Showing posts sorted by relevance for query mentoring summit. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query mentoring summit. Sort by date Show all posts

Sunday, January 30, 2022

2022 National Mentoring Summit

Last week I participated in the virtual National Mentoring Summit hosted by the MENTOR, the National Mentoring Partnership.  Below are some Tweets I posted, along with comments. I encourage you to follow the links, and visit the MENTOR website throughout the year to find ideas that you can use to strengthen your own mentoring programs and do more to help kids in your community.

Part of my purpose with this blog, and each article, is to set an example that I hope many will duplicate, in Chicago, and around the country.  There were more than 1000 participants in this week's Mentoring Summit. There should be at least 100 blog articles where participants share what they learned and who they met.

Now let's look at some of the Tweets.

During one of the sessions I asked if anyone was using mapping and was told of a project being done by MENTOR Nebraska.  I looked up the website and found this PDF with the map shown in my Tweet. 

I hope many will review the PDF. By collecting information about existing mentoring programs in Nebraska and plotting locations they enabled a planning process that identified where more programs were needed. This is what I've been encouraging for the past 30 years.  It will be interesting to see if they make their mapping into a web-based platform and use it to try  to draw volunteers and donors to existing programs throughout Nebraska. 

Becoming a Better Mentor Guide

In more than one session people asked for help in training their mentors. I started building my library in the 1970s when leading a program with 100 volunteers, while holding a full time advertising job. I did not have the time to do on-going training of every volunteer so I started building a library and tried to motivate volunteers to dip into that regularly, doing their own learning.  I then created on-going social interaction events where volunteers could share what they were learning and mentor each other.  

I've continued that for over 40 years. The "Becoming a Better Mentor Guide" which I Tweeted about below, is a new resource any volunteer can use to build their skills.

 

Understanding benefit to youth through a social capital lens.

This is a Tweet by I Could Be, highlighting a workshop by the Christensen Institute.
I've written articles about social capital often in the past and am pleased to see this finally getting greater attention.  A few workshops emphasized the benefit to volunteers, not just kids. That's an important reason for businesses to encourage volunteer involvement and support programs with corporate dollars.   

Virtual Mentoring featured in many workshops.  

I Could Be hosted their own workshop, which I highlighted in this and other Tweets. I wrote about I Could Be and virtual tutoring/mentoring in this article last March. While thousands of youth tutoring and/or mentoring programs and almost every public school and college had to rapidly move to on-line learning in March 2020, a few organizations, including I Could Be.org had already been doing this since the mid 2000s. Thus, they had valuable experience to share with others.  

In response to the huge demand in 2020, MENTOR established a page focused on Virtual Mentoring Portals. 

I've connected with MENTOR Maryland before, but re-introduced myself with this Tweet.


Community For Youth, in Seattle, was a program that impressed me. I added their blog to the list of tutor/mentor program blogs that I include in the tutor/mentor library.  


I've included Capital Partners for Education in the Tutor/Mentor library since the early 2000s. I connected with them in this Tweet.

GenerationHope was another program that I learned about. I posted a Tweet and started a conversation. Connect on social media.
In many of my comments during workshops and with my Tweets, I encouraged other participants to come to Twitter to share their own ideas and connect with others. These are just a few Tweets I posted. Visit #MentoringSummit and #NationalMentoringSummit and skim through the Tweets, going back to last Wednesday when mentoring leaders when to Capitol Hill to educate congressmen and senators and build support for legislation that supports mentoring programs throughout the USA.

Today marks the end of the January 2022 Mentoring Month, and the Summit seems like a great way to propel everyone forward for the work of building and sustaining mentoring and tutoring relationships  that help more kids living in high poverty areas move through school and into adult lives.  

There's lots of work to be done. Don't reinvent the wheel. Try to learn from each other.  Try to help build greater business and donor involvement that draws volunteers and operating dollars to programs in every high poverty zip code.  

Thanks for reading. I look forward to seeing your own stories. 
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Posted by Tutor Mentor Connections at 11:28 AM 0 comments
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Sunday, January 31, 2021

Mentoring Summit - in Tweets

 The annual National Mentoring Summit was held this past week, in a virtual format due to Covid19.  I've attended the summit in past years and I really like this format, because of the low cost (no travel or hotel expense) and the ability to get up close with speakers.  The link above points to the Summit website, but since  there was a registration fee, I don't think others can view the presentations, at least not yet.

However, the Instagram page for the Summit does have some of the videos.


As I watched Summit presentations I shared some via Twitter.  Below are just a few Tweets that I posted. Visit this link and scroll through all of the posts for #mentoringsummit. 

The opening session provided many reasons organized youth tutor/mentor programs should be supported. 

I enjoyed the workshop of the Million Women Mentors. In this workshop Jay Flores shared ways he is engaging youth in STEM learning. His videos could be used by anyone.  I shared some of my own ideas.  I did not see any discussions talking about availability of mentor-rich programs in all high poverty areas, nor platforms where the types of programs are separated into specific categories as I've tried to do since 1994.  Then, the four speakers in this panel shared thoughts that could be part of any tutor/mentor program orientation and on-going training of volunteers. Thank you @AricHamilton @aniyaspeaks @_GabiBello_ and ⁦@ClintSmithIII   Then, two youth leaders from HeartsSmiles in Baltimore demonstrated the potential of youth as spokes persons and leaders of any program. 

This last Tweet shows two professional basketball players talking of the importance of mentors.

There was much more. On Twitter I responded to a question raised by the America's Promise Alliance. This is my final Tweet There's much more. Browse through the Twitter thread yourself, or visit the Instagram page. When there is a release of all of the Summit workshop videos I'll update this blog.

I would love to find blog articles by other people who attended the Summit and are talking about "what we need to do"  

I'll close with this question:  "How can we do this better?"  How do we take what was shared in the Mentor Summit and use it to help existing youth tutor, mentor and learning programs constantly increase their impact and how do we help new programs form where more are needed?  How do we influence donors to make more flexible, long-term funding commitments, reaching every program, and every high poverty zip code. 

I don't have the answers but if the conversation is not taking place, we'll never get to where we need to be. 


Thank you for reading.  Good luck as we move further into 2021.  
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Monday, January 28, 2013

Mentor Summit Workshops. Take a Look.

Yesterday I posted an article with some quotes made by mentoring leaders at last week’s National Mentoring Summit. I also posted a map showing people I met. I do this to draw attention to the need for operating resources and to try to connect with others who will add their time, talent and dollars to building a year-round public attention and resource generation strategy that supports tutor/mentor programs in every neighborhood of Chicago and every city with flexible, constantly flowing operating and innovation resources.

I was able to attend only one workshop in each time frame out of six or seven offered. Thus, unless others are sharing their reflections from the workshops they attended, most of us will only benefit from a fraction of the ideas shared.

I’ve been part of an Education Technology MOOC since Jan 13, in which more than 1600 people are sharing ideas with each other. My hope is that on-line learning events like this can grow in the youth development, mentoring, tutoring fields.

All of the workshops I attended were full of value. Visit this page on the MENTOR website for workshop descriptions, downloads of handouts, and bios of all speakers.

One workshop and one keynote offered a unique new perspective on mentoring opportunities.

The workshop was The Rudd Adoption Mentoring Partnership at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Renee Moss and Jocelyn Nelson of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Hampshire County, MA and Dr. Harold Grotevant and Jen Dolan from the university, described a mentoring partnership in which college students who had been adopted were matched with middle and high school students who had been adopted.

This project focused on a specific population of special needs youth, matched with college mentors who had the same life experience (adoption) and who met the BBBS stringent guidelines for match compatibility.

Dr. Grotevant provided an overview of some of the issues adopted youth face that only others who have been adopted themselves can really understand. Today he sent an email with links to two presentations that tell more about this unique program.

Mentoring Partnership PDF and PPT of presentation from Summit.

A couple of highlights: The university gave class credit to the mentors, who were required to participate in bi-weekly feedback sessions. Thus there was tremendous coaching provided by the university. Dr. Grotevant reported that the unique program has begun to attract students to the university who have an adoption background.

Renee Moss, the BBBS leader, has been in her role for 27 years! We need to find ways to encourage this depth of experience in thousands of programs. A needed research project might develop information showing tenure of leaders and staff of tutor/mentor programs.

The second special needs program was Eye to Eye, a mentoring program focusing on LD/ADHD youth, which was featured during the Friday lunch time session. This project matches college and adult mentors who have overcome learning disabilities with LD/ADHD youth still in middle school and high school. Visit the web site and see how volunteers serve as Think Different Diplomats to share this program with others.

As with the adoption model, the mentor having the same experience as the mentee was the basis of the match, and the population served cuts all economic levels. Neither of these programs focus primarily on youth living in poverty.

I would expect both models to expand rapidly since affluent parents of adopted or ADHD youth will be more than willing to provide personal philanthropy and fund raising leadership to make such programs available to their own kids.

The second morning workshop that I attended was titled: NYC Mentoring Investment – The Young Men’s Initiative Click here to view workshop description and down load power point presentation.

The most impressive thing about this initiative is the number of organizations involved and the huge financial commitment behind the initiative. The New York City public school population is close to 1 million and the number of youth at risk of drop out in New York City is huge – 532,434! I've written in the past about the unique challenges of big cities with school-age populations over 100,000 youth.

One of the partners in the Young Men’s Initiative, is the department of Probation, which operates the Neighborhood opportunity networks (NeON) among other programs.

I would like to have seen a use of maps in this initiative, to show where the drop out problem is concentrated, and to support marketing efforts aimed at building a flow of needed operating resources, volunteers, ideas, etc. to all of these neighborhoods, and all of the partners in the initiative.

On Thursday afternoon I attended a workshop that described the Coaches Mentoring Challenge

I wrote about this in an article last month. Since I’ve wanted to unleash the power of coaches and athletes to mobilize volunteers and dollars to support tutor/mentor programs in all part of the Chicago region, this was a workshop that I really wanted to attend.

Mentoring network leaders from Iowa (Sarah Hinzman and Chad Driscoll), Kansas (Nicolette Geisler) and Nebraska (Suzanne Hince) described how head football coaches at Iowa, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State and Nebraska were leading a competition to see which state could recruit the most mentors between September and December.

The planning was broken down to “pre season” “game day” and “post game” with lots of information on the web site. See details here and here.

A lot of work goes into this and the mentor leaders deserve a lot of credit. They did a great job of showing the challenges of working with high profile coaches and universities.

This puts a bit of a damper on my own hopes because 99% of the work comes from the Mentor Partnerships while the coaches and universities lend their names and get credit for the good will generated.

I’m idealistic. I want coaches and other leaders to spend quality time trying to make mentoring and tutoring available, just as other volunteers do. If we do all the work for them, the commitment is not really there, nor are we benefiting from the talent and creativity these leaders might apply to building tutor/mentor infrastructure in their cities and states.

I don’t have the manpower, or brain power, to do all of the thinking that is needed to ensure the coach’s involvement has the desired impact. Will need partners to help with this.

On Friday morning I attended a workshop titled Recruiting Policy Advocates to Support Inspiring Program Innovations. An Urgent Call.

This was probably the most valuable workshop of all that I attended. Why?

The facilitator was Janet Forbush, a consultant supporting mentor program growth. We’re both part of the mentoring email list hosted by Dr. David DuBois of UIC. Janet set the stage for the workshop when she said: “You can’t run mentoring programs without money” as part of the introduction to this workshop.

That’s my own view and the efforts I’ve led for past 20 years have attempted to increase the flow operating resources to all tutor/mentor programs in the city.

Trudy Perkins, Office of Congressman Elijah Cummings, MD, was the first speaker on this panel, and provided valuable insight for reaching out to elected officials. I’ve not been very effective in this myself.

Heather Harvison, founder of My Sister’s Circle, , described a girls mentoring program that she formed in 2000. I appreciated this program because it focuses on helping girls from 5th grade through high school and college, and keeping volunteers involved for all seven years. In addition, Heather has been reaching out to build networks with other tutor/mentor programs in Baltimore, similar to my efforts in Chicago since 1976.

I think that there is too little effort to determine the different types of mentoring programs in each city, based on who they serve, and based on how broad-based and long-term their support of young people extends.

Conference speakers said “MENTORING Absolutely Works” but they did not say what that means or that it works when programs are able to support youth and volunteers effectively and sustain youth and volunteer involvement for multiple years. In the rush for “numbers” many programs are not designed to keep youth involved for multiple years. I’ve been trying to build a distinction between different types of tutoring and/or mentoring programs in Chicago since 1993, but never have had the resources to go beyond creating a database of providers which breaks down by age served and type of program. See http://www.tutormentorprogramlocator.net Connecting with leaders like Heather who also are trying to build a connection with peers, is one step toward gaining more attention and support for this intermediary role.

The final member of the panel was Lynn Sherman, Baptist Health Center in Jacksonville, Fl. Lynn described the Tipping the Scale mentoring program lead by the hospital with partnership from a local CBO. It includes a mentoring and a workforce development component.

This program seems very similar to the programs in the Hospital Youth Mentoring Partnership network, which I connected with in late 1999. Members of the network attended one of the T/MC conferences in 2000 and I was a speaker of a HYMP conference in Baltimore in 2001. As it turns out, Lynn also attended that conference!

I’ve written many articles on the role hospitals can take in building networks of mentor-rich programs in their trade area, but have failed to find a champion who would rebuild the HYMP and expand its focus to one of community network builder from just innovative mentor program operator.

This article describes the partnership and the program at Vanderbilt Medical Center.

This is a press release from Ceasar’s Siani Hospital, which also was part of the partnership

This PDF includes a Commonwealth Fund Report on Hospital Youth Mentoring Partnership from circa 1999

2001 Hospital Youth Mentoring Partnership Conference and list of member hospitals.

My vision of hospitals in intermediary roles, supporting the growth of tutor/mentor programs in their community. I've written about this often since 2005.

The final workshop I was able to attend on Friday before heading to the airport was one focused on Mentoring Central, an on-line training resource that can be used to provide pre-match training to new volunteers. Mentoring Central includes research-based, pre-match blended learning mentor training curriculum; post-match Web-based mentor training on special topics; post-match mentor support resources; and many tools to support mentoring program staff. I was impressed with the creativity and quality of the training modules that were shown during the workshop.

Visit this link to see other workshops I attended and people I connected with.

Summary: For the past 20 years I’ve built a database of Chicago area tutor/mentor programs and a web library with links to research, editorials, programs in other cities, “how to” info, etc. Through the Internet I attempt to connect with representatives of these organizations with a goal of getting help in maintaining the library, and in building public will needed to support tutor/mentor programs in thousands of locations with public and private dollars and volunteer talent. I have hosted a Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference in Chicago every six months with invitations to those in my network to come and share their own ideas and build relationships with others who they may not know.

There are dozens of conferences and events around the country that have workshops and speakers with equal value to the MENTOR Summit. Due to financial restraints I’ve never been able to participate in many of these. While I try to get to as many events in Chicago as I can, I’m so committed to connecting people who attend these conferences via the Internet because with more the 650 attendees, no one is able to connect with more than a few other participants.

You never know who you will meet and what will happen. At the end of the first day of the Mentor Summit as I was collecting my coat a man introduced himself and handed me a book that he was sharing at the Summit. I said thanks and stuffed it in my bag with everything else I picked up to read. Since my flight back to Chicago was delayed, I had time to read the entire book. I found it uplifting, and maybe you will to. It’s titled Mentor: The Kid and the CEO and was written by Tom Pace. Learn more about this book and Tom’s work at http://www.mentorhope.com/

This Forbes article was in my email today. It talks about the need to support the program infrastructure connecting many different programs in efforts to help young people succeed in school and life.

The Tutor/Mentor conference in Chicago in May/June and November is part of an on-going effort to build a collective commitment that supports tutor/mentor programs in all high poverty neighborhoods of the Chicago region. It will be held on June 7 and I hope some of you will help recruit speakers and workshop speakers, as well as a few sponsors. However, the next opportunity we have to connect and share ideas is today, tomorrow and any time you’re motivated to reach out to me on Facebook, Linked In, Twitter, Skype or via email or the traditional telephone.






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Sunday, January 27, 2013

National Mentor Summit - January 2013

I spent last Thursday and Friday at the National Mentoring Summit in Washington, DC. In this week’s blog articles I’ll try to share some of the ideas and resources that I connected with.

I created this map to show some of the people and organizations I connected with out of the more than 500 people who attended. The green nodes are people I've connected with prior to the Summit. The light blue nodes are new people who I hope to build relationships with in 2013. The link to this map can be found at http://preview.tinyurl.com/MentorSummitMap2013

The “theme of the Summit was “Mentoring Works” and David Shapiro, CEO of Mentor was the first speaker to reinforce that message.

Below are quotes from David and others who spoke over the two days. I tried to Tweet some of these as I listened. I’m sure others were doing the same. If you attended the Summit, I invite you to post comments below to add quotes you were inspired by, or point to your own blog articles where you have posted your own comments.

Morning, Day 1

David Shapiro, CEO Mentor

“We do not have the political will (to support mentoring programs all over the country). We can’t do it with hope alone.”

“Moving mentoring from ‘nice to have’ to ‘need to have’ is my goal.”

Wendy Spencer, CEO, Corporation for National and Community Service

“We know that mentoring absolutely works.”

“A supportive mentor can make the difference between trouble and success.”

My goal is to “Bring a caring mentor to every child who needs one.”

Willem Kooyker, MENTOR Board Chairman

“Let’s think retail. It takes a village. We need partners in the private sector. Focus on the emotional part, not just the IQ part.”

Comment from workshop “New York City’s Mentoring Investment and Evaluation – A Key Strategy in the Young Men’s Initiative”

“There is a connection between chronic absenteeism and future success. Need to catch kids before it is too late. We need to repurpose resources.”

Afternoon lunch panel – day 1

The Honorable Congressman Chaka Fattah (PA)

“We need all departments of government involved.”

“We can’t afford to leave any child behind if we are to compete with huge populations of China and India.”

Omarina, Cabrera, Student at Brooks Academy (was mentee at Middle School 244, Bronx, NY, when in 7th grade. Watch American Graduate Video featuring Omarina.

“It (mentoring” is something every child should have. It’s not fair when one doesn’t”

Dr. Robert Balfanz, Co-Director, Everyone Graduates Center, Johns Hopkins University

“Challenge is to organize enough adults so there are enough “People Power” in places that need it.”

We need to become “Insider traders for social good.” Use knowledge of what works to expand impact.

“We have to value student supports.”

“You can have the best curriculum in the world, but if students don’t attend class it does not matter.”

Catherine Miller, Teacher who worked with Omarina, Middle School 244, Bronx, NY

“You hold up a dream for a child until they are strong enough to hold it up for themselves.”

Michael Selkis, Director of School Development and Support and Director/Network Leader, fhi360

“We need to help understand connectivity around how all these things work. How do we use collective impact? Asset analysis?”

Morning, day 2

The Honorable Congressman Elijah Cummings (MD)

“Our children are a living message to a future we will never see.”

“We must do our part to life them up so they can deliver their gifts to the world.”

Lt. Governor Brian Calley, Michigan

There are “few areas where we have the ability to affect the world 50 years from now, as much as how we mentor kids who need help.”

“Those who have the most stacked against them are once to concentrate on first.”

Eric Dawson, founder of PeaceFirst

“We do not call them (youth) to anything.”
“What about the power of young people to be assets of change?”
“What are we going to ask of young people?”

Eric announced the Peace First Prize, a “Nobel Prize” for youth leadership.

I'm sure there were many other great quotes from all the different speakers. These are what I captured in my notes. I think they are enough to inspire us in efforts that mobilize resources and talent needed to support volunteer based tutoring and/or mentoring programs in high poverty areas, as in special need populations.

All of these speakers and many others talked about the power of mentoring and the need for resources to support mentoring in many places. My next article will introduce you to some of the workshops I attended. My final article will post reflections on what this all means and what the next steps should be in 2013.

If you want to help young people in Chicago, browse the maps on the Chicago Tutor/Mentor Program Locator and look for tutor/mentor programs near where you live or work. Offer your time, talent and dollars to help each program move from what they are today to becoming the best in the world at helping young people find their own paths to positive futures.

Browse the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC web site for more ideas on where and how you can become involved, including offering your support to the Institute so it can continue its intermediary role.





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Monday, February 11, 2013

Final notes from 1/24-25 National Mentoring Summit

I received an email from MENTOR today announcing that photos, videos and workshop presentations are now available at this link.

I’ve been working on a final recap expressing some of my observations. I wrote here and here showing some of the people I met and comments I heard.

President Obama is coming to Chicago this Friday in response to the shooting of 15 year old Hadiya Pendleton. Thus, I hope some leaders will read what I share below, and browse some of the other articles I’ve written, and develop comprehensive, long-term youth development strategies in high poverty neighborhoods of the city and suburbs. This is not a problem that will go away after the high profile attention of this past two weeks.

As I listened to Congressman Elijah Cummings, MD, talk about mentors in his life, saying “I’ve had one mentor since I was 16;” and “We must do our part so they can deliver their gifts to the world;” I though of my own mentee, Leo, who I met in 1973 when he was in 4th grade. We’ve stayed connected ever since then. A few years ago we met on Thanksgiving morning at a Starbucks in Chicago and passed a video camera back and forth recording how important each of us had been to the life of the other.

Lack of market-based data
While many workshops focused on data and evaluation and accountability, I was struck by how little data was used in keynote presentations to show the distribution of programs and resources in different parts of the country. Furthermore other than showing a commitment to build the public will, I did not see an outline of a year-round strategy, or the engagement of partners from many different sectors to support the advertising frequency and reach needed to gain and sustain public and private sector support for a decade or longer. I did not hear anyone talking about building a distribution plan to make programs available in more places.

This does not surprise me. In my frequent Google searches I can’t find sites that focus on this the way I have done since 1993.

Use of Maps

In the main sessions of the Summit I saw lots of story telling, but too little data showing where mentoring is most needed, or where programs are already available. What numbers of kids need mentoring, based on age, demographics, economics, or other indicators?

If the data were being collected, it can also be mapped. No maps were used in the keynote sessions, or in workshops I attended, to show what populations of young people MENTOR seeks to serve, based on poverty, school performance, violence, or any other indicator. Such information is being mapped in many places and could be used on a national level to focus attention on areas with greatest need. The New York City initiative could have included maps in its presentation but did not.

Maps could also be used to demonstrate level of program distribution in these areas, and to highlight under-served areas. Without this information it’s difficult to lead any kind of on-going effort intended to reach kids in more areas, and to know if there is a growth in program reach from year to year.

Unclear priorities
New forms of mentoring, such as those targeted at adopted youth and youth with special learning needs (ADHD, etc)are exciting. However, they make the target for mentoring a mixed bowl of fruit. I think that in most forms of mentoring, our goal is to help youth grow up to be good citizens and productive adults (is it?). However, youth from different social/economic backgrounds have different levels of support already available in their lives. I think maps could help clarify the areas of the country where kids need the most help, while other forms of visual organization can still show that kids from many different backgrounds have a need for specialized forms of mentoring and extra adult support.


Marketing and Year-Round Strategy
I also did not find any workshops that showed strategies, or talked about building strategies, that would support year-round efforts intended to reach some of the goals of MENTOR, such as building public will, or increasing the number of volunteers, or the number of dollars supporting tutor/mentor programs. While National Mentoring Month is in January, events need to be taking place in other months. National Mentoring Month is led by the Harvard School of Public Health, not MENTOR. Perhaps other events throughout the year could become part of a year-round effort to draw attention and mobilize resources for mentoring programs and networks in various cities and states.

Expand Role of Media
With the need for year-round strategies that mobilize resources for programs in different neighborhoods and cities, I feel the media also have an expanded responsibility. The PBS American Graduate effort and the NBC Education Nation campaign are two of many media campaigns that focus on different parts of the same overall problem, but seem to compete for attention. If every media outlet in each city included a "take action" section on their web site, encouraging companies, faith groups, universities and individuals to do something today -- volunteer, donate, partner, etc. --, every story could be part of a larger on-going effort to build public will and draw needed operating resources and talent to all tutor/mentor programs in each city.

MENTOR could put together a calendar showing all of the different media events, and work to have them point to the MENTOR web site and other sites where people can become involved in local programs. As media become more focused on generating resources, not just attention, I’d like to see the September American Graduate and Graduation Nation events move into late August, or have a build up that starts in late August, to have greater impact on volunteer recruitment in the first few weeks of Sept. Programs have screening, matching and other work to do with a volunteer before they are matched with a youth, which could last until mid October, which means the first six weeks of the school year is lost and for some kids who get into the wrong peer group, they may be lost forever.

In the same line of thinking, National Mentoring Month could have a December launch, intended to influence more charitable support of mentoring programs, not just the intermediary organizations.

Need better data collection tools
I’ve been trying to automate the collection of information about tutor/mentor programs since 2004. I’ve also been working to create maps that show who attends a conference and the composition of my network. I’m doing this with volunteers, but learning from some of the brightest people in the world through forums like the Education Technology and Media MOOC #ETMOOC at http://www.etmooc.org

Tracking impact of our campaigns and showing flow of attention and resources directly to local programs would be a useful tool. I created this graphic to illustrate the idea. Can we develop tacking system that automatically captures “opens” on different web sites resulting from a “campaign” such as the Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska Coaches Recruitment Competition?


The Coaches Competition organized by Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska is pretty unique and could be duplicated in other states if the leaders and resources were available. Lots of work was involved in organizing this. Playbook of the three states organizing this is available.

However, this is not the only effort involving celebrities and athletes. I know sports organizations are involved in other cities, like Memphis Grizzlies Foundation is in Memphis. A national effort is the United Way Team NFL which has a goal of 1 million mentors. 300 United Ways involved. Another national effort is the Corporate Mentoring Challenge

It would be great to have someone keeping a master list of such campaigns. A map showing colleges or sports teams with mentor mobilization campaigns could be useful. A map showing businesses with strategies for mobilizing and supporting volunteer-based mentoring programs would be useful.

It would be even better if every city had a master database of tutor/mentor programs that various campaigns were using throughout the year to point volunteers and donors to, and that were being used to show the effect such campaigns were having on the distribution of programs in places where they are needed.

I wrote down many of these thoughts as I attended workshops at the Summit this year and in 2012. I could only attend a few of the workshops and probably won't find time to go through all of the archives to learn what else was presented in other workshops and planning sessions. However, I did not see any presentations outlining tipping points, or theory of change, focusing on strategies that build and sustain mentor-rich programs in high poverty areas of big cities for the many years it takes for a youth to go from first grade to first job.

Perhaps these were being shared in workshops I did not attend, or are on web sites of some of the organizations partnering with MENTOR to host the Summit. If they are, please share links so I can expand my own library of strategies and collaborations. As we learn more of what works in different parts of the country we can use blogs, MOOCs, Facebook, Linked in and other on-line media to share these ideas so they can work in more places.

I hope that by sharing my ideas others will be stimulated to share their own thinking on blogs like this or on wikis and web pages and that we can connect and gain greater attention to such strategies as we move from this year’s Summit to next year’s summit.

If you’re writing on topics like this please share a link to your web site in the comment box or submit a link to the library at http://tinyurl.com/TMC-Library

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Wednesday, January 29, 2025

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. 
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Thursday, January 19, 2012

Mentoring Summit - Social Capital Connections

This graphic shows a small part of the network of people who have helped inner city Chicago kids move through school and into jobs and careers through the efforts of programs I've led at Montgomery Ward and Cabrini Connections since 1975. I think more programs who can build and sustain these connections should be available in big city neighborhoods. Through the Tutor/Mentor Connection and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC I've been trying to make that happen.

Next week I'll be in Washington, DC attending the National Mentoring Summit. While I'm there I hope to connect with leaders from different cities and states. I also hope to connect with people who are not able to attend the Summit, but who will connect with me and others via Twitter and Facebook.

Use this link to connect with the Summit on Twitter. Conversations regarding the summit will use the Hashtag #Mentor2012

To connect with MENTOR on Facebook go to http://www.facebook.com/MENTORnational

While my goal is to find partners, benefactors and corporate leaders who will support our efforts in Chicago, I also am hoping to connect with leaders who view mentoring and tutoring as a strategy for expanding the social capital of youth living in highly segregated, poverty neighborhoods of big cities. I've written articles about social capital in the past and point to research that I'm reading that show how the income of your parents and wealth of your community determines your future and impacts your performance in school. If that's true, we should be looking for ways to demonstrate the growth of the network of adults and experiences surrounding youth who participate in these programs as opposed to youth who don't have access to well-organized tutor/mentor programs.

I've been building my network of ideas, friends, peers for over 30 years. What if kids in inner city neighborhoods were able to build their own networks over a period of years and what role might tutor/mentor programs have in accelerating that process. This graphic illustrates the growth of a network over time. This PDF shows this in a much more strategic way.

Thus, my hope is that next week in Washington I'll connect with leaders who also are thinking of volunteer involvement in organized tutor/mentor programs as a strategy for building social capital for a youth, for the volunteer and for the programs that enable these connections to take place.

If you're one of these people and want to connect with me in DC, or via Twitter or Facebook, contact me and let's find time to meet. Find me on Twitter @tutormentorteam and on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/TutorMentorInstitute
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Thursday, January 26, 2012

Mentoring Summit - Reflections; Call to Action

I was in Washington, DC on Jan 24 and 25 for the 2nd Annual National Mentoring Summit. More than 400 people involved in mentoring programs, networks and support organizations were connected for two days of networking and workshops. Now the real work of putting these ideas into practice takes place.

One of the emotional highlights of the Summit came yesterday during lunch when Beverly Bond, Founder of Black Girls Rock! moderated a panel of students/volunteers who each told of how mentoring made a difference in their own lives.

As I listened to Beverly and this panel it reminded me of the year-end dinner celebration we held each year since 1973 to celebrate the connection of youth and volunteers in the programs I've led in the Cabrini Green neighborhood of Chicago. The panel members were different people from different programs, but the messages were the same. As Beverly said, "people in these programs know the many small and big success of tutor/mentor programs." Data and professional evaluation statistics don't paint the real picture. Below is one of many videos created at Cabrini Connections during the past 15 years. You can find more here and here. The video below shows parents speaking at one year-end dinner.

Year-End Dinner 2010: Parent Speakers from Cabrini Connections

These stories are powerful. They need to be told over and over with the same reach and frequency as corporate ads for fast food, banks, and wellness. But we don't have the money. Thus we need volunteers from business, colleges, high schools and faith groups to become our journalists, movie makers and story tellers.

This is another video created by a volunteer and telling our story.

Adopt a program and become their journalist for as long as you can and then recruit someone to take your place. Learn to close your stores with a call to action: "Be a volunteer. Be a donor. Be an intern. Be a business partner."

Then go one step further, point to a directory of tutor/mentor programs for your city, and say "we need great programs in every high poverty neighborhood." Point to videos, web sites, an social media places that expand the range of places and ways volunteers and donors can help tutor/mentor programs grow in an entire community, and in every state in the Union.

This video does that. It was created a couple years ago by one of our interns. The contact information at the end has changed. We're no longer part of Cabrini Connections. However the message and purpose of the video has not changed.

I'm no longer leader of a single tutor/mentor program because I could not find enough dollars to keep the Tutor/Mentor Connection operating under the umbrella and funding base of one small program. However, I'm no less committed to helping strategies grow in business, faith groups, philanthropy, media and government sectors that provides "a better operating system" and does more to make constantly improving mentor and/or tutor programs available in more places to help more kids through school and into adult responsibilities.

If you've been touched by these stories or have responded to the President's Corporate Mentoring Challenge, I'd like to become a resource to help you develop strategies that benefit youth, your employees, your company and the community.

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Thursday, January 30, 2014

Super Bowl, Mentoring Summit, State of the Union

This weekend about 130 million people will watch the Super Bowl. 30 second TV ads will cost over $2 million each.

Today I'm following workshops in the National Mentoring Summit, being held in Arlington, VA. I attended the past two years, but this year I'm following on-line and sharing with my Twitter feed.

A couple of days ago millions of people listened to President Obama's State of the Union. I followed on my PC and connected with many via live Twitter discussions during the day.

In the next few weeks millions will tune into watch the Winter Olympics.

Millions of dollars in advertising are being spent to attract fans to these events. Who is spending that kind of money to attract supporters to youth tutoring and/or mentoring programs?

While all of these sports events may make us feel better, and feed the economy, and make the rich richer, my goal is that by posting messages on Twitter and other social media today and next week, I can attract volunteers, donors, partners and/or investors to the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC, web site so more people will become involved in on-going learning, idea sharing and brainstorming that improves the distribution of talent, dollars, technology and ideas and leads to more and better k-12 tutoring, mentoring programs in more of the places where they are needed.

What would it take for millions of people to be tuning into the Mentor Summit, or reading articles on blogs like mine on a monthly basis? What leadership is required?



This photo illustrates why it's important to attract some donors to support our work. This was taken more than 20 years ago when these kids were participating in the tutoring program hosted at the Montgomery Ward complex in Chicago. Today, many are connected to me on Facebook. With enough resources, we could be advertising a "Mentor Reunion" event and and connecting more and more of our alumni with programs and each other via a variety of social media platforms.

What this illustrates is that "connecting a youth and volunteer in a tutor/mentor program is only the beginning. Keeping them connected to each other, and the program, is an on-going process" that must be continuously funded if the youth will experience the real benefit of an expanded social network consisting of people who don't live in poverty, and who hold jobs in many different industries, when they are adults. This animation created by one of our interns that illustrates this concept.

I use maps all the time to illustrate that constantly improving, mentor-rich programs are needed in hundreds of neighborhoods. Every program needs the same resources to connect youth and volunteers and keep them connected and growing.

I don't have the dollars to have an ad on TV today, or any day of the year. Yet, unless we can attract the same number of fans to our web sites and events, we'll never achieve the goals the President set out in his State of the Union address.

There are nearly 200 Chicago youth serving programs on this list. They all need consistent support, and challenges to learn from each other and constantly improve.

Note that throughout this article and most of my blog articles I include graphics to illustrate ideas. I encourage other leaders in the youth development, mentoring, tutoring and workforce development fields to develop similar graphics and include them in their own web sites. Many of these were created by interns, demonstrating that youth in schools and non-school programs could be building skills while also learning leadership and communications strategies that are needed to build strong, on-going organizations.

If this interests you let's connect on Twitter, or Facebook, or the Tutor/Mentor Conference Help build teams of volunteers, donors, political leaders, etc. who help build great tutor/mentor programs in every neighborhood where they are needed.
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Posted by Tutor Mentor Connections at 11:17 AM 0 comments
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