Two students from Indiana University created an animated presentation showing where and why business leaders should support volunteer-based tutoring/mentoring in Chicago. 

This illustrates how college students can create content that will mobilize volunteers and donors to support tutor/mentor programs, if the content is distributed to enough people on a consistent basis.

That's the goal of the Business School Connection. My dream is that teams of business school students from different universities will create and distribute a variety of advertising messages modeled on the work we're doing at the Tutor/Mentor Conneciton, with a goal of drawing volunteers and donors to tutor/mentor and other youth serving organizations in their own communities.

The next conference on May 29 and 30 is a time to meet and share ideas. I urge you to attend, or to help spread the word.  If you can't attend, but like this idea, then join us in this discussion or in another forum, such as http://tutormentorconnection.ning.com

Hello everyone!

My name is Nicole White and I am a Fellow from the Northwestern University Public Interest Program Fellowship working at Cabrini Connections for the Calender year 2007-2008. I graduated from Northwestern University this pst June 2007 with a degree in International Studies and French and am very excited about bringing in Northwestern and other University Contacts to the Tutor/Mentor and Business School Connection. One of my many roles is to continue this discussion of the Business School Connection. In my limited experience in public advocacy and non-profits, I am fully aware of the potential that business schools and future and current MBA's can bring to the non-profit realm. I would love to meet or discuss with anyone about the potential of creating more links between Cabrini Connections and business schools so we can keep this discussion alive and well!

In the past few weeks, Dan and I have worked to evaluate what we've done over the past 6 months and where to go from here.  While I will no longer be serving as a Board Fellow (graduation is just around the corner!), I will continue to be in touch with Cabrini Connections when I return to Chicago in the fall.

In the interim, CC/TMC is looking for additional volunteers to better understand how the tutor mentoring community can reach into the business school community and make meaningful relationships and networks.  If this interests you, and you would like to hear about my experience, I'd be happy to discuss.  The Board Fellows Program was a great learning experience for me and nicely complemented my formal classroom learning as a business school student. 

While we are a long way from having a competition in place, we are much closer to understanding how productive links between these two groups can be formed.  We also have a better understanding of the landscape for these types of competitions. CC/TMC is revolutionary in looking to form long-term, repeated connections between a community and its business leaders. 

Stay tuned to the Wikispace and the Discussion Forums for further updates!

02:50:15 PM

I am a recent graduate of the North Park University master of arts in community development (MACD) program.  I will share your ideas with the  current students and faculty of the MACD program.

I created a workplan for this project when I began in January, and haven't done a very good job of sticking to it.  This highlights one of the key issues about mobilizing those with business skills and having them apply them to nonprofits.

In my case, I initially viewed my project as a linear process to achieve the end goal of having a competition amongst business schools to generate resources for tutor mentor programs.  There are steps in setting this up, and I was ready to jump right in.

What I did not expend extensive effort on was creating a community of discussion about the best way to leverage business school talent.  And this is where I now am aware that I need to focus.  

While a lot of research is devoted to measurement and creating tangible results, which is what excites members of the business community in getting involved with nonprofits, even more of the process is raising awareness and getting OTHERS involved as well.  The measurement I should be focused on is the number of conversations I have, and people I can engage in this discussion, so that others can help us think through the best way to get people involved.  This is the goal of my project now. 

It was much simpler to me to research competitions and contact resources about setting things up.  It is much more complicated to me to create a discussion on the Internet (one of my professors once said that the Internet is the closest things human know to infinity), when I don't know what the result will be.  However, business school students and business people need to gain comfort with the uncertainty, while using their rational approaches, in working with nonprofit organizations.

I hope to take a more active roll in this process now. Over the next few months, we shall see whether my comfort with this uncertainty changes, so that I'm able to help TMC with what they want (not simply what I had planned or envisioned).

I encourage you to introduce yourself and the Business School Connection to a discussion started on 2/27/07 at the Social Edge web site. It is titled: Young Social Entrepreneurs and Global Change

http://www.socialedge.org/discussions/social-entrepreneurship/young-social-entrepreneurs-and-global-change

My name is Lina Sweiss and I graduated from University of Chicago last year from the MAPSS program. I met Dan and began volunteering towards the end of last year. I am assisting a colleague of Dan, Dr. Steve Roussos, by coding documentation within the OHATS (Organizational History and Accomplishments Tracking System). This is a great way to document any reports, plans, actions, and/or accomplishments that occur with the goal to improve youths’ lives and help them succeed. You can learn more about OHATS at http://www.tutormentorexchange.net/ohats.html

My goal, with Steve, is to take the reports from OHATS and code them in order to see any trends and understand how such programs as the T/MC are helping youth achieve their goals to succeed in life. By documenting your plans, actions and achievements, we are able to get a sense of what is working and what is not. When you look into the link I attached above, you can find a pdf report from a few years back that coded and interpreted the reports from the preceding years.

As you begin your project of recruiting business school students and raise money for tutor/mentor programs, you can report all that you do within OHATS to not only keep track of all that is done, but to also get a sense of the efficacy of your project as it moves along.

(This post should precede the one starting with Case Competition)

Dan's written in his posts about his goal of starting a business school case competition.  As a student at the University of Chicago's GSB, I am here to help this materialize.  I am working with the Tutor/Mentor Connection as part of the Board Fellows Program through Net Impact.  This program allows me to sit in on Cabrini Connection's Board and complete a strategic project for the organization, the case competition in my case.

Tutor Mentor Connection plays a vital role in generating interest for tutor mentor organizations everywhere.  The emphasis on Internet blogs and forums is to generate discussion.  The more people thinking about these issues, the greater the possibility the thinkers convert into actors.  The end goal is to generate resources (donations of time and in-kind, as well as volunteers) for tutor mentor organizations.  Education is the root cause of many social problems.  By improving education opportunities, we hope to improve outcomes for the students involved, and as such, improve communities.

Evidence supporting the links between all these pieces in the chain is difficult to come by and typically pieced together from multiple sources.  However, organizations such as Tutor / Mentor Connection are learning how to document the data so it can be tracked, and the connection to long-term social improvements verified.  The OHATS (Organizational History & Accomplishments Tracking System) is one such way.  Browse through this area on the TMC Website for additional information on how to use the system, and on how Cabrini Connections has been able to use the data to document community change.

This all may seem like a divergence from starting a case competition.  I've spent the past few weeks soaking up T/MC's goals and mission to understand where I fit in.  There are synergies between these discussion forums and the case competition.  Awareness and Education lead to Action in both arenas, just through different vehicles.  In another post, I'll go into the specifics of getting this competition underway.

Case Competition:

Last week Dan and I devloped our plan for how for the case competition.  We spent some time initially clarifying the mission and defining our vision.  Here's a brief overview of my next steps:

• Research existing case competition and figure out what works
• Figure out how to promote this online; where does socially networking with a socially-conscious purpose occur?
• Build a network from these forums; find contacts at other business schools and track what interest we can generate
• Dive into logistics
• Find someone to carry the torch into the summer

As someone who's never participated in a case competition before, any input would be helpful.  I'm starting this phase of my research currently. 

I'd like to welcome Nithya Rajan, a University of Chicago Graduate Business School student, who is serving as a Net Impact Board Fellow with the Tutor/Mentor Connection. Read Nithya's introduction .

What can CEOs do to encourage volunteerism? That's a discussion that I'll be hosting at http://www.socialedge.org/?13@346.tjFnaxPQXrK.16@.3c49d7f8/0 starting on September 5th. I encourage you to join me and bring your CEO.

While this discussion is archived, you can still post comments. (editor note, 11/06)