GROWTH AND EXPANSION OF THE TUTOR/MENTOR CONNECTIONAND CABRINI CONNECTIONS (CC, T/MC)

Vision: We will help educationally disadvantaged children and youth reach jobs and careers.

As a result of our actions, thousands of educationally disadvantaged children in major cities like Chicago will participate and benefit from comprehensive, mentor-rich programs that stimulate children's desire to learn, increase their self-esteem, and reinforce classroom teaching through lessons and friendships with adult role models. Such program will mentor adults into greater involvement while mentoring youth, thus creating a mentoring-to-careers network of adults who will open doors to scholarships, jobs and careers as youth become young adults.

Mission: Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection (CC, T/MC) engages workplace volunteers as tutors, mentors, donors and leaders in programs that help inner-city youth stay in school and move toward jobs and careers.

Operating Philosophy:

Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection (CC, T/MC) will be recognized throughout the world as an innovator, an organization that gets results, and an organization that makes a difference in the lives of urban youth and the volunteers who become involved in programs that serve these youth.

CC, T/MC is non-profit that operates like a for-profit. Our products are knowledge and services that help people help kids. Our customers are the youth and youth-serving organizations we seek to influence, as well as resource providers that must be more strategically involved in a mentoring-to-career strategy. We seek to emulate the best practices of for-profit businesses, with an on-going emphasis on quality improvement and shared ownership and involvement all stakeholders of the organization.

Core Business:

CC, T/MC provides products and services that help tutor/mentor programs increase volunteer involvement, improve quality, and reach more youth. Our services are provided to leaders of t/m programs and to business, volunteers, donors, etc. who are needed to support the long-term success of these programs. One of the tutor/mentor programs that we help is our own Cabrini Connections, which serves Cabrini-Green area teens.

Two-Part Strategy:

1) The Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC) was established to fill a leadership void. Our leadership is intended to help build and sustain comprehensive, long-term mentoring-to-career programs in every neighborhood where there is high poverty or poorly performing schools.

2) The Cabrini Connections Tutor/Mentor Program (formerly called Kids’ Connection) that we operate in Cabrini-Green is the anchor of our commitment. When teens join us at 7^th grade we promise to do everything we can to help them be in jobs and careers by age 25. To do “all we can” we must learn from the best practices of others in this industry.

Combined Impact:

CC, T/MC realizes that for a single tutor/mentor program to succeed it must be able to draw volunteers, dollars and ideas to its location. Furthermore, it must sustain this flow of resources for the 10 years it takes to provide continuous service for one 7^th grader to be in a job by age 25. The same is true for every other tutor/mentor program in the city.

Recognizing this, Cabrini Connections (CC) created the Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC) in 1993 to fill a leadership void. The T/MC seeks to identify tutor/mentor programs throughout the city, build a best practice library, and generate public awareness and leadership that would create a flow of dollars, volunteers, ideas, technology and business partners to every tutor/mentor program in Chicago, including our own Cabrini Connections program, based at 800 W. Huron. In1993 when we established the T/MC there was no infrastructure or citywide leadership with this commitment. Just to help our own Cabrini Connection grow we had to build a system that would help every tutor/mentor program grow. We draw from our own experiences of leading a single program to be passionate about the every day needs of every other single program.

Note: To reflect the growing impact of the T/MC as a global strategy, the organization officially changed its legal name to Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection in 2004. We now operate as one or the other, depending on who we are talking to, and their interest in supporting a site based program, or a global infrastructure strategy.

Since 1994 the T/MC has created a calendar of actions that start in August of each year, as school is starting, and continue through July of the following year. These actions draw attention of large and small groups of potential resource providers to our Cabrini Connections program and to all other tutor/mentor programs in the Chicago region. They also draw visitors to our Internet web sites where visitors can build their knowledge of poverty and of the potential of comprehensive, mentor-rich programs such as Cabrini Connections.

Some of these actions, such as the Chicagoland Volunteer Recruitment Campaign, are organized by the Tutor/Mentor Connection, with Cabrini Connections and dozens of other programs serving as participants in making this event a success. Other actions, such as the Innervisions Youth Productions Video Festival and the Cabrini Connections International Art Festival, are launched from our own Cabrini Connections program, with teens and volunteers collaborating to create the event and the call for public involvement. Some of the actions, such as the SunTimes Judge Marovitz Lawyers Lend A Hand Program’s March Barrister ‘s Ball and August My Hero Award Lunch, are led by partners of the Tutor/Mentor Connection, yet generate visibility, volunteers and dollars for tutor/mentor programs throughout Chicagoland.

As each of these events have repeated year after year they are becoming traditions that draw more and more public response, and that encourage the media to look to us when they want to do a story about tutoring/mentoring.

The result of this strategy is a growing public awareness of tutoring/ mentoring, and of the T/MC and Cabrini Connections. This has helped draw volunteers and dollars to Cabrini Connections, AND to more than 100 other programs throughout the area.

THE REST OF THIS DOCUMENT FOCUSES ON THE T/MC. IF THESE IDEAS ARE IMPLEMENTED, WE WILLBENEFIT CABRINI CONNECTIONS AS WELL AS HUNDREDS OF OTHER TUTOR/MENTOR PROGRAMS

EXPANSION AND GROWTH OF THE

TUTOR/MENTOR CONNECTION: 2008 - 20013

Between 1998 and 2008 this document has been updated every three years to define growth areas and the type of manpower needed to support this growth. Until 2008 most of these roles were being done by Dan Bassill, CEO of the Tutor/Mentor Connection, with help from a variety of volunteers and a few part time employees. In the last two months of 2007 key resources were received which have enabled T/M to add staff that will focus on these specific areas of growth.

History

Seven volunteers, with a broad vision and no money beyond their own personal resources, formed Cabrini Connections and the Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC) in the fall of 1992. Their primary purpose was to help youth from the Cabrini Green area move from tutor/mentor programs that provided 2nd to 6thgrade support into mentoring-to-career programs that provided 7th grade to a career support.

However, the leaders realized that getting resources to build and sustain this vision was a challenge faced by every tutor/mentor program in Chicago, regardless of location or age group served. There was no public leadership group trying to build the capacity of every tutor/mentor program, or trying to make sure comprehensive programs serving each grade level were available to a majority of youth in every poverty neighborhood, or around every poorly performing school.

The Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC) was established to fill this void, with an understanding that its success would deliver help to the Cabrini Connections part of the organization at the same time that it was helping every other program in Chicago grow. From this commitment the Tutor/Mentor Connection has taken shape, growing as resources, both in-kind and hard dollars, became available to fund new opportunities and needs. While other documentation illustrates the accomplishments and the business plan behind the T/MC, this document shows the areas of 2008-20013growth that will make the T/MC the best resource in the country from which to develop and expand tutoring, mentoring and school-to-work programs.

These impact areas divide into six categories:

• Research

• Promotions/public awareness

• Channels of business/professional group support

• Training/support

• Fund Raising

• Evaluation/planning

In the discussion on the following pages there is an overlap of staff responsibilities since technology, marketing and research staff are part of each category. At the end of this document is a summary of staff now in place as we head into the 2^nd quarter of 2008.

RESEARCH:

Knowledge is power. It is the currency of the 21stCentury. It is the accumulated experiences of individuals and organizations. Those organizations who are able to use knowledge to influence and support decisions of other individuals and organizations, will be leaders and change makers of the 21st Century. This is the type of role the T/MC seeks to play in helping youth move from poverty to careers.

The T/MC is gathering, organizing and distributing knowledge that any tutor/mentor program leader or volunteer can use to build more effective programs and which partners (business, churches, schools, alumni and social groups, senior centers, etc.) can use to develop outreach strategies to connect with children in those programs. Visit the following T/MC web sites to see how information is gathered and organized.

www.tutormentorexchange.net and www.tutormentorconnection.org and http://jordan-webb.net/tmc

The T/MC's research and information sharing tools divide into the following categories:

Interactive web sites

- The internet has enabled many people from different places to share the same knowledge and to network and collaborate on line. The T/MC is adopting these capacities into its own information collection/networking strategies, borrowing from new ideas as we learn about them, and find talent to implement them.

At http://www.tutormentorconnection.orgthe Links Library shares information about more than 1400 organizations. These links point to sites we manage and sites managed by other organizations in Chicago and around the world. One section focuses on “process improvement, creativity, innovation, knowledge management and visualization” because these are the tools we use daily in to achieve the T/MC mission.

We are using Free Concept Mapping technology to visualize the organization of our library, and our strategy, with links to various sections of the web site that related to different parts of the strategy. These links are interactive. Other people can add links. They can rate them. They can talk about them in the on-line forums on the T/MC site. We can talk about them in forums hosted by other people. Thus we lower our costs of gathering information and increase the number of people who find and use the information.

Tutor/Mentor Program Profile – The T/MC has been maintaining a directory of tutor/mentor programs in Chicago since 1994, using traditional one-to-many forms of outreach to collect the information. Beginning in 2004 we began to host this information on the Internet, making it easier for people to find and use the data, and easier for other people to add new information and update existing information. T/MC can maintain more accurate, and constantly expanding, knowledge about tutor/mentor programs, aided by all of the people who contribute to the knowledge on the T/MC site.

The T/MC directory has primarily focused on the city. However, it is also needed for many of Chicago's suburbs and in many cities around the country. However, it already provides many different levels of information that is not available from most other volunteer match internet services, or local Chicago program directors. The T/MC subdivision of information is:

• Time service offered - 1) school day (8am to 3pm); 2) afterschool (3pm to 5pm); 3) evening (5pm to 8pm); 4) weekend; 5) summer

• Type of service – 1) pure tutoring; 2) TQM tutor/mentor; 3) pure mentor

• Age Group Served (k-5; 6-8; 9-12)

• Activities (technology, arts, school-to-work, health education, etc.

• Sources of funding

• Diversity of volunteers (age, race, economic, business/profession)

At this point we cannot quantify the number of youth and volunteers in all tutor/mentor programs, and we must educate programs to use this resource and maintain their own data. However, with funds received in 2008we now have a full time person dedicated to collecting and maintaining this data, and to teaching tutor/mentor programs to use it.

Visualization of Data - Geographic Information System(GIS) databases– The T/MC has been applying concepts of visualization to its strategy since 1994, using Geographic Information System databases to create maps that show areas of need (high poverty, poor schools, youth violence, etc.) and to show existing NGOS (tutor/mentor program) in those areas. The T/MC is now rebuilding its GIS capacity, with funds received in late 2007, and building in a GIS capacity that can also show business, hospital, university and faith groups in the same geographic area where poverty shows a need for tutor/mentor programs. Such information can be used by individual tutor/mentor programs, or other local community leaders, to encourage collaboration of NGOs and Resource Providers. This capacity should be fully functioning by late2008.

Once we make this system work in Chicago we can lease it to other cities or other charitable causes, or share it as open source technology, if we can find sponsors who will continue to support our own innovation and uses of the technology. Examples of our GIS can be seen in the Program Locator Map Gallery which can be found at www.tutormentorconnection.org. Visit http://mappingforjustice.blogspot.comto follow the progress of our GIS intern

Social Network Analysis/Visual Communications Databases - A GIS is just one form of visual communications tool. In the LINKS section of http://www.tutormentorconnection.orgare many other examples of visual databases, such as “concept mapping” and” social network analysis”. In the ABOUT US section of the T/MC web site we use concept maps to visualize the strategy of the Tutor/Mentor Connection and to illustrate “ideas”. We are reaching out to information departments of the University of Michigan, University of Indiana, Dominican University and elsewhere for the talent needed to expand our use of these tools.

Staffing:

The T/MC Research and Collaboration Coordinator will be responsible for this research collection/distribution process. IUPUI has created the and is hosting the T/MC Internet platform which supports this process. Our eLearning and Technology Coordinator, and Interns, maintain the information that is being collected.

PROMOTIONS/PUBLIC AWARENESS

The T/MC seeks to support tutor/mentor programs the same way Wal Mart, Sears and other retailers promote stores located all over the county. This means we need to build a store-support infrastructure (see below) and a broad-based, multi-media communications campaign, with reach and frequency that reaches into every business and every household in the Chicago market at least four times per year. Such a campaign will build a growing awareness of the needs/opportunities of tutoring/mentoring, draw programs together to share resources, bring volunteers and dollars to individual programs in each neighborhood and increase number of tutor/mentor program sites available throughout the city.

Since a charity will never have the advertising dollars of a business, we need to innovate ways to "ride along" with business advertising and create other forms of message communication. The Internet is one avenue that we seek to exploit. The SunTimes Judge Marovitz Lawyers Lend A Hand to Youth Program at the Chicago Bar Association/Foundation (www.lend-a-hand.net) is proof that this impossible. The T/MC has helped this program grow since its inception in 2004. In 2007 it awarded $240,000 of grants to 31 different tutor/mentor programs, including a $30,000 grant to the T/MC to fund the T/MC Research and Collaboration Coordinator position.

Another example of how T/MC seeks to build visibility and increase its knowledge of tutor/mentor programs is the "Talk to the tutor/Mentor" Radio Campaign. During the winter and fall the T/MC seeks to conduct a call-in radio campaign where tutors and mentors and students of these programs talk to radio hosts about their experiences. A mail in post card campaign will ask for names and addresses of programs, success stories, etc. which will be use to generate calls, but more importantly will be used in updating the T/MC Directory and database of programs. This will also generate "success" stories for all programs to share in capturing new resources and will provide motivation to volunteers at key points of the school year as they find out how really difficult this work is.

The T/MC has a similar idea for using a call-in TV show format on Chicago Access Cable TV as a forum for building public awareness of the need for tutor/mentor programs and the ways people can get involved with existing programs. We just do not have the staff to execute these ideas.

Finally, the T/MC aims to adopt internet social networking and learning strategies to its public awareness campaigns. A blog at http://tutormentor.blogspot.comalready draws 1,200 visitors a month and T/MC is active on Facebook, Linked In and many other networking platforms. In coming months we will add webnars to the T/MC elearning strategy, so we host more frequent information exchanges than the May and November conferences.

Needs:

CELEBRITY SPOKESPEOPLE – Kurt Kitner, former NFL and University of Illinois quarterback has joined the leadership of CC, T/MC. El Da’Sheon Nix, former Northwestern University football player has joined the CC staff. With the help of these leaders we will build celebrity involvement in the T/MC strategy, which will help increase the number of people who hear, and respond, to our message.

The CC, T/MC Marketing, PR and Fund Raising Coordinator will lead this part of the T/MC effort and increase the frequency of T/MC stories in traditional and non-traditional media, while bringing ideas like the “talk to the tutor/mentor" radio campaign or the Cable Access TV show to reality.

The CC, T/MC Marketing, PR and Fund Raising Coordinator, T/MC Research and Collaboration Coordinator, and Interns will develop and write stories that profile tutors, mentors, programs in every neighborhood. We seek to distribute these stories in various media channels and aggregate them on our web site and in books.

In addition, CC, T/MC staff and volunteers will engage youth voices and youth leadership, that communicate the T/MC message via blogs, social network spaces, and videos that can be found on YouTube and Google (see home page of http://www.cabriniconnections.netfor links)

The T/MC now has a GIS Intern working who is rebuilding a GIS desktop platform that will be used to develop T/MC maps to support communications and resource development

By making the database available on the internet, T/MC is better able to share its information and to respond to calls from parents, social workers and others who want to know where tutor/mentor programs are located in Chicago

The eLearning and Technology Coordinator of CC, T/MC, along with Interns from the University of Indiana and University of Michigan, are providing talent to GIS & POWER POINT ANIMATION projects – with such talent we will tell the T/MC story the way a TV weatherman uses maps to show changes in weather. This means finding a TV station that will help us. It also means putting this on our own web site even if a TV station does not join us.

The CC, T/MC Marketing, PR and Fund Raising Coordinator will recruit Public Relations and Advertising support, along with additional dollars needed to increase the reach and frequency of our message in the following media

• Internet sites; social networking sites

• cable TV, public TV

• expanded newsletter distribution (along with cost/time saving equipment)

• email marketing/distribution of newsletters and invitations to events

• access to company media

• story development for “letter to editor” campaign

• In-house video studio to produce communications videos

• funding for 4-page insert in Sun Times during August BTS recruiting

• funding for radio talk format “talk with tutor/mentor” for Winter Period

• expanded distribution of T/MC Directory

• More consistent mainstream media coverage (focusing on program in neighborhoods)

• Tutor/mentor anthology (a process that leads to students/volunteers telling their stories through dance, poetry, prose, theater, etc.

The CC, T/MC Marketing, PR and Fund Raising Coordinator will also raise funds to support this process- while PR can increase reach and frequency; we have no control over content and timing. We need ad dollars to place our message prior to the conferences and recruiting campaign. This will increase participation.

TRAINING

TRAINING / FACILITATION / COACHING/ LEARNING

While much of the world seeks to improve teaching, the T/MC seeks to create a culture of learning, that connects people to knowledge, and to people/organizations/web sites that help a person understand and apply the knowledge to daily life circumstances, or to solving large community problems.

To accomplish this we seek to recruit teams of students/faculty and alumni from different universities who will take a role in the knowledge collection, and in the use of the knowledge to generate resources that distribute to the programs in our databases.

We seek to support the learning, public awareness and resource strategies of the T/MC with two learning strategies:

* E-conferencing and distance learning.

Our aim is to create an on-line collaboration and conferencing template that will be used by the T/MC and many different partners to connect participants in face to face events with each other, and with an expanded based of knowledge and contacts. By providing an on-line platform to support face to face events, we encourage collaboration and learning among those who attend any event, we increase interaction after the event, and we link participants from various events with each other in an on-line community. By linking conferences strategically at key times each year, with others around the world, we will expand public awareness, increasing involvement, and of draw resources directly to programs throughout the network.

The T/MC already is beginning to implement this strategy. Visit the discussion board at http://www.tutormentorconnection.org

College or business training partner(s) – much of the work we describe is already being done at universities around the world. It’s just not being used to support the work of the T/MC, or other partners. Thus, while we invite such groups to be our partners because “it’s the right thing to do”, a more practical goal is to recruit an investor who will endow a chair at one or more universities, dedicated to supporting the goals of the Tutor/Mentor Connection and its partners. At a university we cannot only tap the annual pool of students who come to a university to do our research and facilitate our networking; we can organize our information and teach our concepts.

Needs:

TRAINING BANK - T/MC seeks to create a fund that would enable those with knowledge/experience to reach out to individual programs and groups of programs and volunteers to share what they know. By building the training bank, the T/MC can control the distribution of funds and require trainers or programs using training funds to document via OHATS when, where and how the funds are used. This will lead to GIS maps that show the distribution of training, which will lead to a better public understanding of how well (or poorly) training is distributed into every poverty areas.

T/MC CONFERENCE SPONSOR (s) – The T/MC conferences now attract 150 to 225 people. They can grow to more than 750 participants because of the central location of Chicago and the high visibility of tutoring/mentoring. However, to continue to expand the quality of each conference, including facilities, presenters, networking and information available, we must find sponsors to fund the conferences. At some point we will also find sponsors to help TELECONFERENCE the event to other cities so that more people can share information from high-quality presenters without the huge expense and time commitment of bringing everyone to a central city.

E- CONFERENCE Sponsor or Partner - companies like www.icohere.com already are hosting internet conferences. We need funds to hire them, or the ability to find partners from this industry who see partnering with the T/MC as a way to do well, while building product awareness among potential customers.

T/MC TRAINERS - there is a lack of qualified people, with availability, who can help programs learn to be good businesses and who can speak to groups of volunteers and deliver a meaningful message. Funds from the Training bank would help establish a "Training Corps" drawn from veteran volunteers who are looking to take a two to three year sabbatical.

UNIVERSITY BASED TRAINING

Universities are geographically distributed in each community and therefore are ideal hubs for the variety of training that needs to be available. Universities have the potential:

• To make training for volunteers and program leaders more available/higher quality

• To provide incentive for training (e.g. credits, image)

• To train students to be tutor/mentors, as part of campus-based service, or in community based organizations

• To equip students to become better future leaders for community based programs

• To equip teams of graduates from multiple disciplines (business, marketing, education, health, etc.) to build new tutor/mentor programs in cities and neighborhoods that are now underserved

• To build alumni connections with tutor/mentor programs (as volunteers, hosts, leaders, and donors)

PLANNING/EVALUATION TRAINING

Many groups, such as the Drucker Foundation, talk about outcome based planning, but the cost of their workshops and conferences is far beyond the scope of the small, emerging tutor/mentor program. We must find ways to bring this type of training down to the local level, through our conferences, and through groups who will work for months and years to help small programs and groups of programs internalize and implement these new forms of evaluation.

CHANNELSOF SUPPORT FROM BUSINESS AND PROFESSIONAL GROUPS

The T/MC seeks to develop "channels" of support for tutor/mentor programs throughout the city. Channels of support can come from groups looking to share their knowledge, or from groups seeking to involve themselves and their members with tutor/mentor programs.

For instance, the SunTimes Judge Marovitz Lawyers Lending A Hand to Youth Program (www.lend-a-hand.net) has become a highly visible channel of support. They recruit volunteers; they use their newsletters and website to promote tutoring and mentoring opportunities; and they raise funds to help neighborhood tutor/mentor programs operate. Any company or professional group can duplicate this model.

T/MC seeks to consult this process, using its GIS capacity to help companies focus on tutor/mentor programs in areas where a business site might exist, or where employees or customers might live. In this same manner, alumni from various universities, such as Illinois Wesleyan, can become a channel of support. So can social organizations, such as the Union League Club. Any association of people can become a channel of support for tutor/mentor programs throughout the city, or in a part of the city, or in a specific neighborhood. As the T/MC increases the number of channels, it increases the number and variety of learning opportunities for kids in every neighborhood.

Staffing

The CC, T/MC Marketing, PR and Fund Raising Coordinator will lead efforts to carry T/MC message to more channels, working one-to-one to help group develop, sustain and expand tutor/mentor & school to work initiatives.

The CC, T/MC Marketing, PR and Fund Raising Coordinator and T/MC Research and Collaboration Coordinator will develop and expand the T/MC’s annual citywide volunteer recruiting campaign, the Tutor/Mentor Week Campaign and to develop other types of events that draw support for tutor/mentor programs.

EXECUTIVE COUNCIL/LEAD DEVELOPMENT TEAM/INTRODUCTION (s) -The United Way works because CEO's recruit other CEO's to be part of the annual campaign. The T/MC seeks to duplicate this process, recruiting CEOs who will become leaders in the Tutor/Mentor Movement. See the power point essay titled ROLE OF LEADERS, in the Tutor/Mentor Institute section at www.tutormentorexchange.net

FUND RAISING:

While Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection needs to increase the flow of flexible operating dollars to itself, we’ll ultimately be measured by how well we are able to increase funding for ALL tutor/mentor programs.

Our goal is to increase flexible funds for general operations.

These are the dollars program need to innovate, to hire and keep great staff, to provide training and incentives and to meet opportunities for improvement as they arise. At least 50% of the funds at any tutor/mentor program, including Cabrini Connections, should come from this stream of funding. Following are some ideas that can lead to such funding:

• workplace fund raising – we seek to use our database to create a tutor/mentor funding federation that can compete with United Ways for workplace fund raising dollars. This is the most consistent flow of dollars that can be reached.

• Internet fund raising portal – while www.networkforgood.org hosts more than 700,000 charities, it does not evangelize for any single service category the way T/MC does for tutor/mentor programs. That means our site can attract more people who care about this cause than their site does. It also means that if we can establish a giving capacity that attracts donors to the programs in our database, we can begin to demand more from programs. This will lead to more programs completing the annual survey, which will lead to the T/MC site hosting more cutting edge data. That will lead to more visitors and more donors.

• event marketing – we should be able to create events four times a year that raise more than $500,000 to fund tutor/mentor programs in Chicago. Wards held an annual event that raised$1million for the YMCA.

• planned giving – we seek to strategically recruit volunteers from finance, legal, accounting, etc. who are involved with planned giving. These volunteers will lead an education process within their industries that gets the T/MC and tutor/mentor programs listed in planned giving directories. Over time this will lead to a flow of major giving into tutor/mentor programs all over the country.

• Edutainment– the stories of our youth and volunteers, as well as the movies and videos that are produced to tell their stories, can build awareness and generate revenue. We can self-produce and publish our “edutainment” via the Internet. As we increase quality and impact of our products we will attract more visitors who will buy these products.

• consulting– As we build the T/MC in Chicago and continue to demonstrate its impact via the Internet, we will be able to sell our services to other cities and to other social service categories.

• affinity programs - we aim to set up a "store" on the T/MC web site where we sell training materials that we create, and that other non-profits or for-profit organizations distribute through our store.

Staffing:

The CC, T/MC Marketing, PR and Fund Raising Coordinator, and other CC, TMC staff and volunteers will comprise a MARKETING TEAM which aims

• To research best practices of others to raise money and to innovate new ways to generate funding for the Tutor/Mentor Connection and other tutor/mentor programs in Chicago or nationally.

• develop and manage new and more powerful fund raising events (in Chicago, or nationally)

* develop a tutor/mentor funding federation that can compete more effectively for workplace fund raising dollars,

* Project team to create a tutor/mentor recruitment and fundraising site on the Internet. Develop "store” to sell tutor/mentor training materials

• To identify and develop new revenue streams

• To help CBO’s be more effective in local fund raising

EVALUATION/PLANNING

The Tutor/Mentor Connection is an out-of-school learning distribution system. As it builds more sites in more neighborhoods, with more students and volunteers participating on a regular basis, it will achieve the primary need of a distribution system, a point of contact where a student and volunteer and donor can meet.

In many parts of Chicago where there now are no programs, or where programs have limited structure and irregular participation, accomplishing this step will be a major accomplishment, taking many years.

However, in every program, as these steps are being achieved, there must be commitments to improving the quality and effectiveness of the services provided. At present, the T/MC knows of few tracking systems or measurement standards to quantify short term and year-to-year success. By any measure it takes a child at least 12 years to pass through high school from elementary school and another four to six years to complete further education and become employed. The long-term between the year a child joins a program and the program's ultimate success, requires interim measures which can be used to judge the effectiveness of process, and keep the focus on the ultimate long-term goals of the tutor/mentor program.

The T/MC therefore seeks to help programs determine and share measures and stories of success which can be used to benchmark individual programs and provide evaluation points for funding decisions. In a shrinking pool of dollars available this system must be able to demonstrate results if it is to effectively compete for the dollars it needs to succeed.

The T/MC began to develop an on-line tracking system in2000. One version (T/MC Organizational History and Tracking System (OHATS) can be seen at www.tutormentorexchange.net. A second version, called Student Volunteer History and Tracking System (SVHATS), is focused at the actions of youth and volunteers in a single tutor/mentor program. It is being piloted at www.cabriniconnections.net/feedback.

The T/MC is also learning about Youth Development evaluation systems that are being piloted by Public/Private Ventures and similar groups, as well as those being uses by business to track performance or spur innovation. (See the Learning and Management section at www.tutormentorconnection.orgfor examples.

As more programs find and use these systems, and funds become available for interactive database linking, we’ll build a better understanding of which programs are designed well, which work well and which need improvement. This will lead to better donor and volunteer decision making when they seek to find or support a program. This will begin to motivate programs to enter into on-going quality improvement processes.

Staffing:

CC, T/MC now has a full time eLearning & Technology Coordinator who focuses on technology and learning issues, and helps recruit other volunteers who will take more specific roles in developing and maintaining this system.

• The T/MC Technology plan can be viewed and updated at http://www.cabrini.hopto.org, which is a wiki created by one of our volunteers.

• The T/MC OHATS is now being rebuilt by a volunteer based in Baltimore who farms out the work to his company in India (see it at http://www.pflaws.com).Using funds from a special donation received in late 2007, T/MC will hire consults, or interns, with specialty talents to make OHATS and SVHATS programs more interactive (e.g. when someone enters information the report should automatically update). See the Tutor/Mentor Survey at http://jordan-webb.net for an example of this possibility.

• We continue to seek volunteers/funding to build on-line database platform for Cabrini Connections, T/MC, expanding from the FileMaker Pro system we already use.

• We continue to seek graduate students to serve as Researcher/evaluator -university partners are needed to conduct long-term studies of different programs to help capture information which shows what works and why and shares that so other programs can learn from these experiences

CONCLUSION

In 1992 when this organization was formed, the T/MC was only a vision. Our first priority was forming a tutoring/mentoring program that would help area youth move from 7^th grade to high school graduation and on to jobs and careers. Thus, we named the organization Cabrini Connections. We called the tutor/mentor program a Kids’ Connection. We formed the T/MC to help our own program get the ideas, volunteers, leaders, dollars and business partners we needed to help us mentor our own teens to careers. By 1997 the T/MC was so well-known that it was selected as one of 50 organizations from throughout the country to have a Teaching Example booth at the April 1997 Presidents’ Summit for America’s Future, held in Philadelphia.

This success and the T/MC strategy led the organization to develop two brands. Cabrini Connections was the brand associated with the Kids’ Connection program hosted at the Montgomery Ward headquarters from1993-1999. It currently operates at 800 W. Huron. The T/MC was the name recognized throughout the city and country as a leader of the Tutor/Mentor movement in Chicago.

This duo strategy was successful at raising more than $4.2millions since 1993; however, it has confused many of our supporters and potential supporters. Thus, in the spring of 2004 the board of directors voted to formally change the name of the organization to Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection and the name of our own site based program to Cabrini Connections. We will delete the name “Kids’ Connection”. (Note, while the organization has officially added Tutor/Mentor Connection to the name, most of the material on our web sites has not yet been changed to reflect this change. Volunteers with writing and marketing background are needed to help do this strategically.)

We will continue the two part strategy that has resulted in a constantly improving tutor/mentor program serving teens in Cabrini Green, and a constantly innovating and expanding Tutor/Mentor Connection helping draw resources to tutor/mentor programs all over the Chicago region. This strategy will continue to draw volunteers and donors to support the continued growth of the Tutor/Mentor Connection and Cabrini Connections and will lead to the expansions described as2005-2009 goals.

However, the strategy is also designed to enable partners to come forward who share the same goals and vision and have the resources to accelerate our growth in any of these areas. This strategy will enable us to “franchise” the Cabrini Connections strategy in other neighborhoods, expanding the pool of volunteers we can recruit into leadership of Tutor/Mentor Connection strategies. It will also help our vision be better understood as a citywide strategy, not a single neighborhood strategy. This will lead to better funding of the T/MC, as well as formation of partnerships that duplicate T/MC strategies in other cities.

This strategy has now led to funding that provides the following staffing:

a) T/MC Research and Collaboration – one person to maintain regular contact with tutor/mentor programs, to maintain the quality of information in the T/MC Program Locator database, and who can build connections between these programs, each other, and the T/MC. This role has been funded by a 2008, 2009 grant from the SunTimes Judge Marovitz Lawyers Lend A Hand Program.

b) Marketing/PR/Fundraising/Event Planning - one person who can generate tutor/mentor stories and distribute them in the many channels described in this report; one person to organize conferences, the annual volunteer recruitment campaign, etc. One person who is effective at building relationships with foundations and researching/writing grants. While this could be three people, we have been able to hire one person using funds from a special HSBC Holdings LLC Holiday award.

c) Training/Curriculum Development - one person to work with universities and other partners to develop a curriculum to teach the principles of the Tutor/Mentor Connection

d) IT staff - someone who can build databases, manage the GIS, build web sites, and keep our technology running smoothly

• Funding from HSBC North America has enabled CC, T/MC to hire an eLearning and Technology Coordinator who provides technology support, website support, and elearning support for students/volunteers and staff.
• Funding from an anonymous donor has enabled T/MC to hire a GIS Intern to rebuild the T/MC mapping capacity. Funds will also be used to build an on-line version of this capacity and to support the operations of the Program Locator (searchable database of tutor/mentor programs) and Organizational History and Tracking System (TMCOHATS) (used to document actions leading to T/MC goal achievement).

With this talent we will increase the pace of development and the growth of our impact. Visit the following web sites for additional information:

www.tutormentorconnection.org www.tutormentorexchange.net

www.cabriniconnections.net www.tutormentorconference.bigstep.com