[YL] Tutor/Mentor e-News forJune 2006 - Connecting, Networking and Sharing Ideas

[Dan Bassill]

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

June 6,  2006

T/MC REPORT ON-LINE, Issue #43
Join on-line Tutor/Mentor forum at MENTOR EXCHANGE, this week
Chicago Conference attended by 190
May eConferences hosted by MENTOR, Social Edge and IUPUI
Chicago Programs: Update your Program Locator Contact information
On-line Volunteer Recruitment and Learning Resources
President's Message - Good to Great and the Social Sector

This email newsletter is being sent to people who are volunteer
tutors/mentors, leaders, staff, board members of tutor/mentor and youth
development programs.  As you read this email newsletter, and visit T/MC web
sites,  please consider everything you read as a personal invitation to
connect and collaborate with the Tutor/Mentor Connection.

If you would like to be removed from this email list, just reply and say
"remove".

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This Week, June 5 -9,  Join the Discussion of PROGRAM IMPROVEMENT,  on the
MENTOR EXCHANGE listserv

The forum started on Monday morning, with an introduction from Michael
Garringer, who wrote:  What is the one thing you¹ve done in the last year
(or two) that really improved your mentoring program?

Obviously, this question can be approached from many angles. For some of
you, it may be programmatic things, like finally developing a match
supervision database or discovering a new approach to getting volunteers
from local businesses. For others, it may be more organizational, such as
getting the right folks on the board of directors or getting a large grant
as the result of a new partnership. Other areas of innovation might include:

§    Program evaluation
§    Fundraising 
§    Mentoring activities
§    Technology solutions
§    Staffing/professional development
§    Different mentoring models
§    Volunteer training
§    Parent involvement
§    Wrap-around services for youth or families

Whatever your key innovation, be sure to give some details on how you went
about getting from point A to point B. What would others on the listserv
need to do to implement your cool idea on their end? Any little tidbits of
advice from your experience will be most helpful.

If you're already subscribed to MENTOR EXCHANGE, send your response to
mentorexchange at lyris.nwrel.org.

To find out how to subscribe to MENTOR EXCHANGE, go to
http://www.nwrel.org/mentoring/listserv.html


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May 25 and 26th Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference,   held at
the Northwestern University Law School in Chicago, was attended by more than
190 people.
Thank you to everyone who participated in the Chicago conference, especially
to the volunteers who donated time to present workshops.  I've heard
positive feedback from many who participated. Among the speaker evaluations
were comments like "This workshop was awesome. I loved the interactiveness
and the things that I will take away from the workshop." and "It was a
pleasure and a privilege to attend this session. I learned a lot, even after
37 years teaching middle school students".

Visit http://www.tutormentorconference.bigstep.com to see the list of
speakers and workshops. Web links are provided for many of the workshops so
that you can continue to network and learn from each other.   The next
conference will be in November 2006.  We seek a university, hotel or
business who will donate space for the 2-day event.   Email
tutormentor2 at earthlink.net or call 312-492-9614 if you can help.

May on-line forums connected tutor/mentor leaders and stakeholders from
around the world.  Visit http://www.tutormentorconference.bigstep.com/ to
find links to the Social Edge May 2-15th forum, the MENTOR/National
Mentoring Partnership May 8-12 forum and the IUPUI May 17th eConference.  If
you'd like to host an eConference in August, email
tutormentor2 at earthlink.net.  We seek eConference partners in Europe, Asia,
Africa and South America, as well as in the US.  The issues of poverty,
class and race are the same, only the people and places are different.

Sponsors needed to help support May and November conferences.  Please
forward this address (
http://www.tutormentorconference.bigstep.com/May06Conference.pdf ) to anyone
in your network who might be willing to become a donor to support the May
and November conferences. This is what enables us to keep fees low and offer
scholarships.  It also will enable us to confirm a date and location for
future conferences with more lead time for planning.

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Technology problems - the T/MC main website at
http://www.tutormentorconnection.org has been out of service since last
week, due to our servers crashing. We hope to be back on line soon.  In the
meantime, use the http://www.tutormentorexchange.net web site.

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What boards and funders can do to help nonprofit leaders
The Donors Forum held a program on March 22, 2006 to discuss a recent
CompassPoint report on nonprofit leadership issues. More than 400 local
nonprofit leaders attended the event to discuss issues of succession
planning, executive burnout, and what boards and funders can do to help
nonprofit leaders.

Read the complete CompassPoint report, Daring to Lead 2006: A National Study
of Nonprofit Executive Leadership, at
http://www.informz.net/z/cjUucD9taT0yNTY3NDQmcD0xJnU9NzcyNjE1MjMmbGk9NjM1NDc
5/index.html . 

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Volunteer Recruitment and Learning Resources
The networking and  on-line discussions in May and June are intended to help
programs and stakeholders join together in strategies that will increase the
number of volunteers and donors who support volunteer-based tutor/mentor
programs as school starts again in August and September.  If you'd like to
participate in on-line planning of volunteer recruitment events, email
tutor/mentor2 at earthlink.net, or subscribe to the online forum at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/volunteer_recruitment/

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Chicago Programs: Update your contact information in the Program Locator at
http://www.tutormentorexchange.net.
As the T/MC works to increase the number of volunteers and donors who want
to support a tutor/mentor program in Chicago, it is important that
individual programs maintain the accuracy of the information we have in the
Program Locator database.  You can now edit your own information on line.
Email tutormentor2 at earthlink.net, or call 312-492-9614 so we can show you
how to use this new feature.

If you are in another city and would like to have a Program Locator for your
own city, email tutormentor2 at earthlink.net so we can brainstorm ways to
collaborate.

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Are  you listed in these volunteer search engines?  These are no-costs ways
to attract volunteers.

http://www.ServeNet.org
http://www.volunteermatch.org
http://www.chicagovolunteer.net


Other resources for volunteer recruitment, recognition and training
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
Verizon Literacy Campus - http://www.literacycampus.org
State of Illinois - Volunteerism & Community Service -
http://www.illinois.gov/volunteer/
Jefferson Awards for Public Service - recognize your volunteers by
nominating them for a Jefferson Award.  Learn more at
http://www.jeffersonawards.org

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PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE:

Good to Great and the Social Sector
One of the workshops from the Chicago conference, hosted by Angel Diaz of
The Midtown Education Foundation (http://www.midtown-metro.org), was
organized around the concepts of a pamphlet written by Jim Collins, titled
"Good to Great and the Social Sector".

I read it. It's great.  I recommend that you go to Borders and buy this
pamphlet. It can be the most important thing you've ever done to help kids
move from poverty to careers.  Why? Because it can help  you build a Great
organization to support the on-going growth of your program.

I incorporate the concepts of going from Good to Great in the Cabrini
Connections (http://www.cabriniconnections.net) tutor/mentor program that I
lead in Chicago, and in the actions of the Tutor/Mentor Connection.

In the Program Locator, we show maps of Chicago that highlight areas with
highest concentrations of poverty and poorly performing schools.  We do this
to emphasize that GREAT tutor/mentor programs are needed in all of these
neighborhoods, not just in the neighborhood where we operate Cabrini
Connections.

While each of us may define what we mean by GREAT in different terms, we can
each learn to benchmark what we do against what others do who have similar
resources and meet similar needs, even if these programs are in other cities
and countries.  As we do that we'll be able to borrow ideas that will help
us build from good to great on an on-going basis.

After you read the book, please share your ideas in one of the on-line
forums. What is your non profit doing to grow from good to GREAT?  What is
your business, church, university, hospital or elected leader doing to help
tutor/mentor programs grow from good to GREAT?

As we share these ideas in future conferences and in on-line libraries,
we'll stimulate the ability for more programs in more places to become GREAT
and that will result in more kids moving from poverty to jobs and careers,
over the course of many years.

I'll be writing more about this in my Blog at
http://tutormentor.blogspot.com. I hope you'll post your comments.

Thanks for reading this newsletter, and for forwarding it to others.  If you
know of people who want to be on the distribution list, just send their
email to me at tutormentor2 at earthlink.net.  Every thing that the T/MC sends
to you is intended as an invitation to start a conversation intended to find
ways you and the Tutor/Mentor Connection might work together to make more
comprehensive, non-school tutor/mentor programs available in neighborhoods
where kids are being killed and futures are being lost because too few adult
support systems are available.


Daniel F. Bassill
President, Tutor/Mentor Connection and Cabrini Connections
____________________________________________________________________________

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