What resources are available?
A tutor/mentor program is like a store in a neighborhood. It needs to offer products and services to attract youth, volunteers, media and leadership support. While each program competes for these, what if business, colleges,faith groups, etc. were proactive in their support?
Chicago has more than 400,000 youth in its public school system. New York City has close to one million. Most non-school tutor/mentor programs serve between 40 and 80 students. How many of these programs would need to be operating to reach even 25% of the youth in these cities?
If each program has to be an expert at connecting youth and volunteers and an expert in marketing and fund raising not many will be available and not many will stay in business for decades or longer.
This section points to web sites and training materials that non profits can use to acquire needed resources. It also points to articles that show challenges facing non profits and benefits to business of encouraging volunteer involvement in tutor/mentor programs.
All non profit tutoring, mentoring, learning, arts and technology programs need the same resources. This graphic illustrates that volunteers, public visibility, operating dollars, technology and many other essential resources need to be reaching non profit tutor/mentor programs in every part of the city.
In this discussion can we innovate ways that would increase the flow of these resources directly to programs in different places and by-passing the grant-seeking process so the costs of acquiring the resources is reduced?