tutormentor - Sep 5, 2006 4:33 pm (#1 Total: 13)
Cabrini Connections Tutor/Mentor Connection


Hi everyone, I hope that over the next week or two we can build a list of examples that illustrate unique ways business and professional leaders can draw volunteers and donors from their industry to a universe of charities in their community, rather than to one or two that might be the personal favorate of a CEO or a company.

At http://tutormentor.blogspot.com/2006/07/chicagos-legal-community-lending-hand.html you can read about a July 2006 lunch hosted by the Abraham Lincoln Marovitz Lend A Hand Program. More than 200 lawyers, judges and tutor/mentor program representatives attended. The President of the Chicago Bar Association kicked off the meeting saying, "I'm going to be a mentor this year and I hope you will too."

This is the type of leadership we'd like to see leaders in every industry take. I've invited Jim Morsh, chair of the Lend A Hand Exec Committee to talk about the process that has led to the growth of the Lend A Hand, and his own personal reasons for volunteering time over the past 12 years to make it happen.

I encourage you to offer you own ideas and to invite CEOs that you know to join the discussion and talk about their own innovations in leadership.If more CEOs will encourage volunteerism, learning from each other, we can dramatically increase the resources we have to solve community problems.

I'll look forward to hearing from you.

jmorsch - Sep 6, 2006 6:30 am (#2 Total: 13)

Hi, my name is Jim Morsch.  As Dan Bassill indicated, I am the Chair of the Abraham Lincoln Marovitz Lend-A-Hand Program in Chicago and partner in the law firm of Butler Rubin Saltatrelli & Boyd where I have served over the years as a Member of the Management Committee, Pro Bono Director and Chair of the Antitrust and Competition Law Practice. 

Oneof the challenges we faced while I was one of the firm's Managing Partners was to build more non-work related interraction between our administative assistants, back-office staff and paralegals with the attorneys of the firm.  We suveyed the staff, and somewhat surprisingly, they said they wanted to be more involved in the firm's pro bono program and for the firm to find ways for them to give back to the community.  We brought in different charitable organizations to meet the staff, and ultimately they decided to adopt a tutor-mentor organization in a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood on the west side of Chicago.  We are now in our second year of sponsoring the program and have hosted Kid's Day here at the firm, organized school supplies drives, and contributed time and equipment to help the program out.  During the program's first year, the staff indicated in our annual staff survey that the adoption of the agency was the best development at the firm in the past year, that it brought lawyers and staff together in ways that had never occurred before, and that it enhanced people's job satisfaction immensely.  The lesson we drew is that we are all looking for ways to give back to society and tapping into those sentiments can serve not just charitable ends but critical business needs as well.

tutormentor - Sep 6, 2006 10:28 am (#3 Total: 13)
Cabrini Connections Tutor/Mentor Connection


Thank you Jim for introducing yourself. Jim's post shows how he is trying to get members of Chicago's legal community involved in tutoring/mentoring.

Below is a link that illustrates why healthcare leaders should be involved in activities that create a pipeline of workers to their industry: http://www.healthworkforce.org/guide/pipeline_sec1_1.htm

Browse the sections of this site and you'll find useful information that any CEO could use in his/her own corporate and professional leadership.

pcubeta - Sep 6, 2006 10:30 am (#4 Total: 13)


Habitat may be a good model in providing a way for employees to bond together while doing good.

plamb - Sep 6, 2006 12:40 pm (#5 Total: 13)
Paul Lamb

Dan: Interesting idea to organize location based networks for volunteering and/or mentoring. One of the ways that this could be accomplished, particularly with with CEOs and other well connected indviduals, is through an online social network (a kind of LinkedIn for volunteering) that would highlight the programs these folks support and create a built in marketing mechanism. Does anything like this exist at Tutormentor or at places like volunteermatch.org etc?

Good stuff!

Paul

tutormentor - Sep 6, 2006 2:42 pm (#6 Total: 13)
Cabrini Connections Tutor/Mentor Connection


Phil thanks for pointing to Habitat for Humanity. Paul, my vision is that leaders from different industry encourage employees and friends to become involved in various charities.

Once people begin service, the next step is that at the business end, and at the service end, volunteers can connect and share ideas, socialize, and reinforce each other's involvement.

At the program side of this, such socialization could be in the activities of the event, such as building homes. At a tutor/mentor program it is in the weekly meetings of kids/volunteers. However, this is just one way charities can connect volunteers with each other.

In Chicago, networks of local tutor/mentor programs are getting together to organize training events that connect volunteers and/or leaders from local programs with each other, and with leaders and volunteers from programs beyond the local community.

With the internet, we've started to build discussion forumsand at http://www.tutormentorconnection.org and via the http://www.tutormentorconference.bigstep.com forums, where volunteers and leaders from our own program, and other programs, can connect and learn from each other. As the number of volunteers who come to these service specific forums grows, we can begin to ask "who works for such and such company" and begin to form industry specific groups who might have more reasons to network with each other, and who can begin to share ideas of what works, what does not work, and what might a group from the same company, or industry, do as a group to make things work better for multiple organizations.

From the industry side, we'd like to see this same process emerge, supported by corporate leaders who encourage volunteers to share information on Intranet bulletin boards. If such forums were created they could link volunteers from multiple branches of a company with each other. In this scenerio, volunteers from a company who do the Habitat program in different cities could be connecting with each other before, and after, to plan future events, or to talk of other ways they could help the neighborhoods and familes where they did their Habitat service.

To my knowledge, these types of social networking are not yet happening in many charitable sectors, or many businesses, if any. If any of you can point to such forums, please do that.

If this process is not yet happening, then my goal of hosting meetings like this week's Social Edge forum is to draw people together who have the sense of purpose, and the talent and time, to create such a process.

tutormentor - Sep 8, 2006 5:55 am (#7 Total: 13)
Cabrini Connections Tutor/Mentor Connection

Yesterday I was part of a volunteer recruitment fair held at the James Thompson Center in Chicago along with 8 other organizations that offer volunteer based tutoring and/or mentoring to youth and adults.  We were each seeking volunteers for our own organizations, while we also were creating visibility that was intended to draw volunteers to more than 200 other organizations that offer volunteer-based tutoring/mentoring in Chicago.

While each of us met 10 to 15 potential volunteers who happened to be visiting the Thompson Center, there really were very few people who came to that location yesterday just looking to learn more about being a volunteer in a tutor/mentor program.

That's because we (non profits) have very little money to advertise.  The only way we can increase volunteer involvement, is if leaders in business, churches, hospitals, etc. are using their own visibility, and communications tools, to encourage such involvement on a regular basis.

I developed a pdf titled ROLE of LEADERS that illustrates what this role might look like.

If dozens of leaders in Chicago, or other cities, were applying this type of leadership there might have been hundreds of potential volunteers at the Thompson Center  yesterday, and perhaps thousands on web sites with volunteer databases.

I'm also a Commissioner for the Illinois Commission on Volunteerism and Community Service, and feel this type of leadership is needed to encourage volunteerism in all forms of service, not just tutoring/mentoring.

What do you think?

Attachments:

Role of Leaders.pdf (229 KB)

tutormentor - Sep 11, 2006 7:53 am (#8 Total: 13)
Cabrini Connections Tutor/Mentor Connection

While the attention of millions is focused today on the memorials to 9/11, I'd like to ask what role a CEO should take in encouraging employees to give time, talent and treasure to addressing the root causes of terror and human suffering in the US and around the world.

As you ponder this question, think of how much time/talent an employee gives to doing his/her assigned task within a company.  The bigger the job, the more time, talent, resources that are required.

Solving poverty is a big job. Thus, how much should CEOs encourage employees to get involved, and stay involved, in efforts to end poverty?  Why should such efforts be encouraged?

 

tutormentor - Sep 13, 2006 8:09 am (#9 Total: 13)
Cabrini Connections Tutor/Mentor Connection

I know that we've had many people read the information posted since last week, but we've not had many add ideas and examples to the discussion.  Because there are so many in the world who need help, leaders will always be needed to mobilize reinforcements and point them to places where  help is needed the most.

This is most evident in response to tragedies like 9/11 or Katrina or the Tusnami.  What this discussion focuses on is what type of leadership it takes to provide a focus on a social issue when everyone else is looking at some other cause.  I know that tutor/mentor programs need help every day, not just when the media are talking about some kids who got killed.

I also know that in Africa they are dealing with AIDS every day and in India and other countries, they are dealing with Water and Education issues every day. Thus, whenever we have a massive response to a highly visible event like an earthquake, this tilts the boat.  Everyone shifts to one cause, leaving everyone else short of the resources needed DAILY to do good work.

I hope some of you who read this will add your comments here, or in other discussions at Social Edge. I also encourage you to visit the Discussion Forum at http://www.tutormentorconnection.org, where the focus is on volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs that not only enrich the life of a child, but provide a path of growing understanding and involvement for adults.

Thank you to the leaders of Social Edge for providing space for me to lead this discussion for the past week. Please continue to read and add your own ideas of how we build more consistent attention to all causes, in all parts of the world, while still responding generously to the emergencies that happen randomly in different places.

Mark Lewis - Sep 17, 2006 2:19 am (#10 Total: 13)
CEO/Executive Director; Strategic Business Intelligence Group

The question was asked: Do you know other business leaders who act like Jim and draw staff and colleagues into involvement with tutor/mentor programs or other social benefit causes? Can you point to a web site that illustrates their leadership?

I would submit the Prison Entrepreneurship Program (http://prisonentrepreneurship.org/) as a great example of CEO's leveraging their leadership for an NPO.  This program, based in Houston, has CEO's training selected men in prison to become businessmen and entrepreneurs.  The program even has a fund set up that supports start-up businesses the men create when they get out of prison.  Catherine Rohr is the CEO and she has the benefit of a San Francisco area background, which puts her ahead of the curve in Texas...plus she seems to have a social entrepreneurs component to her program with internally generated revenue supporting their operations.  They claim a 2% recidivism rate for participants in the program who go back to prison verus the 2/3 who normally return within 2-3 years for violating parole or additional criminal acts.  The CEO's who volunteer in Catherine's program also contribute financially as doners.  I've had initial contact with them through a board member and I'm impressed with what I'm seeing.

Dan said: To my knowledge, these types of social networking are not yet happening in many charitable sectors, or many businesses, if any. If any of you can point to such forums, please do that.

Dan, great point about connecting networks though the internet, something I know you've been working hard on.  If you have even one great networker using the web you can build some great relationships.  SBIG has been pushing towards the goal of creating a platform for social entrepreneurship in Dallas where none exists now, and social networking is our primary vehicle.  We've achieved some branding success in the sector here, but we are looking to do more than create awarness of each other's organizations, objectives or projects.  We're looking to find tangible ways of benefiting each other by sharing resources, intellectual capital and social/business networks.  SBIG is a networking organization, and we're trying to create relationships with other networking organizations as well as individual companies or NPO's.  I agree with Harvard researcher Jane Wei Skillern who takes the position that NPO's and other social benefit organizations are better served in building capacity through identifying core mission values, sticking to them and then building a powerful network to carry out additional programming goals.  It's superior to building branch offices and much more efficient in terms of financial bang for the buck in my view.

tutormentor - Sep 18, 2006 7:36 am (#11 Total: 13)
Cabrini Connections Tutor/Mentor Connection

Mark,

Thank you for providing the link to the Prison Entrepreneurship Program. This is a really important effort, because the only way to keep people from re-cyclying in a life of crime is to provide a path to a job/career.  Lots of people are struggling to figure ways to do this effectively.

Thus, as I look at this example, my hope would be that I could find on this web site, or on a sponsor web site, a library of links to programs all over the country who are doing work to help men and women move from prison to careers, and who are working to prevent young people from going to prison in the first place.

If such a web library existed, then my next hope would be that the business leaders who advocate for one program, would point to the web library, so that their  support would draw resources to all of these programs, not just the one they are personally involved with.

I would also hope that some business leaders would be looking for ways to encourage idea sharing among these programs so they could all be constantly improving, and that new programs could form where there are no programs now.

This is the type of leadership that can lead to a better distribution of highly needed programs reaching more people in more places.  There are a lot of intermediary organizations who could help make this happen. Most are not  yet connected to each other.

Do any of you know of other examples of corporate leadership like Mark has pointed to?

Pamela Hawley - Sep 28, 2006 4:49 pm (#12 Total: 13)
Founder and CEO, UniversalGiving

Jim, thank you for such a great discussion.  Corporate leadership is gaining more and more speed as we are evidently seeing --even on the global front. 

At UniversalGiving (http://www.universalgiving.org), we help donors and volunteers find quality opportunities to give and volunteer -- all over the world. We also customize our service for companies and their global programs.

While we work with companies in locations all over the world, we haven't yet heard some case examples of CEOS serving globally.  But we are definitely seeing the support on critical levels:

*Encouragement of domestic employees in giving and volunteering -- for crisis and for giving back to and volunteering in their homeland

*Incentives/City Competitions for Global Offices -- encouraging office teams in Peru to have a "friendly competition" against an office team in France. Who can log more hours within a specific timeframe?

*Now we are starting to see multiple, innovative layers of communications -- TV broadcasts by the CEO, email blasts, "deskdrops," etc -- which all revolve around mobilization.

Finally, a great volunteer/internship program I saw in Uganda, was led by Pfizer. Quite competitive to get into, and an impressive program.

Thank you, Jim, for an exciting discussion. Please let me know if I can be of more help in the discussion!

 

Best, Pamela

 

 

tutormentor - Sep 30, 2006 5:34 am (#13 Total: 13)
Cabrini Connections Tutor/Mentor Connection


Thanks Pam for introducing yourself. I think that portals that combine volunteer and dnor opportunities make sense. My only concern about portals such as yours, and something like NetworkforGood is that they promote all causes, in many places, thus don't focus daily on a single cause in many places, or in just a few places.

Thus, for someone working with an Aids program in a remote corner of Africa, or a mentoring program in inner city Chicago, we don't get much daily attention on such a site, which we need to provide a consistent flow of resources.

I'd like to invite you, Social Edge, and others to brainstorm ways we can give energy and visibility to this discussion during November, with a goal that CEOs and leaders from big and small institutions all over the world will join the conversation in November, and then do things in December, that dramatically increase the number of people who go to the Internet and use services like yours, mine and others to find place to make year end holiday donations.

If such a discussion were taking place in hundreds of internet portals, as well as in churches, businesses, colleges, and social clubs, at key times each year, we could reach more people, and stimulate a greater and more consistent response.

Any ideas, anyone?