Connect with other out-of-school-time leaders

 Below is a map on the Georgia Statewide Afterschool Network website. 

This looks like a great resource.  I follow them on Twitter (X).  They post information regularly.

They are one of several afterschool resources that I share on this page of the Tutor/Mentor library.  The Georgia Afterschool Network is also listed on this 50 State Afterschool Network page, which is also on my list.

I also point to websites that aggregate youth program information on this page.  The map below shows one of the organizations on that list. It's the MyChi.MyFuture. Programs map which shows youth serving programs in Chicago.  

If these two pages don't provide enough information on out-of-school-time programs, you can also look at individual programs that I show on this page, and this page. 

And, if you visit this section you'll find dozens of research articles.

From 1994 to 2015 I hosted May and November leadership and networking conferences to try to get representatives of these organizations to connect, network, share ideas and find ways they could work together to overcome obstacles.  I used the website to share links to all of these organizations, even if they did not attend the conferences. I also included them on printed newsletters sent from 1994 to 2003 and email newsletters sent monthly since then.  You can see the conference goals on this page. 

These are still my goals.

As we enter a new school year, and the final months of 2025, programs serving youth in the non-school  hours, or focused on youth in high poverty areas, or with special needs, are struggling to find consistent resources. That struggle is magnified by how much attention traditional and social media are focusing on the actions of the current US government, and many states.

More than ever we need to aggregate information, and find ways to draw people to it, help them understand it, then help them apply it in many different places where kids and families need extra help.

In several past articles I've talked about "mapping participation" to learn "who's there" and "who's missing".  I saw a post on LinkedIn today from KUMU that showed how their platform can be used to do network analysis.

Note how when you click on each node you get information about that person, or what network he/she is part of.  Similar maps could show all the information in my library, or in libraries hosted by other people.

It would be great if someone were able to create a tool that would look at different sections of my library and created network maps showing who is visiting.  It would be even better if we had places where a large portion of the ecosystem (including media, funders, policy makers, families, youth, business, etc.) were engaged on on-going learning and planning that leads to more and better youth serving programs in all the places where they are most needed.

Until that happens I'll keep trying to keep the links in the library updated and will continue to point to this resources in my blog articles and my own social media posts.

If you've found any of this useful, let me know.  You can find links to my social media platforms on this page.

If you'd like to contribute to help pay the bills, visit this page. 

Mapping Complexity

Below is a post I saw on Twitter, showing a "Social Change Ecosystem Framework" developed by Deepa Iyer, of the SolidarityIs and Building Movement Project.  

.@aliciasanchez: This #SocialChangeMap ecosystem reduces hierarchy, but also shows how roles can be racialized & gendered: "Is it always women of color who are caregivers in your life? Is it always white folks who are considered visionaries? What's the power dynamic around that?" pic.twitter.com/cWLHqRfRdL

— Building Movement Project (@BldingMovement) November 16, 2022

Here's an article by Deepa Iyer that describes a use of this Social Change Map.  I love the "hub and spoke" design she uses and how this shows the range of people and networks who need to be part of any problem-solving ecosystem.  

I've used similar visualizations for more than 20 years.

You can see these in hundreds of articles on this blog.  I've posted several dozen articles since 2005 that I've tagged "complex problems".  And many more tagged "network building".  Plus a few more tagged "ecosystem". 

Below is a concept map created more than 10 years ago that shows the range of talents and networks that need to be involved in solving any complex problem.

All of these emphasize that no single person can solve the many complex problems we face locally and globally.  If you scroll through the articles tagged complex problems you'll find many visualizations showing complexity. 

I found another on my LinkedIn feed this week.

This graphic by Christian Sarkar can be viewed in an article titled "The Ecosystem of Wicked Problems".  

One of the features of this graphic is that it shows relationships and how the problems are inter-related to each other.  

What would have made it better (in my opinion) would have been links from each node, to web libraries with information about each problem.

For instance, here's my concept map showing the research section of the Tutor/Mentor Library.  At the bottom of each node is a link to a specific collection of websites.

Linking to libraries like this would expand the information anyone has to understand a problem, to connect with others who are also trying to solve the problem, and to find work being done in some places to solve the problem that might stimulate innovation and/or duplication in many other places.

The challenge, of course, is building and maintaining such libraries, and attracting people to use the information.  And, finding consistent funding to pay for the work.  I was never able to do that. 

I hypothesize that every link I point to from my library represents an ecosystem of many people working for that organization and an even greater number who that organization and its employees connect with.  

Looking at the graphics by Christian Sarkar and Deepa Iyer, imagine people from each of these nodes connecting with each other in on-going learning, innovation, resource development and problem solving.

Who are all of those people? Who are all of the organizations working in each category? 

Someone who's been doing some deep thinking about part of this is Greg Bloom, Founder of Open Referral. He was the speaker at the November 15, 2022 ChiHackNight event.  

I encourage you to view the short video on the home page of the Open Referral website to understand the important work they are doing and the problems they are addressing. 

Greg's group has been bringing people together since 2012 to talk about the challenges of building and maintaining information directories and to "create a common set of data standards, that define and structure information, so that it can be readily transferred between systems".  Read through the FAQ questions and answers on the Open Referral website to understand this better. 

View Greg's Nov 15 presentation to ChiHackNight.  click here

That means many distributed directories could be connected in larger directories, making more information available to more people.

The Tutor/Mentor Connection, which I and a few others created in 1993 and launched in 1994, has been collecting information about Chicago area volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs for 30 years, along with building a library that represents the ecosystem of research, resources, funding, businesses and everyone else who needs to be involved in helping kids in poverty move more safely from birth-to-work.

We published our first printed directory of Chicago tutor and mentor programs, and the ecosystem of those who support them, in 1994 and updated it annually through 2003. After that all of our information was put on-line. 

We had others ask us to share the data, but who never offered to help pay the costs of collecting and maintaining it.  I never did this for fear of the larger organization eliminating the need for our work, and then at some point in the future, ceasing operation, so none of the data we had been collecting would remain available. 

Furthermore, if our data was owned by a national organization, the people who managed it would not have local passion, or local purpose, to use the data regularly to help existing programs constantly improve, nor to help new programs form where data analysis showed more were needed. 

That was why we were collecting the information in the first place!

Thus, I proposed there be a decentralized collection of data that was shared in a system similar to what Greg has been working on. Back in the 1990s the technology, or motivation, to do this was not available.

Thus, I fully understand the challenges Greg describes. For the past 10 years I've been a one-person army trying to maintain the library, share it, and get people to talk to myself, and each other.  If you read though this blog you can find hundreds of articles that relate to this.

Bringing people together.

When we were planning the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 and talking about building a directory our PR partner from Public Communications, Inc. in Chicago, said "You've got to host a conference!".  

Using the contact information from organizations we learned about through our survey and our networking, we hosted a first Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference in May 1994 and hosted one every six months after that until May 2015, at which time I had to stop due to lack of money.

In this article you can see a map showing participation over 20 years.  Here's a presentation showing how universities hosted these conferences and how I reached out to them for many years.  Between 1996 and 2002 attendance ranged from over 150 to over 300. Our mailing list grew from 400 to 14,000. This represented quite a large ecosystem, yet, it was not attracting business, philanthropy, government or university participants.   Thus, there were always too few of "the right people" to fully build the Tutor/Mentor Connection to what I hoped it would accomplish.

Since forming the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC in 2011 the range of people I've been reaching dramatically declined and conference participation dropped to around 100 per event. 

So let me sum up.

1) the world is dealing with complex problems and some people are creating great visualizations showing this complexity;

2) some people recognize the difficulty of collecting and sharing social service information and are trying to innovate new solutions;

3) knowing "who" should be included in a directory, or in an "invitation list" is part of the problem in a big city like Chicago;  getting them to come to "your event" or into "your conversation" is a huge challenge if you're not well-connected, or have a reputation that draws people to you.  Getting into "their conversations" and "being heard" is just as difficult.

4) I find very few people creating visualizations of who should be connected, or who they are bringing together via their events.

5) even if you have a list of "who" unless you do some sort of network analysis of event participation and/or social media conversations, you don't really know how well your network is connecting.

I'm sure readers might list more problems. I'd love to hear from you.

This has already been a long article, but if you've made it this far I encourage you to go one article further.  Review the 4-part strategy described in this concept map.

The "information collection" described in this article is just STEP 1. Getting people to look at the information (step 2) and helping them understand it (step 3) and use it (step 4) also need to be funded and supported as part of any problem-solving process.

Thanks for reading. I hope you'll share this.  I'm on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook and Mastodon. (see links here).  Let's connect.

If you appreciate these articles please visit my FundT/MI page and send a small contribution. 

Building a Segmented Understanding of Youth-Serving Programs

Now that school has started, and most volunteer-based tutor and/or mentor programs are past the recruitment/orientation/matching stage, and volunteers are meeting with kids, I think it's a good time to dig deeper, to understand the different types of mentoring strategies that exists, and the different youth and adults who are the intended beneficiaries of mentoring. Furthermore, let's once again look at roles volunteers can take beyond being a mentor, or without being a mentor.

I'm going to share some graphics.   Let's look at this graphic first:

All youth and adults (represented by yellow circle) would benefit from mentors helping them journey through life. However, much research shows that youth living in high poverty, segregated, and/or isolated, areas need more help to move from first grade toward their adult lives.  Here's a concept map that illustrates this differently. People living in more affluent areas have more resources to help them overcome challenges.  

Below is another graphic, from a presentation titled "Defining Terms".  In this I show youth living in high poverty areas as the group I focus on, but recognize that system involved youth, youth with social, emotion, physical needs, youth with parents in the military, and LGBTG youth, all have unique needs. 

Through the Tutor/Mentor Connection, started in 1993, and through the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC, started in 2011, I focus on youth living in high poverty areas of big cities like Chicago, where a wide range of mentoring, tutoring and learning supports are needed, in the lives of thousands of young people.  At http://www.tutormentorexchange.net you can find a library of information and ideas that anyone can use to help create programs that reach youth early and stay connected for many years, if the end result is a life out of poverty with a network of people to help achieve that goal.

Someone should be duplicating what I've been doing to support youth in each of the other categories shown on the above graphic, including building a web library similar to the one I've hosted since the late 1990s. 

The graphic shown below illustrates this long term commitment.  It shows kids I connected with when they were in middle school, who I'm still connected with nearly 25-30 years later. Several have college degrees, including advanced degrees. These are just a few of the youth who were part of the tutor/mentor programs I led between 1975 and 2011.

Not all youth serving programs have the same long-term commitment, or focus only on youth in high poverty areas.  Many mentoring formats focus on youth age  16-24 who have been involved in the juvenile justice system, or have dropped out of high school before graduation.  Such program require many different types of support to help a young person get his/her life back on track. 

Other mentoring formats, such as school based mentoring, are not structured for long-term connectivity. Many forms of involvement are "motivational speakers" or short duration classes. These are all part of a mix of needed services, but without at least one organization in a child's life offering a long-term support system, are the others enough to overcome the challenges poverty places in front of kids and families?

So who is doing the research to understand what types of programs are available? 

In 2013 I created the graphic below. I wrote about it here, with an invitation for technologists to help build a graphic that programs might be willing to put on their web sites. Imagine a common graphic showing what age you serve, what time of day, what part of the birth to work pipeline, etc.

 

Until we build a more segmented understanding of the different types of programs within a city, and who they are intended to serve, then use maps to better understand what neighborhoods are well-served and which are under-served, we'll never be able to build a marketing strategy that leads to great programs reaching k-12 youth in all places where such programs are most needed.

The question we should be asking ourselves is "How can we fill all high poverty neighborhoods with organized, age specific programs, that can build and sustain long-term connections with children as the grow to become adults?    How do we pay for it? Where do we attract and retain talented leaders? How do we keep volunteers involved for multiple years?  

Furthermore, who's providing the money and talent to collect, organize, analyze and share this information on a continuous basis?  

Every child is special. Every child deserves a support system that offers hope and opportunity. Some have this when they are born. 

Most kids live in neighborhoods with a wide range of adults modeling opportunity and helping kids through school and into adult lives.  However, kids in high poverty areas don't have such a diverse network of support. Most kids in these areas won't have this unless many adults who don't live in poverty make a consistent, heroic, on-going effort to make such supports available. 

If you're writing similar articles on your own blog, or host on-line forums where people are discussing these questions, use the comment box to share a link to your web sites or forums. I hope there are many leading this discussion.

I'm on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn (see links here). I look forward to connecting with  you. 

There's one other page I'd like to call your attention to. It invites you and others to send small contributions to help me continue to do this work. 

Thank you to those who read and share my posts and to those who also send contributions! 

Building knowledge-based ecosystem

I'm fascinated by their potential for bringing people together in ways that's not possible face-to-face. I've wanted to build this capacity into the Tutor/Mentor Connection for more than 25 years. 

I and six other volunteers created the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 to "gather and organize all that is known about successful non-school tutoring/mentoring programs and apply that knowledge to expand the availability and enhance the effectiveness of these services to children throughout the Chicago region."

It's 2021. I'm still leading that effort, via the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC

1998 Crain's Chicago Business

I'd been leading a tutor/mentor program in Chicago since 1975 when we formed the T/MC. So I already had an extensive database of other programs in Chicago, as well as of foundations, businesses, volunteers and media. We did our research and planning, and developed a 4-part strategy in 1993. Then, we launched our first Chicago tutor/mentor program survey in January 1994 to systematically learn who else was offering non-school tutor and/or mentor services.

As we started reaching out to learn about programs we began sharing what we were learning with other programs, and with resource providers and other stakeholders, via printed newsletters. We began drawing stakeholders together to share and learn from each other via organized conferences in May 1994 and started organizing an annual Aug/Sept Chicagoland Tutor/Mentor Volunteer Recruitment Campaign in 1995.  You can view the goals of the conference here. See recruitment campaign history here.

We began sharing our list of Chicago tutor/mentor programs in a printed directory in 1994, but never circulated more than 500 copies a year. As we put our library on line in 1998, we also put our list of programs on line.

In 2004 we were able to launch an on-line portal where people could search for information about Chicago area tutor and mentor programs by zip code, type of program and age group served. In 2008 we launched a map based version of this.

With the maps we could show all the places where programs were needed, as well as what places already had service from existing programs.  Thus, our conversations were focused on a) helping existing programs get a more consistent flow of resources needed to constantly improve, while b) helping new program start where more are needed, borrowing ideas from existing programs, rather than starting from scratch.

The conferences and annual recruiting events we organized helped us generate a flow of print news stories, drawing attention to tutor/mentor programs throughout Chicago, not just to our own program (which I led until mid 2011). While we stopped our printed newsletter in 2002 we've been sending email newsletters every month since 2000. With our maps we crated map-stories following negative news, in an effort to draw more attention and resources to neighborhoods where help was needed.

I created this concept map many years ago to visualize how we were building a library of information that anyone can use to a) build and sustain volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in high poverty areas; and b) understand root causes that created a need for tutor/mentor programs and placed challenges that made it more difficult to move safely from birth to work; so (c) more people who first became involved as tutors or mentors would become involved in building solutions that reduced, or removed, these systemic barriers.

Below I'm showing some elements of this concept map.

When I first created this chart I only included information that people could use to build and sustain volunteer-based tutor and mentor programs. (#1) on the graphic.  I updated that with the set of green boxes (#2) showing that the Tutor/Mentor library includes a much wider range of information about poverty, racism, inequality, challenges of funding, ideas for learning, and ideas for collaboration, knowledge management, etc.

Just getting a youth into a tutor/mentor program is often not a powerful enough influence to assure a successful  journey from birth-to-work. In high poverty areas there a many systemic barriers that need to be reduced, or removed.  Getting more people personally involved in the work needed to understand, then remove the barriers, can be one by-product of getting more  people involved as tutors/mentor and leaders in organized youth programs.  My own 40 year journey is an example of that.

The right side of the concept map shows two forms of learning, one formal, and the other informal.  Each are intended to support volunteer involvement that leads to a better understanding of the information in the library and the growth of more and better tutor/mentor programs in places where they are most needed.  

It also results in more people working to create systemic changes where those are needed.

Now look at the line across the top of the concept map.

Building the library is an on-going process, but it's only the first step in our 4-part strategy.  Getting people to look at the information in the library is an advertising and public awareness effort.  

Thus we published our list of programs in a printed directory from 1994-2002, then in an on-line map based directory through 2018. It's now available in an on-line list and a Chicago programs map.  I've used newsletters, blogs, social media, along with conferences and media events to draw attention to the library.

We began to use GIS maps in 1993 to show where tutor/mentor programs were most needed and where existing site-based programs were located.  We also started a "rest-of-the-story" strategy using maps to show where media stories focused on incidents of violence, or locations of poorly-performing schools.  We used these to who what assets (business, university, hospital, etc.) were in the area where the incident took  place, who could help tutor/mentor programs grow. This was part of our effort to draw greater attention to programs throughout the city.

We (#3) then organized May and November conferences to draw programs together to learn from each other and to provide information to help support volunteers and students in every program. This information was part of on-going formal and informal learning.  We organized annual August/September Chicagoland Tutor/Mentor Volunteer Recruitment campaigns to help programs find volunteer talent.  

Finally, we repeated this for 20 consecutive years.  

At the top right of the concept map I show events that we created in August, November and May to draw programs together and draw attention and resources directly to programs.  The May and November conferences were held every six months for 20 years. The Volunteer Recruitment campaign was a multiple-site event every year from 1995 to 2003 and has been an on-line activity, drawing attention to our on-line lists of Chicago area programs continually since 2003.

5-15-2026 update - see an updated description of this concept map in this Substack.com article. 

Ultimately my goal is that people from different sectors and different places are forming study and learning groups which draw from information libraries they find on line. While these groups engage in on-going face-to-face learning, they also engage in on-line conversations, with each other, and with people in other groups, expanding their  understanding of problems and solutions and building relationships with people who who might help...

....all with the goal of filling high poverty areas with needed programs and services that help kids move safely through school and into adult lives, jobs and careers  (see strategy map).

If you've read this far, thank you! I hope you'll visit some of the links and build your own understanding of the strategy I've piloted.  I hope you understand how this supports my own on-going learning and efforts to do "better today than I was able to do yesterday". 

While there are many intermediary  organizations in Chicago and around the country who focus on youth well-being and do some of the things the Tutor/Mentor Connection/Institute, LLC, have piloted, I don't yet see anyone including all of these steps, supported by a library with as much information as is included in the Tutor/Mentor Library.

Nor do I find anyone using concept maps as extensively as I have since 2005 to visualize strategy, process and information available.  

Yesterday the Ryan Family made a $480 million commitment to Northwestern University.  I dream of someone making a $100 million commitment to build a Tutor/Mentor Connection in every major city, supported by student/alumni teams from a local university.

That needs to happen soon so I can pass on all of my archives and enable people to build from what I've started, rather than start from scratch.  

If you'd like to help make such a community a reality, let's connect.

Building the network

Note: in this and other pre 2022 articles all links pointing to www.tutormentorconnection.org are broken. Now you can find these links in the www.tutormentorexchange.net site.

Last week I posted an article talking about the "ecosystem" of people and organizations who need to be connecting and working toward common goals, such as helping kids in poverty move through school and into adult lives.

Here's an example of how I have been trying to do that.

First, since forming the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 I've been building a library of "all that is known" about successful non-school tutoring/mentoring programs and applying that knowledge to expand the availability and enhance the effectiveness of these services to children throughout the Chicago region.

This concept map shows the four sections of the library, along with sub-categories in each section. It includes more than 2000 links.

Every year I spend time going through each section to refresh my understanding of what information each link shares, and to make sure they all are working.  I started doing that again last week.

This time I looked for Twitter links on each account then made sure I was following them, or that I included them on one of my lists.  Twitter rules limit how many you can follow but not how many you can include on lists.  If I want to see what certain types of programs are Tweeting I open a list and skim through those Tweets.

I also started a document where I put the Twitter handles for each organization in my library, in a document which enables me to find them later. Below is one segment.

Then I created a set of graphics, asking "Are you following all of these organizations?  Are you visiting their websites and learning from them?  Below are some Tweets showing how I then shared this information.

I point to many #volunteer #Recruitment resources. Here are some.

3 - These are some #Volunteer Management Tools. @BetterImpact @blackbaud @energizeinc @Giveffect @Graduway @RealizedWorth @NeonOneTech @NobleHour @salsalabs @TrueImpact I'm sure there are others. Who keeps a master list? Which does your organization use?

— Daniel Bassill (@tutormentorteam) September 15, 2021

Here's another: 

2- Are you following these orgs. Do they follow each other? @SphinxOrg @ASPChicago @TMC_Chicago @timeinkids @urbangateways @urbanwordnyc @CreativeLivesCL @YoungChiAuthors @youthcomm

See my list at https://t.co/gwBrlFBWEH

— Daniel Bassill (@tutormentorteam) September 13, 2021

I did this several times so far and am just starting.  Here's another Tweet, where I show how the library website looks, and circled the section of links I was sharing with my post. 

 I point to from the #climate #environment section of my library. @350 @AUAChicago @CJAOurPower @ELPCenter @chicagobotanic @gpny @newdream @Openlands @Peoples_Climate @buildresilience @Belmont_Forum @tpl_org @Water https://t.co/zMV3ZqtWow pic.twitter.com/DktJ0uGKbk

— Daniel Bassill (@tutormentorteam) September 13, 2021

As a result I've generated some conversation between myself and people in the library and hopefully  have encouraged some to reach out and connect to others.

There are other ways to share this information so I hope readers will dig into my library and share the links.  I hope my example will be duplicated in other cities, where people will add my library to their own, which would focus on issues specific to that city, or country, not Chicago, where I work. 

 I'm just one person. I've been building this library and sharing the information since 1993, but with too few resources to do it as well as needed, or to share it as widely as needed. 

Yet, if I can keep doing what I do, maybe others will join and add their own time, talent and dollars.

Thanks for reading.  

Helping kids move from poverty to prosperity - who needs to be involved?

You've heard the phrase, "It takes a village to raise a child" haven't you?  I created the concept map in this graphic many years ago to visualize all sectors of the village who need to be involved.

The graphic can be found in this article, which shows the knowledge base we need to support our efforts to help kids in poverty areas move through school and into jobs and careers. 

If you try to define who all needs to be involved,  you're talking about an ecosystem.  Here's a definition of what that is. 

I was going to write a long article about the ecosystem and what I've been doing for the past 28 years to connect such a group with each other in an on-line learning network, but searched my blog for previous articles and found this one, from February 2018. 

Rather than repeat that article here, I hope you'll follow the link and read it. 

Actually, I've focused on the ecosystem in many articles, so visit this link and you can browse those. 

All of these articles, in fact this entire blog, is focused on supporting actions of millions of people in many places, who all are focusing on helping kids born, or living in,  high poverty areas, move safely through school and into adult lives, with decent paying jobs, that enable them to raise their own kids without so many of the challenges of living in segregated, high poverty areas.

If this is your goal, too. Let's connect on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and/or LinkedIn.  Let's connect our networks too. That expands the ecosystem and helps people connect and learn from a wider range of sources.

A Look at Purpose Driven Boards

 A few days ago, Betsey (Merkel) O'Hagan, a long term supporter of Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC, posted a message on LinkedIn, pointing to an article on the Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR), titled The Four Principles of Purpose Driven Boards, written by Anne Wallestad (@AnneWallestad), who is president and CEO at BoardSource.  

After reading the article, and posting a comment, I shared it on my Twitter feed. 

I urge business, philanthropic and non-profit leaders to spend time reading this @SSIReview article about "Purpose Driven Board Leadership". I highlighted part of a section about "Respect for Ecosystem". https://t.co/1aAkJf5z3O pic.twitter.com/JJ54cEi5GI

— Daniel Bassill (@tutormentorteam) August 9, 2021

Below I've  posted a few screenshots from the article along with comments.

The article started by sharing some research from Board Source's recent Leading With Intent study.  I highlighted two points: Disconnected from the communities and people they serve and Ill-informed about the ecosystems in which their organization is operating  

I led two non-profit tutor/mentor programs, from their formation. The first was the Cabrini-Green Tutoring Program, Inc, which was formed in 1990 after operating for the previous 25 years as an employee led program at the Montgomery Ward corporate HQ in Chicago.  The second was started in 1992 after I left the first program. At that point we created Cabrini Connections (a direct service tutor/mentor program) and the Tutor/Mentor Connection, which I still lead via Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC.

We always needed to focus on fund raising, yet realized that without a board that was well informed, understood our purpose, mission and history, we'd always struggle.  When forming Cabrini Connections we included in board member responsibilities a commitment to spend 2-4 hours monthly reading and learning of the organization's purpose.  

With a constant turnover of board members we constantly struggled with ill-informed and under committed board members.  Thus, I emphasized these two points in the Board Source research.

The next four graphics are from the second section of the article, titled "Respect for Ecosystem".  

The first paragraph focuses on the need for Boards to understand the ecosystem within which they operate.

This second passage follows and talks of how organizations work to address this lack of ecosystem awareness through board education and exposure to programs.

 

This is where problems with Boards really begin to surface.  NonProfits seek people with talent and influence, who have proven themselves in their careers, and who they "hope" will help access funding from their workplace and/or their personal and professional networks.  That's what my organization did. Unfortunately, most of these people had spent little time thinking of how tutor/mentor programs operate or how an intermediary like the Tutor/Mentor Connection might influence support for every tutor/mentor program in a city, including our own.  The ultimate separation of the Tutor/Mentor Connection from Cabrini Connections in 2011 was a result of this lack of understanding.

On-the-job learning is not enough because busy people don't take the time to do the in-depth reading and learning needed to bring them to even moderate understanding of the organization's purpose, history, or it's ecosystem. 

The next paragraph talks about understanding the ecosystem within the neighborhood where the organization will operate. Are there already organizations there who might be negatively impacted by adding a new organization? 

Below is the concluding part of the section on "Respect for Ecosystem".  The first bullet is what a "traditional board" would do. The second is what a "purpose driven board would do".   How does our organization impact the ecosystem and do the most good? 

There are three more sections to this article, which are equally valuable.  Each concludes with this two part summary.  Please read the article.

I'm jumping to the concluding paragraph with this next graphic.

I highlighted "Applying purpose-driven board leadership principles means leaning into the pursuit of a social good purpose at an ecosystem level and a shift away from protectionism and self-promotion at an organizational level."

I've been sharing maps on this blog since 2005, and the Mapping for Justice blog since 2008. I started using maps in 1993.  Below is a brochure we created for Manufacture's Bank (now MB Financial) in the late 1990s, to show the ecosystem surrounding one of their branch banks.  

We created three other versions of this for branch banks in other parts of Chicago, with the goal that employee volunteers within the bank would use this information to help tutor/mentor programs grow in that neighborhood.

Below is another example. It's one of the maps I shared in this story last week.

In both examples I'm encouraging business and nonprofits within a geographic area to get to know the ecosystem within which they operate, with a goal of filling the area with purpose-driven organizations working to expand the network of support for inner city kids and help those kids move more successfully, and safely, from birth to work. 

I emphasize that by trying to help every organization in the area grow, you help your own business and/or nonProfit organization grow.

In my comment on the SSIR article I emphasized how difficult it is to find volunteer Board members who fit the aspirations of this article. For some organizations, who are well connected to civic and business resources, this may be less of a problem, but for mid-size and smaller organizations it's a crisis.

I have proposed a solution. Actually, many.

You'll find this graphic in this article. It's one of several in a Tipping Points set of articles on this blog.  

Expecting board members to "learn as much as they need to know while on the job" is unrealistic. I propose growing new leaders, starting in middle school and continuing through college and then on throughout careers.  In this graphic I show two outputs from such a long-term learning system.  One group of people goes into direct service, with a wide range of skills and in-depth knowledge of the field they will devote their careers.   The second, larger group, are people who go into other careers, but continue learning, and develop a proactive habit of reaching out to offer time, dollars and talent to support non-profit organizations in their ecosystem.

In this article I point to my race-poverty concept map and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) website. Each node on my map, and each of the 17 SDGs, represents a channel of learning that takes many years to master at the level ideal Board members should understand to guide a  purpose-driven mission.  Too few board members have spent enough time learning this. They've been building careers and raising their own families.

In this ROLE OF LEADERS presentation I offer a second, related strategy. CEOs need to encourage on-going, and long-term employee involvement in youth development programs that create future workers and customers.  

I created this volunteer-involvement concept map in the late 2000s to show how volunteers who stay involved for many years grow their understanding and involvement.  While this focuses on what non-profits do to support continued volunteer involvement, CEOs can also do much to encourage employees to give time when they are young and have extra time, and to give talent, dollars and leadership as they advance in age and in their careers...and in their knowledge of the ecosystem supported by the Boards where they volunteer.

Adoption of these ideas could dramatically increase the number of people available to serve on "purpose driven boards" and thus the positive impact that non-profit organizations and their supporters have on local and global issues.

The challenge now is getting more people from every sector to read these articles, reflect on them, and share them with others in their networks.  That's the purpose of the graphics below, which I created more than 20 years ago.

One of my former students asked me "how can I help" a few days ago. I encouraged her to read, reflect, share and help build the network.

Thank you to all who are doing this. And thank you to the small group of people who continue to support me with financial contributions.  If you'd like to join that group, visit this page and use PayPal to submit a contribution. 

August 30, 2021 update - Here's an article I posted in 2013 under the title of "Engaging Board Members, Business Leaders, in Deeper Learning".  

June 6, 2023  update - "How to Build Movements with Cyclical Patterns in Mind" is an article that should stimulate the thinking of social change organizations. - click here

Bringing Youth Tutor/Mentor Learning Ecosystem Together on the Internet

This screenshot is from a Tweet posted a few days ago, showing how more than 300 people from around the world have been connected to each other since February 10 via an on-line "Engagement in a time of Polarization" EdX course and via Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. The hashtag is #EngageMOOC

I've been participating in various cMOOCs since 2011 and wrote about them here, here and here.

I'm fascinated by their potential for bringing people together in ways that's not possible face-to-face. I've wanted to build this capacity into the Tutor/Mentor Connection for more than 15 years. 

I and six other volunteers created the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 to "gather and organize all that is known about successful non-school tutoring/mentoring programs and apply that knowledge to expand the availability and enhance the effectiveness of these services to children throughout the Chicago region."

It's 2018. I'm still leading that effort, via the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC

1998 Crain's Chicago Business

I'd been leading a tutor/mentor program in Chicago since 1975 when we formed the T/MC. So I already had an extensive database of other programs in Chicago, as well as of foundations, businesses, volunteers and media. We did our research and planning, and developed a 4-part strategy in 1993. Then, we launched our first Chicago tutor/mentor program survey in January 1994 to systematically learn who else was offering non-school tutor and/or mentor services.

As we started reaching out to learn about programs we began sharing what we were learning with other programs, and with resource providers and other stakeholders, via printed newsletters. We began drawing stakeholders together to share and learn from each other via organized conferences in May 1994 and started organizing an annual Aug/Sept Chicagoland Tutor/Mentor Volunteer Recruitment Campaign in 1995.  You can view the goals of the conference here. See recruitment campaign history here.

We began sharing our list of Chicago tutor/mentor programs in a printed directory in 1994, but never circulated more than 500 copies a year. As we put our library on line in 1998, we also put our list of programs on line.

In 2004 we were able to launch an on-line portal where people could search for information about Chicago area tutor and mentor programs by zip code, type of program and age group served. In 2008 we launched a map based version of this.

With the maps we could show all the places where programs were needed, as well as what places already had service from existing programs.  Thus, our conversations were focused on a) helping existing programs get a more consistent flow of resources needed to constantly improve, while b) helping new program start where more are needed, borrowing ideas from existing programs, rather than starting from scratch.

The conferences and annual recruiting events we organized helped us generate a flow of print news stories, drawing attention to tutor/mentor programs throughout Chicago, not just to our own program. While we stopped our printed newsletter in 2002 we've been sending email newsletters every month since 2000. With our maps we crated map-stories following negative news, in an effort to draw more attention and resources to neighborhoods where help was needed.

While we hosted Tutor/Mentor conferences for 20 years, the goals never changed.

However, we were only reaching a small fraction of those in Chicago who needed to be involved in building and sustaining mentor-rich programs in all high poverty neighborhoods.  And even when we had 250 to 300 people at a 2-day conference, we and every other participant could only really talk and engage with a few other participants. Even in small groups of 10 to 20 people only a few people were able to share much from their own depth of experiences. It was almost impossible to get all of those who need to be involved into the same space, and keep them coming back, month after month and year after year.

In addition, we were not getting participation from business, foundations, media, political leaders and many others who need to be engaged in efforts to fill city neighborhoods with great programs helping kids move safely from birth to work.

Thus when the Internet became available as an on-line library and meeting place in the late 1990s, I fully embraced this potential.  We held our first on-line conference in 2004 with the aid of IUPUI in Indianapolis.  I've been sharing information on web sites since 1998 and on blogs since 2005. I've been on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn since the late 2000s.

I outlined our eLearning goals in 2004 and you can read them here.  I described them again in this blog article (and many others)

In 2011 I created a "Mentoring Kids to Careers" discussion outline on Debategraph's platform (see graphic at left).

As I participate in cMOOCs, I look at the structure and how they are organized. I created a sub section of the Tutor/Mentor library that others can  use to learn about cMOOCs and that I can refer back to when describing them to others. As I share ideas on Twitter, using the #engageMOOC or the #clmooc hashtag, I'm also using #tutor #mentor to connect organizations I network with to people throughout the world.

As I do this I'm also envisioning an #engageTutorMentorMOOC or a #Tutor/MentorCLMOOC or a Tutor/Mentor Google+ community (similar to this CLMOOC group)  where we're connecting all those who need to be involved in building and sustaining constantly improving tutor, mentor and learning programs in on-going on-line learning, conversation, brainstorming, training and resource development.

What does this mean?

Talent needed

I've used cMaps to visualize "all who need to be involved".  This map shows skills and talents. A similar map shows networks that need to be involved. A social network analysis map of participation could put names of people in each of these nodes and help us understand "who is participating, and who's missing".

Another cMap visualizes "who needs to be involved" under the "It takes a village" heading.

In another cMap I show how information we were collected was intended to support the learning of many different groups of stakeholders.

Knowledge Flow cMap

Ultimately my goal is that people from different sectors and different places are forming study and learning groups which draw from information libraries they find on line. While these groups engage in on-going face-to-face learning, they also engage in on-line conversations, with each other, and with people in other groups, expanding their  understanding of problems and solutions and building relationships with people who who might help...

....all with the goal of filling high poverty areas with needed programs and services that help kids move safely through school and into adult lives, jobs and careers  (see strategy map).

As I was writing this article my #engageMOOC feed included the response shown below response to one of my Tweets.

Here are some good examples:https://t.co/ft6rXsvvH2https://t.co/WZJ1pDcaFkhttps://t.co/WKfvFkhNT8https://t.co/0ywRWzlijd

— Connected Action (@ConnectedAction) February 19, 2018

I was asking for examples of using network analysis tools to understand participation in conferences or organized Twitter events.  The links provided pointed to two fascinating articles on the #ScotPublicHealth blog.  Click the links. You can read the articles yourself.  I'm adding this link to the Tutor/Mentor web library so that I and others who want to build an on-line engagement connecting people and organizations in the youth development, tutor, mentor, education, etc. ecosystem, can learn from this model.

However, by putting the link in my library and posting it here and re-tweeting it, anyone else can find and use this information to do better work in their own problem solving efforts.

If you've read this far, thank you! I hope you'll visit some of the links and build your own understanding of the different cMOOCs  and Twitter chats I've pointed to.  I hope you understand how this supports my own on-going learning and efforts to do "better today than I was able to do yesterday". 

I don't yet see this type of on-line engagement connecting the ecosystem of youth tutor/mentor and learning programs and the businesses, foundations, policy makers and others who need to support the growth of such programs.

If you'd like to help make such a community a reality, let's connect.