Doing Good is Good for Business

This is a report published this year that shows how consumers value businesses who have social benefit strategies. The message is "good citizenship creates trust".

I encourage every volunteer and leaders who supports Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection, to read this, and share it with people you work with, went to college with, or who are leaders of local and national corporations.

This provides reasons why businesses should be strategically involved in supporting our work, instead of responding with small grants when they have the interest, or the money, or when we fit their funding guidelines.

When we have this involvement we no longer focus on the money to do the work, but the good work we can do with the resources that are being provided.

HSBC North America Supports eLearning & Technology

On Friday Cabrini Connections received a $35,000 donation from HSBC North America to support the HSBC Computer Technology Center at Cabrini Connections, along with our elearning, mapping and Tutor/Mentor Connection networking. HSBC began providing this support 2005 and much of the technology on our web sites, and in the center at 800 W. Huron, is a result of their continued support.

We've also received more donations from current and former volunteers and friends of Cabrini Connections. Since I last posted, we've received gifts from

William Barry
Scot and Julie Hamilton
Kathy Cheevers
Lois Proger
Patrick McGrath
Paul and Pat D'Amore
Carol Secor
Samantha Steinberg
Robert Thomas
Elizabeth Coulson
Jane Ann Curto

You can see a list of additional donors, and add your own contribution, in these fund raising campaigns

* Mike's Map a Thon

* Illinois VS Northwestern Alumni Challenge. See Illinois. See Northwestern.

* Nicole and Nick's Run in Chicago Marathon

Don't Forget, You can also make a donation to the Martini Madness benefit.

Read about the struggles of non profits, and the role of enlightened leaders.

If we are to overcome these challenges, and grow to meet the many needs of inner city youth, we need everyone who has been part of Cabrini Connections, or benefited from the Tutor/Mentor Connection to say "If it is to be, it is up to me."

Jimmy Had a Dream. It's up to others to make it a reality.

The annual Cabrini Connections Golf Benefit is named in memory of Jimmy Biggs, a young man who grew up in Cabrini Green with the help of the volunteer tutors/mentors of Cabrini Connections. Jimmy became part of the tutor/mentor program when he was in 2nd grade. He graduated from high school in 1995 and became part of the Cabrini Connections staff.

Jimmy championed the goals of Cabrini Connections and the Tutor/Mentor Connection. Jimmy had a personal goal of recruiting 100 CEOs and "people of influence" to be his personal mentors and his partner in bringing resources to Cabrini Connections and similar mentoring-to-career programs throughout Chicago. Jimmy was working toward this vision when he died suddenly in August 2000. Because of the friends and "people of influence" Jimmy met at the annual golf benefit, the event is named in his honor.

At last Thursday's golf benefit more than 120 people gathered for golf, dinner, a silent auction, and networking. One of the guests was Tangela Smith Marlow, who was in Cabrini Connections the same time as Jimmy, and has now finished college and is a successful businesswoman.

Among the guests we had business executives,lawyers, pro football players, and many others who have the potential to be one of the 100 leaders who make Jimmy's vision a reality.

How does one get into this club? Write a check for $5000 and send it to Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection, 800 W. Huron, Chicago, Il. 60642.

Everyone at the golf dinner, or the annual year end dinner on June 4th, was able to see for themselves how much our current students and alumni value what Cabrini Connections offers.

All you need to do is look in the mirror, and look in your network. If you have the financial ability to be one of Jimmy's 100 leaders, please send your check this week, or sometime in the next six months.

If you don't have the personal capacity, but know others who do, then introduce them to Cabrini Connections and the Tutor/Mentor Connection, and ask them to join Jimmy's Club. If you can't write a $5,000 check. Write a $2500 check. If 100 leaders take this role each year we can stabilize our funding, and dramatically expand the impact we have on current and former students, and on helping similar programs grow in other neighborhoods.

I was not able to stay for the dinner, because I caught some sort of flu bug, and was running a 103 fever by the time the dinner started. That meant that our other volunteers, staff, and board members had to fill in for me. Think what that means.

Everyone needs to be an owner, not just Dan, Ray, and a few others. I read a book titled The Spider and The Starfish (given to me by one of our volunteers) and I've posted a link here.

This is the concept of leaderless organizations, or movements, where many people take responsibility for the success of the enterprise.

Anyone reading this, or looking at our web sites, or who attends an event like the Golf Outing, Year End Dinner, or Tutor/Mentor Conference, can take the same responsibility that I've taken for 30 years. When that happens we'll recruit Jimmy's 100 leaders, and we'll do more to help the kids and volunteers who are part of tutor/mentor programs like Cabrini Connections.

Cabrini Connections featured on Oprah's Angel Network site

We're honored and excited to have a story about the work of Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection to be featured on the Oprah's Angel Network web site. I hope you'll look at this, and add your own comments telling how you've been part of Cabrini Connections, or helped by the Tutor/Mentor Connection.

Then, I hope you'll also contact the people at your company, or a friend's company, or your faith group, or family foundation, and ask them to send their own donation, or a grant application, to help us fund the work we do.

No donor provides more than a small percent of the funds needed by any tutor/mentor program in any given year. Visit our donor list for 2008 and you'll see many who have given big and small donations. This is an orchestra. Some have more talent, and a bigger capacity to help than others. However, all are needed, this year, and every year.

Our teens are 7th grade when most join us. This means it will be six years before the 7th graders are finishing high school, and another 4 to 6 years before they are in their mid 20's and beginning to become established in jobs and careers. Because of the negative influences of big city poverty, which grow stronger as kids grow older, we need to provide continued mentoring, tutoring and career coaching for each youth for many years.

In fact, we say, "once in Cabrini Connections, always in Cabrini Connections". What we mean by that is that when you are born into a family, in a wealthy neighborhood, or a poor neighborhood, you are part of that family until you die.

Depending on the community where that family lives, and where you are raised, the network of adults, and variety of learning experiences, will be far greater for most kids than it is for kids living in urban poverty.

A tutor/mentor program like Cabrini Connections builds connections between inner city kids and volunteers who don't live in poverty. The longer these kids and volunteers stay connected, the more they can benefit. Thus, our efforts to build a Cabrini Connections on Facebook, Ning, or Linked In, or in other portals is part of an effort to keep members of this family connected to each other, no matter where they move to in their adult lives.

If we can do this we end the isolation of poverty, and create a network of support that mirrors what other kids in more affluent areas are born with.

We cannot do this without sustained financial support from an orchestra of donors. While we are trying to find these donors, our web sites and your networking, helps them learn to find us, and find others doing similar work in other neighborhoods.

Stories on high profile web sites like the Oprah's Angel Network site give a big boost to this effort. However, they are just one very talented and influential member of the orchestra of support we need to build for volunteer-based tutoring and/mentoring.

Please help spread the word and build the orchestra.

Make a donation today.

Stimulus Package for Cabrini Connections and similar programs

As our elected leaders are debating how to spend $800 billion, I want to encourage you all to read El Da'Sheon's Blog about TEAMWORK.

While El Da' Sheon uses a sports apology to talk about the roles many people need to take to help kids in poverty connect with tutors/mentors who help them through school and into jobs, I sometimes use a military anology.

I wrote about the graphic above in an article last summer. It shows how generals use maps to determine where the enemy has strength, and how this triggers a planning process that not only distributes troops to where the enemy is located, but builds a supply chain to make sure our troops are well fed, have good weapons and training, and are replaced by others after one year on the job.

The infantry on the front lines of a tutor/mentor program are the men and women who volunteer time to be here each week working with our kids. However, without a sophisticated support system, or supply chain, these volunteers, and our students, will not have the on-going support they need for many years to go from 7th grade through 12th grade then through college or vocational school to the point that our volunteers can help them find job interviews .... IF they are still connected.



We use maps to illustrate that Cabrini Connections is just one program in a huge city where hundreds of programs like Cabrini Connections need to be supported by well trained staff and well equipped facilities.

In this graphic the red dot represents the members of the team that El Da'Sheon is writing about. Every day you can pass on messages to the people in your network that tell them how important it is to support volunteer based organizations, and how they can provide big and small donations, to help Cabrini Connections and other programs do this work.

If you think of this in contest of the Stimulus Package in Congress, support for a program like Cabrini Connections keeps people employed, builds future workers and reduces the costs of poverty, and can create new jobs if additional money can be found to pay for the extra people Cabrini Connections and hundreds of other programs need to support the troops in existing programs, or to create new programs where more are needed.



One painless way to build this support is to create a workplace fund raising campaign in your company or organization, or to select a tutor/mentor program like Cabrini Connections if you already have such a campaign.

In workplace fund raising your contribution comes out of your pay check each week. Thus, if you pledge $1 dollar (still less than coffee at Starbucks!) that weekly contribution adds up to $52 dollars at the end of the year. If one thousand people do this, that is serious support that can help us stay in business and innovate new ways to influence what kids do.

This is a group activity, but it takes each of us to be the CHANGE, or the leader, who says "if it is to be, it is up to me."

Help us find this stimulus for tutor/mentor programs.

Donate now at http://www.cabriniconnections.net/donate/donate_online.asp

Facebook Article about Tutor/Mentor Connection

A new article has been written about the Tutor/Mentor Connection. It is posted on Facebook, where it can be read by thousands of people. You can view it at http://theloop21.com/blogs/how-connecting-people-increases-power

At the same time, we have created videos where students tell how important their mentor, and Cabrini Connections, are to them. You can see these at http://www.cabriniconnections.net

The stories from kids show how important an organized volunteer-based tutor/mentor program can be. The work of the Tutor/Mentor Connection seeks to assure that such programs are operating in every poverty neighborhood of Chicago. The article on Facebook shows how this is being shared in cities all over the country.

I hope you will use this as ammunition in your efforts to enlist individuals, companies and foundations to make 2009 gifts and sponsor donations of $5,000 to $50,000 so that we have the money needed to do this work the way it needs to be done.

If each one of you can enlist at least one new donor or sponsor during spring 2009, we will weather this economic storm and move into the 2009-2010 school year with strength and the resources needed to continue this work.

Thank you for your help.

Dan Bassill
President
Cabrini Connections
Tutor/Mentor Connection

Obama provided the inspiration. You provide the time, talent and dollars!

If you were inspired by the election of President Obama, and are looking for ways to make a difference, take time to inventory all of your assets. What are all of the ways you can get involved? Not everyone can be a one-on-one tutor/mentor. Yet, every volunteer-based tutor/mentor program needs a variety of talents to assure its success. And every program needs an on-going flow of flexible operating dollars.

As you are thinking about how to help, take time to understand the issues and where you can get involved. Form a discussion group at your place of worship, your school, your company, or civic/social group. Draw from information on the Tutor/Mentor Connectin web site and use it in weekly, monthly and ongoing reflection, discussion, and action-planning.

Then do something every day, with your time, your talent, and your dollars, to help one or more tutor/mentor programs connect with kids, and stay connected in ways that lead kids to careers. With your help, we can even create a future president.

To make a donation that supports Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection, send checks to 800 W. Huron, Chicago, Il. 60642, or use our on-line donation form.