[YL] Tutor/Mentor e-News for Dec. 2005 - Mayor Daley helps distribute grants to Chicago programs

Tue Dec 13 15:26:51 EST 2005

Tutor/Mentor Connection NEWS
Linking ideas, programs and people to help inner city kids since 1993.

December, 2005

T/MC REPORT ON-LINE, Issue #37

Non profit Blog Exchange
Lend A Hand Grants to 17 tutor/mentor programs
January is National Mentoring Month
Service Learning _Seniors Campaign
Tutor/Mentor Leadership Conference
Webheads in Action Conference Archives
On-line Resources 
President's Message - do your donors a favor, ask them to give

This email newsletter is being sent to people who are volunteer
tutors/mentors, leaders, staff, board members of tutor/mentor and youth
development programs.   If you would like to be removed from this email
list, just reply and say "remove".

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Are you one of the thousands of charities in this nation depending on the
next three weeks of fund raising to determine how well (or if) you continue
to operate in 2006?   December is a huge fund raising period and this  year
is more important than ever, as many donors  have already given generously
to support the Tsunami, the Hurricanes and the Earthquake.

Non-profit Blog Exchange
I've been  participating in a Non-profit Blog Exchange, where a variety of
people who use web logs to share  their ideas on philanthropy and fund
raising are connected to each other.  You can find the complete  list of
blogs at http://nonprofitblogexchange.blogspot.com/  (scroll down to the
December 1 post).  These blogs share ideas in a variety of formats and some
can be fund raising resources that you'll want to stay connected with on a
continuous basis.

Do you blog?  If you have a blog focused on tutoring/mentoring I encourage
you to add it to the LINKS section of http://msg.uc.iupui.edu/TMC/html/.
I'm building a page with links to many on-line forums and blogs.  If you add
yours you can provide more information about mentoring and tutoring to
people who visit the T/MC portal, and by increasing traffic,  you'll find
that more people will visit and read  your blog!!

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Chicago's Mayor Daley helps Distribute $45,000 in 2005 Lend A Hand Grants to
Chicago Volunteer Based Tutor/Mentor Programs.
On December 8th, a special program was held in the chambers of Chicago's
City Council.  Mayor Richard M. Daley and representatives of the Chicago Bar
Association and prominent law firms like Corboy & Demetrio and Much Shelist
joined members of the Abraham Lincoln Marovitz Lend-A-Hand Program  to
present $45,000 in grants and awards to 17 agencies involved in
volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs serving at-risk youth in areas across
the city including Cabrini Green, Humboldt Park, Uptown, and South Chicago.
Read more about this and see the complete list of programs receiving grants
at http://tutormentor.blogspot.com

Much Shelist Honors Founders with $35,000 Contribution to Lend-a-Hand
Program
Read more at http://www.muchshelist.com/512.htm
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National Mentoring Month. The January '06 Campaign Challenges Baby Boomers:
"Share What  You Know. Mentor a Child!"
Mentoring will be in the spotlight again this January, thanks to leadership
from the Harvard Mentoring Project (
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/chc/wmy2006/index.html ) and The National
Mentoring Partnership (http://www.mentoring.org).  In Chicago the campaign
is headed by the Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Metropolitan Chicago
(http://www.bbbschgo.org ).

While the media focus in January will be on volunteering, we hope it also
encourages leaders, volunteers and potential donors to connect and share
ideas on the Internet.  At  http://msg.uc.iupui.edu/TMC/html/index.php  the
Tutor/Mentor Connection encourages stakeholders to share their ideas about
different mentoring strategies and to use the Program Locator to learn where
various forms of volunteer-based tutoring and/or mentoring programs are
located in Chicago and where more are needed.  The T/MC focus during January
is not just on recruiting more volunteers, but on recruiting business,
university and philanthropy partners who will help support the staff
infrastructure needed to support an expansion of the number of volunteers in
existing programs.  These are the topics of T/MC conferences and of the T/MC
on-line Discussion Forum

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Tutor/Mentor Leadership Conference .
Thank you to everyone who attended the Nov. 17 and 18 Tutor/Mentor
Leadership Conference in
Chicago.  Here's what one program leader told me about participating in  the
conference:

"I hired a new tutoring coordinator this summer to manage Christopher
House's tutoring program and she found the conference to be extremely
helpful. She and I have done some "debriefing" since the conference and I
can definitely say that the training, resources, and networking that she got
out of the conference will effectively increase our capacity to serve our
children and families. " Traci Stanley, Director of Youth Development
Services, Christopher House

The T/MC is now planning the May 2006 conference, which will be held at the
Northwestern University Law School on May 25 and 26, 2006.   If you would
like to offer a workshop or help in the planning and marketing for this
event, please email me at tutormentor2 at earthlink.net

eConference, Nov. 17 to Nov. 30
While the Leadership Conference was held in Chicago at the school where
Highsight(http://www.highsight.org)  operates, the T/MC also hosted several
on-line forums in the discussion area of the
http://msg.uc.iupui.edu/TMC/html/index.php portal,  so that people who want
to connect, but cannot come to Chicago, can participate.  This was our first
use of the new portal to support a face-to-face conference and I thank those
who helped with this.   The eConference discussions will remain on-line and
you can still read them, or add  your own  ideas.

New T/MC web portal - 115,000 page views since July 2005
We're now directing all Tutor/Mentor Connection stakeholders to this new web
address: http://
msg.uc.iupui.edu/TMC/html/.   This is a searchable web site that was created
for the T/MC in 2005 by
the Technology Department at IUPUI.  Representatives of IUPUI have been
participating in the May
and November Chicago conferences for the past few  years, and building more
interactive portal for
the T/MC illustrates how universities beyond Chicago can take a meaningful
role in helpling us
collect and share tutor/mentor information with people throughout the world.
If  you would like to
talk of ways  you  and  your university might engage students in T/MC
activities, such as facilitating
on-line discussions in the portal, please email the T/MC at
tutormentor2 at earthlink.net.

NOTE: if you have a link to http://www.tutormentorconnection.org, don't
change it. This site links to  the new T/MC portal, and still provides
valuable Tutor/Mentor information.

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Conference Archive for WiAOC 2005:  Webheads in Action Online Convergence
Bridges across Cyberspace - Nov. 18-20, 2005
An on-line archive of all workshops presented in this conference can be
found at http://schedule.wiaoc.org . Anyone can listen to any of the
recorded workshops that they are interested in.   Dan Bassill, president of
the Tutor/Mentor Connection, did a workshop on Saturday, Nov. 18 titled:
Creating a Network of Purpose: The Tutor/Mentor Connection.

This conference was brought to you by http://webheads.info .  If you are
interested in keeping in touch with the  people in this group, please
join them at this website:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/evonline2002_webheads

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Resources to help you find volunteers, donors,  and find volunteer-training
tools. National Mentoring Month promotions will encourage volunteers from
all over the country to seek out volunteer opportunities in mentoring
programs.  Make sure your listings are up-to-date in the national and local
search engines listed below:

http://www.ServeNet.org
http://www.volunteermatch.org
http://www.NetworkforGood.org
Chicago's Community Resource Network http://www.chicagovolunteer.net

Other resources that can help supporters learn more about volunteer- based
tutoring and/or mentoring
Points of Light Foundation - http://www.pointsoflight.org
Mentor! The National Mentoring Partnership - http://www.mentoring.org
The National Mentoring Center located at the Northwest Regional
EducationLaboratory - http://www.nwrel.org/mentoring/
PEER RESOURCES - http://www.peer.ca/peer.html
State of Illinois - Volunteerism & Community Service -
http://www.illinois.gov/volunteer/
Tutor/Mentor Connection - LINKS LIBRARY at
http://msg.uc.iupui.edu/TMC/html/index.php
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PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE:

Do your donors a big favor: ask them to give.
Do you find it painful asking for contributions to support your tutor/mentor
program?  Maybe it would help to know that giving to a charity makes people
feel good about themselves.  This is the featured story on the Donor Power
Blog, found at http://www.donorpowerblog.com/donor_power_blog/.  This is one
of several non-profit  blogs linked together in the December 2005 Non Profit
Blog Exchange.  I encourage you to read this, and share it  with staff,
board members, and donors.

Support the 2006 National Mentoring Month. The January '06 Campaign
Challenges Baby  Boomers: "Share What You Know. Mentor a Child!"

I fully agree with this campaign. I wish similar campaigns were happening
each month of the year.  However, I feel it's missing a couple of important
targets.  Last  August at the National Conference on Volunteerism and
Service, I attended a workshop that talked about how the traditional
marketing of volunteerism, that focuses on the act of connecting directly
with a child, does not appeal to the TALENT volunteer who could be doing
your accounting, building  your web site, or using their professional skills
to help your agency support the  involvement of  dozens of mentors and
youth.

This  year's National Mentoring Month will benefit from the launch of a new
Corporation for National and Community Service public service ad campaign
that asks America¹s 77 million baby boomers to get involved in their
communities.  Read more about this "Get Involved" Campaign at
http://www.nationalservice.org/

I think  seniors have a wealth of knowledge and experience that would be
valuable in any tutor/mentor program.  But, I also think this campaign is
not focusing on a larger target that would benefit volunteer-based
tutor/mentor programs all over the country --- the billions of dollars in
baby boomer wealth that will transfer to charities over the next 20 years.

The Tutor/Mentor Connection theme for January (and the rest of the year) is:
Share what you've Earned. Make a donation to support a tutor/mentor
program. 
It takes many years of development for a volunteer-based tutor/mentor
program to develop a tradition of participation and a core group of veteran
tutors/mentors and youth.  A few months of NCLB tutoring will not change the
influence of many years of negative expectations of a child living in a high
poverty neighborhood.  There is no short term fix.  It takes many years of
leadership for a person to develop the multiple skills, and the commitment
needed to stay involved and be an effective leader of a volunteer-based
tutor/mentor  program that has a long term goal of the  youth being in a job
or career by age 25.

If Boomers want to leave a Legacy, let's urge them to use their estate
planning to help build and fund the infrastructure needed to make
comprehensive, volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs available in the
non-school hours in every major city in the country.

I read a news article last week about the University of Chicago Hospital
building another $40 or $50  million dollar  building in the Hyde Park area
of Chicago.  This is in a part of the city where there are thousands of kids
living in poverty  but very few comprehensive, non-school volunteer based
tutor/mentor programs.  That money could be better  spent, in my opinion, in
building and sustaining comprehensive volunteer-based tutor/mentor  programs
throughout the South Side of Chicago.  But it won't unless mentoring leaders
focus their marketing  on building the dollars and cash flow needed to
support the growth of volunteer-based tutor/mentor  programs in hundreds of
poverty neighborhoods and in every major city of the country.

The Baby Boomer wealth should be a target, and one of our goals of engaging
seniors in tutoring/ mentoring should be to show some that their legacy
could be to endow programs like the Lend A  Hand  Program at the Chicago Bar
Association (http://www.lend-a-hand.net ) , where most of the money raised
goes directly to  neighborhood tutor/mentor programs, not to some top level
advocacy organizations.

I was a Chicago delegate to the 1997 President's Summit for America's Youth,
which led to the  creation of the America's Promise organization.  This
Summit was originally focused on helping the 13 or 14  million youth living
in poverty connect with caring adults, develop marketable skills and get a
healthy start in life.  My major complaint of the strategy that emerged
since the summit is that it primarily focused on increasing volunteer
involvement. It did not focus enough attention on increasing the capacity at
volunteer-based charities to support increased numbers of volulnteers.

Thus, my fear for the current campaigns is that as we encourage Baby Boomers
to get involved with
mentoring programs, many will be frustrated because the volunteer support in
many places is not  as effective or comprehensive as it needs to be.  That
can actually cause a volunteer to stop volunteering, or event to tell
his/her friends not to volunteer.  That's the opposite goal of what these
campaigns are all about.

What to you think?  What are  you and your friends, co-workers, civic group
or church going to do in
2006 to help build comprehensive, volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in
high poverty areas?   Post  your ideas in the discussion forum at
http://msg.uc.iupui.edu/TMC/html/ .  Or write a web log
and link it to the Non Profit Blog Exchange
http://nonprofitblogexchange.blogspot.com/

You can read more of my ideas in my weekly blog. I hope you'll add your
comments and join us in our 2006 efforts.

Daniel F. Bassill
President, Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection
http://tutormentor.blogspot.com
____________________________________________________________________________

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