still has contact information for tutor/mentor programs in Chicago that I host on the Tutor/Mentor website.   I still have it if anyone would like to do an analysis of the range of organizations I was sharing information with.

After forming the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 I began to attend a number of meetings focused on reducing violence and improving schools.  I often thought to myself, "Who else should be in this conversation?" and "What other information should they be looking at?"   Those two thoughts have driven my thinking about network analysis for over 30 years.

In the 1990s I created the graphic that I show below.  It shows the design of a mentor-rich program, with volunteers coming from many different backgrounds and kids getting involved at one grade level and staying through high school graduation.  Our goal was that those connections would continue after kids graduated.  Today I saw a note on Facebook from one former student to a volunteer, celebrating the volunteer's birthday.  It shows that what we hoped would happen is really happening, at least for some former students and volunteers.

Another version of that is in this second graphic.  This shows how I share information via a website, blogs, social media, e-Mail newsletters and one-on-one conversations that I hope will be passed on to other people. Each spoke of the wheel represents someone who could be sharing information with his/her network.

Both graphics visualize the wide range of people who need to be involved in helping kids in areas of persistent poverty move through school and into jobs and careers.  In this visual essay, titled "Total Quality Mentoring" I use these graphics and show the role of leaders in mobilizing volunteers to support youth serving programs in every high poverty area of Chicago, not just the most visible areas.

Here's a graphic I created in the late 1990s that shows an application of this thinking.

The people in the first ring of your network may not be able to influence change.  However, if they share posts like mine in their networks, a lager circle of people are exposed to these ideas.  Ultimately, this can reach the "super hero" who has the most power and can be a "tipping point" in an organization's growth and ability to have an impact.  

Understanding who is participating.

By tracking attendance at the Tutor/Mentor Conferences I was able to create maps like the one below, showing who attended.  You can see maps from the 1998 and 2008 conferences on this page.  These show a good representation from tutor/mentor programs, but low participation from key people who need to be strategic in supporting these programs, such as business, philanthropy, government, research and media.

In the mid 2000s I began to learn about social network analysis (SNA). One of the leading thinkers was (and still is) Valdis Krebs.  In 2009 I wrote this article, titled "Nudge the Net: - how do we mobilize personal network to solve problems of inner city violence?"  I followed up with this article.  In both, I featured Krebs' work. 

In 2010 Valdis Krebs donated software to the Tutor/Mentor Connection and presented a "how to" workshop to interns who I recruited to do an analysis of conference participation.  Below is a map from a blog article created by one of those interns, showing participation in the November 2008 and May and November 2009 conferences.

Unfortunately these interns were only able to help me for a short period of time and I've not found anyone to continue this work since then.  Thus, I was not able to map more of the conferences and move to the next stage of understanding "Who is missing?" and "How do we get them involved?"

Around this time I created the concept map shown below, showing "talent needed" in any successful organization.  A parallel map shows "networks needed". 

These maps build upon what I was doing in the 1970s and 80s.  In many articles I've suggested that people use these as planning tools for building their own organization, making sure that someone has each of the talents highlighted.  And I've suggested to researchers that instead of just mapping "who participated", use concept maps like mine to show "Who needs to be involved".  Then compare the participation maps to the "aspirational" maps, to learn "Who's missing?"

In 2012 I created a network analysis map showing my Facebook followers. You can see the analysis in this PDF essay.   

I've written about network building and network analysis often since starting this blog in 2005. Here's a 2009 article that uses the concept map shown above.  And here's an article from 2023.

Are you doing this type of analysis? 

How can we apply ideas in the Power Mapping article to better understand who is part of the ecosystem of people and organizations that need to be working collectively toward building and sustaining programs and policies that address all of the challenges shown on the concept map below?

This map shows many of the issues progressives want to address and that the current administration seems to want to make worse for immigrants, people of color, people living in high poverty areas, and people with special needs. 

Using concept maps like I show above, researchers could build a database showing all the different people and organizations who need to be included in on-going learning and problem solving, for many years.  

I'm still connected to the boy I first tutored in 1973. He attended college and has to sons who have graduated from college.  

As you read the above, one thing you may, or may not, be thinking about is, "How does an individual, or an organization, do all of this network building, mapping and analysis?" How do they keep doing it for 20-30 years? Where do they find the money?"

Read some of my articles about having universities adopt my work, with it funded by wealthy donors.   

Become the "YOU" in the graphics shown above and share this article.  Maybe you, or someone you know, will use the Power Mapping ideas to identify one or more people who will move these ideas forward.

Thanks for reading.  Visit this page to see where you can connect with me on social media.

And, visit this page to make a contribution to help me continue to do this work. 

Connecting people and ideas

In many of my blog articles I show a 50 year strategy of "connecting people and ideas".   I posted this article on the MappingforJustice blog this week to illustrate how I do this by adding links to my library.

Here's another example.  I saw this post from the Prison Policy Initiative today on Twitter (yes, I still visit the site). 

I've followed them for more than three years and added them to the Tutor/Mentor library in July 2022. When I did that I put them on a list of "new links added" that I had just begun.

Under the listing I included a "posted in this section" link, which pointed to the page in the library where I host that link, and many others with related information.  

I've also added it to the list of resources that I share in my monthly e-mail newsletter, as you can see below and in my most recent issue.   

And, I boost their posts when I see them on social media, hopefully drawing the attention of others to their work.

Why do I do this?  The two concept maps below show why.

The first shows my goal of helping kids and volunteers connect in multi-year tutor, mentor and learning programs that help them through school and into adult lives. It also shows that kids in areas of persistent poverty face many challenges that they and their families cannot solve by themselves. View the map at this link. 

The second shows the many different supports kids need at each grade level as they move from first grade to their first job and a career.  All kids need these supports. However, kids in areas of concentrated poverty have fewer than other kids.  That needs to change.  Click here to view.

In the lower left corner of this map is a statement saying, "Volunteers who get involved as tutors/mentors learn about these issues, and help provide these other resources.   In high poverty areas of big cities, structured programs are needed to connect youth with volunteers."

Unless volunteer-based programs have an on-going strategy that exposes their volunteers to this information, too few will take the extra steps that I describe in this concept map.  My newsletters, website and social media posts are aimed at program leaders, board members, donors and educators who can help instill habits of "learning" among volunteers, not just students.

One way to know if they do that would be to look for a "resources" page on the youth program's website, to see if it points to libraries like mine, or if they have other strategies for educating their volunteers.

Below is a graphic that shows the role I've taken, of connecting "people who can help" with information, and with places "where help is needed".

The issues we're dealing with today have been with us for many years. Why? Because too few people who don't live in poverty care enough to devote time, talent, dollars and votes to build and sustain the programs and policies needed to help those who do live in poverty.  And that means more than just building volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs.  There are a wide range of issues that need to be addressed. None are short-term solutions.

The Prison Policy Institute does a great job of calling attention to one part of the problem, which is the massive incarceration rates of people in the USA.  Another is the Incarceration Reform Resource Center, which I also list in my newsletter.  Unless more people see the information they are sharing and hosting on their websites, too few will understand the problem and be motivated to do anything about it.

What's your role? Be the YOU in this graphic. 

Share my posts. Share my newsletter. Share information in the Tutor/Mentor library.  Start a learning circle in your family, business, social circle, faith group, college, etc. where you use the information I and others are sharing to become more informed and more active in finding, and funding, solutions.

As I write this, I'm not forgetting the huge challenge facing our freedom and democracy. Many of the policies being rolled out by the Administration hurt poor people, and people of color, more than others. They hurt all of us and are making the world an even less safe place.  I started this section of the library during Trump's first term to help you find resources to improve our government.  The links I include should also be part of your reading and learning circles.

Connect with me on LinkedIn, BlueSky, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Mastodon. (see links here)

And, if you value what I'm sharing, and the library I host, please visit this page and make a contribution to help fund the work.

Thank you. 

New look for visual essays and videos

I spent the last week reformatting pages on the Tutor/Mentor website where I have shared videos, visual essays and concept maps in the past.

This is the revised format for my video library.  I'm showing page 1 of 3 pages. 

Below is what the page looked like before.

The new format is two columns wide.  Each image is larger than on the previous format. Where this really makes a difference is when you view the page on your phone.  Instead of seeing the whole page scrunched onto your phone screen, you see one image at a time as you scroll through the page.

Below is page 1 of 5 pages of the reformatted visual essays page.

Below that is the first page of my concept map library.

I also reformatted pages showing visualizations and videos done by interns between 2005 and 2015. I posted this article on the intern blog to share those. 

As you look at my collection of visual essays you'll see presentations like this, where I've encouraged high schools, colleges and universities to create a Tutor/Mentor Connection study and action program on their own campus.

The interns who worked with me spent time reading my blog articles and looking through my website, then created their own interpretations, using various forms of visualization.  They were building new skills while learning new ideas. They were actively helping share ideas that could help more youth living in areas of persistent poverty get on-going tutor, mentor and learning support that would help them through high school, college and into adult lives and careers.  

Their articles focus on Chicago. The last were done in 2015, 10 years ago. That means there is a lot of new content that could be reviewed.  Any university in Chicago or any other place could have students doing this same work, and could soon have a page on their website showing student work, just as I do.

A few years ago I wrote an article titled "Tipping Points: Growing and Supporting New Leaders". In it I showed how universities could be building a new wave of leaders who work directly in youth serving organizations while training others to become more proactive in supporting nonprofit and social benefit organizations from their roles in business, professions, policy makers, etc. 

It's the type of article student learners could review and reproduce in ways that might influence more people to actually adopt the ideas!  Many might continue such work through their adult lives.

That's the goal.

I can be found on LinkedIn, BlueSky, Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon and Twitter (see links here).  I hope you'll connect with me.

If you appreciate what I share on my blogs and in the Tutor/Mentor library, please consider a contribution to help me pay the bills.  click here