One Month Until the Conference! Workshops to look forward to!

The Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference is in one month! We're so excited about all of the great speakers and workshops that we will be hosting that I will be profiling all of them over the next month.

The first workshop I would like to highlight is the "Understanding Tutor/Mentor Program Distribution in Chicago" workshop, which will be on Friday morning, November 20th, from 9:40-10:50am. This workshop will be led by first-year students at DePaul University and their professor, Janet Hickey, and will be considered their final for their Explore Chicago Class: Growing up in Chicago. Over this fall quarter, these students have been assigned a region of Chicago and have explored and analyzed the tutoring and mentoring programs in this region. Then they write about what they learned and what they think about these programs in a blog. This is a great way for them to give feedback to each other, but it's open to the public, so this is yet another way people can become interested in tutoring and mentoring


This is a great way for first-year students at a university to learn more about the city that the university in. Tutoring and mentoring programs are often pillars in their communities and serve a purpose that is so much bigger than tutoring and/or mentoring kids. Hopefully the students in this class will be inspired about the tutoring and mentoring programs that they have studied and will be compelled to become, volunteers, donors, or even leaders of their own tutoring and/or mentoring program. Hopefully, other universities will be inspired by this class as well and might consider offering a class like this or similar to it in the future. IT doesn't even have to be about tutoring and mentoring programs in Chicago - this model can easily be replicated at other universities in other cities. I must say I am inspired by these students and all of the hard work that they have put in so far. I highly recommend visiting their blog and reading what they have found out. I think you will be just as impressed and inspired as I was.

Jimmy Biggs Memorial Golf Tournament/Northwestern Tutor/Mentor Connection

Hello all! Summer time can sometimes be characterized as the slowest time of the year for Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection, but this summer has been especially productive for all of us. First of all, we are putting on a golf tournament to benefit Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection - The Jimmy Biggs Memorial Golf Tournament. It will be held tomorrow, Thursday July 17th at Highland Park Country Club. Lunch will be from 11:30am-12:45pm, tee time will be at 1:00pm, and there will be dinner and a silent auction from 5:30-8pm. Last year was a lot of fun and it was a great way for me to practice selling Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection to those in the business community, who are our main supporters for the golf tournament. Hopefully, we'll have as much fun and success tomorrow as we did last year.

Also, with there now being three Northwestern Wildcats on staff now (El Da'Sheon, Chris, and myself), as well as countless volunteers, board members, and donors being NU alumnae, we felt it was time to create a Northwestern Tutor/Mentor Connection. Chris blogs about this idea in his blog and Dan wrote about the need for stronger connections between universities and their surrounding communities in his most recent blog entry. Back in November, I went to a conference at Northwestern University on Civic Engagement and the University and wrote about it early in this blog here. Moral of the story is, universities such as Northwestern University have a wealth of talent, ideas and money amongst their alumnae. It doesn't just have to be between Northwestern and Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection where this university-non-profit connection can be made but between a variety of universities and a variety of non-profits and causes. Golf Tournaments such as the Jimmy Biggs Memorial Golf Tournament and other fun fundraising events are a great way to get people to start getting involved in supporting your cause. I look forward to all the future opportunities that I may find as Northwestern and Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection become more connected than ever before.

Blurring the Lines between Non-Profit and For-Profit.

Last night I attended a very interesting panel discussion on the need for more interaction between for-profits and non-profits. Three women, who all had worked in both the for-profit world and the non-profit worlds talked about the importance of the intersection of the two, because both would benefit. The panel discussed everything from the different ways for-profits can help out non-profits to ways non-profits can become more like for-profits. One interesting fact that I learned is that $295 billion is donated to non-profits each year, but only 4% of that is from corporations. This statistic is changing as corporate social responsibility is becoming a hot topic and companies such as the Gap or Motorola are selling products that benefit certain organizations, but still much more could be done in the for-profit world to help out the non-profit world.

One of the best things about last night's discussion was that it was sponsored by CampusCATALYST - a new organization started by Northwestern students that (in its mission statement) states that it "seeks to direct the innovation, ingenuity, and problem solving skills of America's future leaders towards community development by cultivating a rich academic and social entepreneurship experience for college students and tangible solutions for nonprofits." This winter, CampusCATALYST will put on a seminar at Northwestern where students will become consultants to non-profits in Evanston and help them work out organizational issues and come up with innovative ways to make the non-profit more successful.

A question that I posed to the panel was how could business schools become more involved in helping out non-profits. There is an issue of business schools staying away from teaching about non-profit management because it's not "glamorous" enough (in the words of one of the speakers who was trying to start a non-profit management program at the University of Illinois at Chicago.) However, Kellogg School of Business Management - Northwestern's business school has been instrumental in having business students be consultants to non-profits and offering a degree in non-profit management. I have discussed the wealth of opportunities that non-profits could offer to business schools and that business schools could offer to non-profit in previous blog posts. All of the panelists agreed with this assertion and hoped that students such as those who attended last night's panel discussion would be advocates for more non-profit management programs at business schools and more opportunities at business schools for students to work with non-profit.

A great way that business people could get involved in non-profits is at the Center for Economic Progress, where people involved in the financial and accounting world can help low-income families become financially savvy. A fantastic program they have, that begins in January is a program where people take courses to become volunteers to help low-income families fill out their tax forms. A lot of these families' tax forms are a lot more complicated than yours or mine and a lot of them qualify for Earned-Income Tax Credit, which can add up to a lot of money. Please visit their website to find out more.

Business School Connection

One of the more interesting projects I've been given in these past three weeks is to maintain our Business School Connection, a concept that was launched last year by a fellow through the University of Chicago Graduate School. The idea is very simple: why not enlist business schools to use their expertise on running businesses and taking that expertise to the realm of non-profits. After all, non-profits are pretty much businesses, just as their name indicates, not-for-profit. I think the idea is fantastic. I know there is a huge movement for corporations throughout the globe to contribute more to the public interest. There are even people who have an expertise in corporate social responsibility who's job it is to make sure that corporations are being socially responsible by being ecologically friendly, by treating their workers fairly, by contributing to a cause or a charity. Back in May, when I attended the Tutor/Mentor Conference at Northwestern Law School, I sat in on a seminar about creating ties between corporations and non-profits such as Big Brothers/Big Sisters, or Cabrini Connections.
Why not take this a step further? Why not instill this idea of contributing to the public interest while business execs are in business school? This is the whole idea of business school connection so that business schools themselves can have connections to non-profits. Both institutions will benefit in the long-run and it is my belief that CEO's who have worked with non-profits who are understaffed and underfunded while they were still in school will make better CEO's when they are the leaders of Fortune 500 companies.
My boss, Dan Bassill has made an excellent point about many of the nation's top business schools being near low-income areas. For example, University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business is near West Philadelphia, University of Chicago is on the Southside of Chicago, Stanford business school is near East Palo Alto. My alma mater, Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Business has consistently been named one of the top business schools in the world and it is also fairly close to low income areas. I am very excited about maintaining and creating new connections with business schools and if anyone has any possible contacts, please let me know.
There are two forums for our business school connection. One is in our Tutor/Mentor Connection website at:
http://www.tutormentorconnection.org/GetInvolved/DiscussionForums/tabid/474/view/topics/forumid/116/Default.aspx
another is our business school wiki at:
http://boardfellow.wikispaces.com/
I hope everyone thinks about this idea and if anyone would like to contribute anything, please do!