Over 35 years of leading two small non-profit tutor/mentor programs in Chicago I saw many attempts to influence how I and others used donated resources but few that attempted to influence what resources providers do to help us.
This visualization shows that to get the goals we want for youth we need to influence both service providers and resource providers.
The slides include links to many external presentations. Take time to open and read these. Make this part of a study project for people looking for better ways to help kids in high poverty areas move safely through school and into jobs and careers.
The presentation also demonstrates a use of visualizations to communicate ideas. Use these as templates, and thought-starters, then create your own versions.
Helping Youth: Influence Resource Providers and Youth Organizations
1. How to
INFLUENCE
Change
In anti-violence, poverty
reduction, youth development,
tutoring and mentoring
influencing actions of others is
essential to long term success.
Are you trying to help kids
living in high poverty areas?
What does this graphic mean
to you? Find out in the
following slides.
Go to Page 25 to meet Dan Bassill,
author of this presentation.
Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present), Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present), http://www.tutormentorexchange.net tutormentor2@earthlink.net
2. Media Stories for past 25 years
constantly remind us of poverty,
inequality, and lack of opportunities
for people living in areas of
concentrated poverty. Research
shows that poverty has a negative
cost for everyone in a metropolitan
region, not just the poor.
Since 1993 a small Chicago organization has been
trying to influence actions of others throughout the
region, to support growth and constant improvement
of volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs. Learn
more about Dan Bassill and Tutor/Mentor Institute,
LLC on page 24.
See this story at
http://tutormentor.blogspot.com/2015/04/after-riots-do-planning.html
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Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present), Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present), http://www.tutormentorexchange.net tutormentor2@earthlink.net
This is from 1993!
3. When I realized that most people were not understanding what I was talking about I
started creating Illustrated PDF Essays to share ideas, strategies and vision.
Find these and many more at http://tutormentor.blogspot.com and http://www.tutormentorexchange.net/library
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Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present), Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present), http://www.tutormentorexchange.net tutormentor2@earthlink.net
http://tinyurl.com/TMI-Idea-Race
http://tinyurl.com/TMI-TippingPoints
http://tinyurl.com/TMI-MentorKidsToCareer
http://tinyurl.com/TMBlog-RoleOfIntermediaries
4. Let’s Talk About
What this
Graphic is
Communicating.
Each part of the graphic
is numbered and will be
explained on the
following pages.
Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present), Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present), http://www.tutormentorexchange.net tutormentor2@earthlink.net
Note: This presentation includes many hyperlinks
to blogs and web sites with additional
information. You may need to copy and paste the
link into your browser. Spend time visiting all of
the recommended links so you gain the full
benefit of this information.
Pg 4
5. I've been reading, and
commenting, on a series of
articles on the Stanford Social
Innovation Review site, titled
The Value of Intentional Influence
(http://www.ssireview.org/
intentional_influence)
I hope you'll spend some time reading the SSIR articles, then browse back
through blog articles I've written on the http://tutormentor.blogspot.com site, and
the http://mappingforjustice.blogspot.com site. Look at some of the
printed newsletters I was sending to 12,000 people in the 1990s
(http://www.tutormentorexchange.net/print-newsletters ).
The Value of Intentional Influence – SSIR series
This graphic illustrates goal of T/MC,
connecting people who don’t live in poverty
with ideas that help them be more consistent
in helping people and organizations working
in poverty areas of Chicago and other cities.
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Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present), Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present), http://www.tutormentorexchange.net tutormentor2@earthlink.net
6. Here's a graphic that illustrates my goal
of influencing what resource providers
do, along with what tutor/mentor
program leaders do, so every high
poverty neighborhood of Chicago and
other cities is filled with great, or
constantly improving, non-school
programs helping kids move through
school and into jobs some day in the
future.
I feel this graphic is important to
understand because if we want
mentor-rich youth programs helping
kids in more places move through
school and into jobs we must
influence what resource providers do
at the same time as we're influencing
what youth programs do. This
requires a huge, on-going vision, and a
wide range of intermediary supports.
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Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present), Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present), http://www.tutormentorexchange.net tutormentor2@earthlink.net
7. First, the goal of this graphic, and the
Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC is to help high
quality, long-term, site-based tutor/mentor
programs grow in high poverty
neighborhoods. One section of the
Tutor/Mentor web library includes dozens of
research articles that show the impact of
poverty, indicating the potential benefits of
mentor-rich programs. Research articles -
http://tinyurl.com/TMI-Library-Research
Second, if we want mentor-rich
programs in more high poverty
neighborhoods, then we must find
ways to increase the flow of needed
resources to all programs, and
keep this consistent for many
years. To do that we need to
influence what the donor and
resource provider do, not just what
programs do.
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Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present), Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present), http://www.tutormentorexchange.net tutormentor2@earthlink.net
8. Across the country, and in Chicago, people are gathering in conferences and
smaller meetings to talk about poverty, violence prevention, mentoring, etc. I
don’t have the funds to attend most of these, so I follow many via live feed
Internet broadcasts and social media chats.
For instance, I followed many of the January 2014 National Mentoring Summit
(http://www.mentoring.org/2014_national_mentoring_summit) events via a live
feed and posted comments on Twitter. There were about 800 people at the
Summit, and between one-, and two-hundred subscribed to the live feed. Far
fewer actually posted comments on Twitter during these sessions.
In one of the featured discussions, David Gregory, Host of NBC's Meet the
Press, was a speaker. @davidgregory has over 1.6 million Twitter Followers.
Justin Bieber @justinbieber has 49 million followers. @MENTORnational
has only 6628 followers as of Oct. 23, 2015. On same date @tutormentorteam
has almost 2313 followers. This increased to 4500 by April 2021.
These are “attention gaps” that we need to close if we want to influence
the growth of needed youth and family services in high poverty areas.
We cannot do that without more consistent, and strategic, support from
business, public leaders, media and other potential resource providers.
Let’s look at this chart closer:
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Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present), Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present), http://www.tutormentorexchange.net tutormentor2@earthlink.net
9. A tutor/mentor program supports a connection
between an adult volunteer with a youth living in an
area where indicators show extra adult support and
learning activities are needed.
NOTE: While many mentoring strategies are not
primarily focused on youth living in high poverty
areas, there is much research showing that for youth
living in high poverty the non-school hours offer many
risk if not filled with positive learning activities and that
there are too few resources in most neighborhoods.
The Tutor/Mentor Institute's primary focus is helping
mentor rich programs reach youth living in high
poverty areas of big cities like Chicago.
There are a wide variety of formal mentoring programs, and many youth are
involved in informal mentoring. The 2014 Report: The Mentoring Effect (http://
www.mentoring.org/mentoringeffect), shows that too few youth are engaged in
formal mentoring.
The Tutor/Mentor Connection started building a list of Chicago non-school tutor/mentor
programs in 1993. See list at https://tutormentorexchange.net/chicago-area-program-links
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Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present), Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present), http://www.tutormentorexchange.net tutormentor2@earthlink.net
10. This is one graphic from my web site illustrating a
need to support youth for many years. On http://
www.pinterest.com/tutormentor you can find more
graphics like this, which point to a long-term result,
which is when kids have made the journey from first
grade through high school, post high school
learning, and into jobs with family level wages or
better. Our aim is to help youth programs build
strategies that support this long-term goal.
This graphic is intended to illustrate the infrastructure
needed in every tutor/mentor program. Most people,
including youth and volunteers, don’t see the work it
takes to recruit and retain youth and volunteers, and
find the operating dollars and other resources needed
to build an ongoing program. See this graphic at
http://tutormentor.blogspot.com/2008/10/looking-beneath-
surface-of-tutormentor.html
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Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present), Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present), http://www.tutormentorexchange.net tutormentor2@earthlink.net
11. I’ve piloted uses of maps since 1994 to illustrate the
need for tutor/mentor programs in every high poverty
neighborhood of Chicago. Without the maps donors
and media focus on a few high profile programs, or a
few high profile neighborhoods. You don't get a
distribution of resources to all of the neighborhoods,
or all of the programs, which need consistent support.
The oil well graphic indicates the need for programs
to help youth from birth to work. See more maps at
http://mappingforjustice.blogspot.com
and at http://tutormentor.blogspot.com
A collection of Map-Stories from 1990s can
be found at
https://www.scribd.com/doc/230623526/Map-Stories-1994-2000-Strategy-for-Mobilizing-Resources
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Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present), Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present), http://www.tutormentorexchange.net tutormentor2@earthlink.net
Public Awareness Strategy:
When media give attention to negative news, create
map & story showing where the incident took place
and what tutor/mentor programs (if any) are in that
area. Use this as call to action.
12. Most efforts to support non profits, including tutor/mentor
programs, share ideas that help programs improve themselves,
and their operations.
This concept map shows a section of
the Tutor/Mentor Web library that
represents a college of resources
that tutor/mentor leaders could draw
from to be better at what they do.
http://tinyurl.com/TMILibrary-ResourceLinks
However, most smaller programs are so overwhelmed and under financed that
they can't draw from this information for on-going learning as much as they need
to. One section of the Tutor/Mentor library should be read by business leaders,
donors and policy makers. It shows challenges facing non profits.
The link is: http://tinyurl.com/TMILibrary-ChallengesFacingNPO
As the Iceberg graphic demonstrated, every program has common needs for a
wide range of talent. Few have the money to hire all the talent they need or
purchase the best technology and other tools needed to run a high quality
business.
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Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present), Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present), http://www.tutormentorexchange.net tutormentor2@earthlink.net
13. This is where we need to grow. Business leaders
have tremendous expertise in building chains of stores
operating in multiple locations. I wrote about Polk Bros
in Jan 2014 article (see link below), showing how
advertising and sales promotion were used to draw
customers to stores.
On http://www.pinterest.com/tutormentor I show many
graphics that illustrate the
role of business and professionals could take to draw
needed resources to volunteer-based tutoring and/or
mentoring programs all over the city.
I created a “Virtual Corporate office PDF” to illustrate
the way volunteer talent in many companies and
industries could be mobilized and focused on
supporting the growth of tutor/mentor programs
throughout big cities like Chicago.
http://tinyurl.com/TMI-VirtualCorpOffice
Jan 2014 article titled: Lessons from Polk Bros – Power of Advertising!;
http://tutormentor.blogspot.com/2014/01/lessons-from-polk-bros-power-of.html
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Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present), Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present), http://www.tutormentorexchange.net tutormentor2@earthlink.net
14. This is one of many graphics that
visualize the need for leaders
from many sectors to become
“influencers”.
On the next few slides are
concept maps that show reasons
and ways for business to engage
their employees and company
resources, as a workforce
development strategy, not a
philanthropy strategy.
Open the links and follow the
path shown on the concept maps.
See entire collection of concept maps at
http://www.tutormentorconference.org/conceptmaps.asp
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Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present), Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present), http://www.tutormentorexchange.net tutormentor2@earthlink.net
16. Pg 16
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Strategic investment by business
http://tinyurl.com/TMI-WhyShouldBusinessInvest
17. Pg 16
Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present), Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present), http://www.tutormentorexchange.net tutormentor2@earthlink.net
Leadership Commitment Strategy Map
http://tinyurl.com/tmc-strategy-map
What If this Map, and Commitment, Were Shown on Thousands of Business
Websites With the Company CEO or Logo in the Blue Box at the top?
18. If tutoring, mentoring and learning programs are
consistently supported, and are constantly
learning from each other, and engaging all of
their supporters in efforts to constantly improve
the organization’s impact, they should be able
to show on their web sites many indicators of
their value and impact.
This pdf illustrates some
of the things a “shopper”
should want to see when
looking at a tutor/mentor
program’s web site.
Shoppers Guide for Choosing What Tutor/Mentor Program to Support
- http://tinyurl.com/TMI-ShoppersGuide
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Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present), Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present), http://www.tutormentorexchange.net tutormentor2@earthlink.net
20. Teams of volunteers from
business, universities, high
schools, etc. could help programs
collect and share this information
on web sites, and could provide
some of the advertising support
needed every day to encourage
more people to look at these web
sites and provide support to help
one, or many, programs grow.
Visit http://michaelcnt.blogspot.com/2014/02/simplifying-complex-ideas-role-of.html
and see how an intern from South Korea created a YouTube video to share the
“Influence graphic” steps. See video at https://youtu.be/s-vTuuGZc7s
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Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present), Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present), http://www.tutormentorexchange.net tutormentor2@earthlink.net
Students at any high school or college could be creating their own versions!
21. At key times each year, such as when school is starting, or during year end holidays, we need
to be telling stories with a common purpose. Can we influence more people to be volunteers?
Can we influence more people to be donors? Can be influence more people to be
intermediaries, story-tellers, network-builders? When everyone tells these stories can we link
them to common web sites with maps, databases, research and learning resources? Can we
influence high profile people to take this role?
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Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present), Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present), http://www.tutormentorexchange.net tutormentor2@earthlink.net
22. As a result of this support there should be many programs with a long-term
history and the ability to posts murals like this, showing youth and volunteers who
have been part of programs in the past, and who are still connected to those
programs today, while helping programs provide services to the next generation
of youth.
Read 2023 research about mentoring, social capital and philanthropy
https://tutormentor.blogspot.com/2023/07/new-research-on-mentoring-shows-funding.html
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Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present), Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present), http://www.tutormentorexchange.net tutormentor2@earthlink.net
23. Now, when you look at this
graphic, do you understand
what it is showing? Can you
share this with people in your
own network?
Visit
http://michaelcnt.blogspot.com
and see how interns created
visualizations and new
interpretations of graphics like
this between 2005 and 2015.
Start a project at your school, or
in your church or in your
tutor/mentor program, where
youth and volunteers create their
own interpretations, focusing on
your own community and/or
school neighborhood if you're
not in Chicago.
Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present), Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present), http://www.tutormentorexchange.net tutormentor2@earthlink.net Pg 23
24. How do you understand your influence and how it grows?
I create essays like this with the goal that they are passed on to other people.
How do we track the growth of a network? This is a topic of several other PDF
essays and blog articles. Start your reading on this topic by browsing
information at http://www.tutormentorexchange.net/sna
Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present), Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present), http://www.tutormentorexchange.net tutormentor2@earthlink.net Pg 24
25. About the Author
Daniel F. Bassill, D.H.L., Founder Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC, July 2011
• Illinois Wesleyan 1964-68, History Major
• Army Intelligence, 1968-71
• 17 year advertising career (1973-1990)
• 4 yrs Loaned Exec United Way/Crusade of
Mercy, Chicago
• 36 years leading tutor/mentor programs
(1975-2011)
• President, Founder of Cabrini Connections
in 1992; Tutor/Mentor Connection, in 1993;
• Created Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC in
2011 to continue T/MC in Chicago
View timeline of my involvement 1973-1992. http://tinyurl.com/TMI-timeline-1965-90
View timeline 1992-present. http://tinyurl.com/TMC1993-2015
Awards & Recognition. http://www.tutormentorexchange.net/awards-and-recognition
Dan & Leo
Circa 1974
Leo Today
I became a volunteer tutor/mentor in 1973 when joining the Montgomery Ward Corporate
Headquarters in Chicago as a retail advertising copywriter. I was matched with a 4th
grade boy
named Leo. I became leader of the volunteer program in 1975 and continued in that role till 1990
while my advertising responsibilities grew at the same time. Leo and I are still connected. Read
more of my history at http://www.tutormentorexchange.net/dan-bassill
Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present), Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present), http://www.tutormentorexchange.net tutormentor2@earthlink.net Pg 25
26. A Tutor/Mentor Connection type strategy
is needed in EVERY urban area.
Invite Dan Bassill to speak to your group via ZOOM
or to be part of your planning team.
Follow Dan Bassill on social media. See links at
https://tutormentorexchange.net/social-media
Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present), Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present), http://www.tutormentorexchange.net tutormentor2@earthlink.net Pg 26
27. • http://www.tutormentorexchange.net
• http://tutormentor.blogspot.com
• http://mappingforjustice.blogspot.com
• http://debategraph.org/mentoring_kids_to_careers
Email: tutormentor2@earthlink.net
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TutorMentorInstitute
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tutormentor/
Learn more about how you can
help make best practice tutoring
and mentoring programs be
available to more inner city youth
in Chicago, or any other city. Visit
these web sites:
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Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present), Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present), http://www.tutormentorexchange.net tutormentor2@earthlink.net