Mapping Philanthropy - Examples

If you look at the mission for the Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC), formed in 1993, and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC, formed in 2011, it says "gather and organize all that is known about successful non-school tutoring/mentoring programs and apply that knowledge to expand the availability and enhance the effectiveness of these services to children throughout the Chicago region."  

That's what I've been focusing on for the past 23 years.  In doing so, I've gathered information that focuses on the resources needed to enable high-impact tutor/mentor programs to be available in more places. I've also built a library of links pointing to ideas about process improvement, collaboration, innovation, creativity, knowledge management and visualization. These represent skills that need to be learned, if we're going to do all we need to do so that great programs are not only available today, but are still available 10 or 15 years from now...with a growing network of students and adult alumni who are living lives free of poverty because of the long-term support they have received.

Understanding the flow of philanthropic dollars is essential.  Below are three map images, pointing to three web sites where maps are being used in creative ways.

BMA Funders Map - Shows philanthropic support for organizations serving Black Male Youth and Adults.  Sort by category, and zoom in to focus on different cities. Click on the yellow bubble and get detailed information. 

Learning by Giving Foundation grants map.Since 2003 this foundation has partnered with colleges and universities around the country to teach philanthropic habits to students, who then raise money to support different non-profits.  In the drop down menu you can sort by cause, college, year of donation, etc.  Using the map you can zoom into different cities to see who was funded, and by what university.

Chronicle of Philanthropy map of on-line giving. I wrote about this last November.  The image below was created by zooming into the Chicago region, then clicking on the 60623 zip code. The pop-up menu shows donations for an entire year (in this case March 2015-March 2016) and donations by category. This does not show the individual organizations receiving donations, but aggregates on regional levels. It enables a comparison of giving in different parts of the city, which quickly shows that high poverty neighborhoods receive less than more affluent areas. Note: this is not inclusive of all on-line donations, but only those made through Network for Good. 

The last map is a map view created using the Chicago Tutor/Mentor Program Locator, which was launched by the T/MC in 2008, and which I've tried to keep available since 2015, via the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC. This first view shows the entire Chicago region, with overlays showing poverty areas, homicides in 2010, and locations of non-school tutor/mentor programs (green stars).

This second map is also from the Program Locator, but shows how you can zoom into the map to look at a smaller section of the city, as small as a few square blocks. On this map an overlay shows poorly performing public schools, with different color flags for elementary, middle and high school (from 2008).

Browse through maps shown on this blog and on the Tutor/Mentor blog, or the map gallery, and you can see dozens of maps created between 1994 and 2011, using the Program Locator or our desk top GIS work station.   

These maps illustrate the T/MC goal of collecting information that shows where non-school tutor/mentor programs are most needed, based on indicators such as poverty, violence, poor schools, etc. They also show what programs exist (based on surveys done since 1994) so that a) parents, volunteers and social workers can find programs; and b) so that leaders at the neighborhood and city level, including the business community, can build strategies that help existing programs get the resources they need to grow, while helping new programs form where more are needed.

There's more I've wanted to do. I'd like to be able to gather information on donations, as an overlay on this map, so leaders could see where more funds need to be distributed. In addition, I'd like to create an overlay that enables crowdfunding for the individual organizations shown on the map, and that collect information showing funds raised. This also would be used to try to influence greater giving in underfunded areas.

So far I've not found others who are creating map-directories for this purpose, although there are a growing number of organizations creating maps showing organizations in their networks (see list). In addition, I've not found platforms that map philanthropy, including maps showing a) indicators of need; b) existing providers; c) areas where more programs are needed.

I've never had consistent funding, or more than a few dollars to build the database, build and update the maps, create map stories, and use them to build public awareness, or to train others to use the program locator to create their own maps.  

Yet I continue to share this with the goal that volunteers and investors/benefactors will come forward to help me upgrade my own platforms and share it with others so this strategy is applied in every city, not just in Chicago.  

If you'd like to learn more about this use of maps, click here, or email me at tutormentor 2 at earthlink dot net.

Create your own story maps - a tutorial

I started using maps to tell stories in 1993. Back then the technology to create a map story was beyond reach of most people and the distribution channel needed to get your map story in front of a desired audience was also closed to most people.

Much has changed since then. Here's an article on the GIS and Science blog showing how anyone can create their own map stories.

Here's a tutorial showing how to use the Chicago Tutor/Mentor Program Locator to create maps focused on helping volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs grow in high poverty areas.

As you create your maps and share them on blogs, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. share them with us via Twitter or by posting a comment on this blog.

Mapping Chicago's Shooting Problem

This map is from an animated map story on the WBEZ web site. The maps show the distribution of gun violence in Chicago from 2002 through 2011 and changes in intensity in different parts of the city from year to year. I'd like to see stories that focus on gun violence include links to other stories and research that focus on poverty as a root cause. Using the interactive Tutor/Mentor Program Locator I created this image. If you compare the areas of high poverty to the areas of high numbers of shootings you see a correlation.

My goal is that leaders use these maps as a planning tool to build and sustain high quality, mentor-rich, non-school mentoring, tutoring, arts, technology and learning programs in high poverty neighborhoods. Reach young people young and provide supports and alternatives to gangs and dropping out of school and perhaps there would be fewer people willing to pick up guns and do harm to others as a result.

Chicago - Most Gangs in US?

This article about Chicago gangs was posted at ChicagoMag.com. Take a look at the map of gang involvement across the USA. See larger version of map here.

I hope leaders, policy makers and philanthropists will learn to use maps like this to dedicate resources to fighting gangs and reducing the root-cause of gang involvement in places where the problem is greatest.

Map Gallery: Chicago Violence, A Focus On Englewood

2010 Englewood Homicides. Mapping For Solutions.

"Children are killing each other and there is an overall sense of doom and despair…We have the power to use our fearlessness and our strength to literally transform the hood - one block, one child, one family at a time." - Che "Rhymefest" Smith, Grammy Award-winning rapper, Aldermanic Candidate for Chicago's 20th Ward

(Part 7 of T/MC's 2010 "Mapping Solutions" online gallery)

My most recent blog in this series of maps featured an overview of Chicago’s 2010 homicides, and discussed just how significantly poverty and school performance factor into predicting a community’s risk for crime.

I then looked at empirical evidence that shows how students that are enrolled in mentoring programs do better in school, are less likely to do drugs, and are less violent than students with similar positive aspirations but no mentors.

I was discussing this with a colleague (volunteer Tech Club leader for Cabrini Connections tutor/mentor program, Anne T. Griffin) and the discussion reminded her of an article she had read in last week’s Wall Street Journal, called Mentors Give Hope to At-Risk Students.

The article reports the dramatic success story of a high school located in the notoriously impoverished and crime-riddled Englewood community of Chicago, focusing on the school's incorporation of mentoring into its curriculum.

Urban Prep Charter Academy for Young Men employs full-time mentors, who “serve as confidants, counselors and parental figures to the boys, many of whom come from broken homes in gang-ravaged neighborhoods.” Four years ago, the article tells us, 80% of the 150 incoming freshman read at a sixth-grade level or below. Four years later, 107 of those 150 young men graduated this year, with all accepted to four-year colleges.

(Feel free to click on the map above to get a sense of Englewood’s violence, poverty, many less-successful schools, and noticably-lacking mentor resources (we know of only one non-profit program available to the Englewood students who aren't enrolled at Urban Prep). Note that Urban Prep is not on this particular map since schools on this map are “poorly-performing.” If you are interested, it is located next to the highway on 62nd street, just north of Reed Elementary, the “poorly-performing” elementary school on the map that appears to be split by the "Green Line," near the "63rd Red Line" stop).

So here we have a case that seems to fit the discussion from yesterday’s blog. Against a backdrop of high poverty, many poorly-performing students, and the violence that is predictable under these conditions, we have a program where young men are succeeding against the odds and on their way to college, due in large part to the guidance of one-to-one adult mentoring.

With stories like this, it would make sense at some point that more policy makers might prioritize mentoring as part of their education platform, in an effort to improve our general safety, our nation’s dropout crisis, and the cost of poverty to taxpayers of all backgrounds everywhere.

Conveniently for me (since I just happen to have included maps of Chicago's City Council at the map gallery last month too), “Urban Prep Charter Academy for Young Men” and Englewood happen to be on the western fringe of Chicago’s 20th ward, where incumbent alderman Willie B. Cochran will be challenged in this winter’s elections by grammy-award winning rapper turned politician, Rhymefest, a Washington Park native who has supported Cabrini Connections tutor/mentor program in the past, and who notes in his campaign that residents "deserve representation that not only helps local government work for its residents, but that actively educates residents on all services available to them.”

Looking at our maps, I wonder if an alderman with Rhymefest's visibility, energy, and power of communication might take the lead in building new mentoring services for the at-risk youth in his 20th ward (a ward that, clicking on the map to the left, reveals only one program that we at Tutor/Mentor Connection know about... that's one known program serving thousands of children who are at-risk for crime, academic failure, and continued poverty).

At the very minimum, I am hopeful that our political leaders take the lessons from a case study like Urban Prep seriously, and make a real effort to launch new research and new programs.

If they ever need a map or strategies, I might know an organization that can help!

Thanks again for your support of this work. If you feel this not-for profit work is important...

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We at Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC) have spent the past several years using maps to identify and analyze areas of our city where support for at-risk youth needs to grow, in order to make our students brighter, our workforce stronger, and our streets safer.

We operate on a non-profit budget and rely on donations and charity to continue our work, using state-of-the-art GIS technologies in support of our community-based mission.

Please consider a small tax-deductible donation to this important charity this holiday season.

Map Gallery: Chicago Violence

Helping Students Choose Books Over Guns

"If society focuses on these basic developmental needs, youth will mature responsibly, avoid many negative behaviors, and become more resilient in the face of inevitable setbacks." - The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention

(Part 6 of T/MC's 2010 "Mapping Solutions" online gallery)

So far in this series of blogs, I've discussed how Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC) maps (maps that were featured at a real live art gallery this past November) can be used by spiritual and political leaders to develop new quality tutor/mentor programs for at-risk youth.

Today I’d like to look at one of the reasons these leaders should.

T/MC occasionally features maps that piggy-back on the all the violence in the news. Teen violence is an epidemic that shocks us on what seems like a daily basis. Local commuter newspaper, The Red Eye, tracks the area's homicides and maps the locations of each crime.

We try to take it a step further, by adding layers of poverty, poorly-performing schools, and neighboring tutor/mentor resources to the picture, to try and visualize where mentoring programs could best help steer the next generation of kids toward academic and vocational success, versus futures on the streets and in the jails (which by the way, ultimately costs taxpayers like us a lot of money, regardless of whether you care that kids are killing kids).

Over the years many people have kindly pointed out for me that "poverty is not necessarily an indicator of crime." I would agree of course. There are many poor who are not criminals, and there are plenty of wealthy criminals. This is common sense.

However, I point to findings by contemporary sociology and criminal justice academics like Melissa Deller, who clarifies that “factors often associated with poverty could affect a community’s crime rate more than simple income levels.” Deller tells us that these factors include “housing values and conditions” and “chronic unemployment" - which are clearly tied to poverty. She adds “education level” to the mix, which validates our use of low-performing schools in our maps. Finally, she considers “broken homes” a factor in predicting a community’s risk for crime, and it stands to reason that children from these broken families might find positive role models to fill the void at nearby mentoring programs, if they exist.

But how successful can mentoring really be in addressing our crime and violence problems? When clicking on the "Chicago Violence" map above, and taking a closer look at the crime scenes in relation to poverty, low-performing schools, and existing known tutor/mentor programs, consider the empirical evidence from a 1997 study of well-known mentoring program Big Brothers/Big Sisters (BB/BS), conducted by Public/Private Ventures (P/PV).

The study looked at how youth that were enrolled in BB/BS fared versus a control group of students who were on the program's waiting list, over an 18 month period. In other words, all student in the study - including the control group - had the desire and motivation to be in a mentoring program. This is important. Very often, skeptics suggest that students in mentor programs do better than their peers because they already have the desire to seek out help. This study compares kids who want to be in a program, versus kids who also want to be in a program. Click here to learn more about the research method and sample.

“The researchers considered six broad areas that mentoring might affect: antisocial activities, academic performance, attitudes and behaviors, relationships with family, relationships with friends, self-concept, and social and cultural enrichment.”

The results showed that those in the program were 36.7% less likely to skip classes and showed a 3% improvement in grades overall, versus the control group.

Regarding crime and violence more directly, the research showed that those in the group were 46% less likely to use drugs, 27% less likely to use alcohol, and 32% less likely to hit someone when in a mentor-mentee relationship at BB/BS.

Moreover, “the quality of their relationships with their parents was better for mentored youth than for controls at the end of the study period, primarily due to a higher level of trust between parent and child,” and likewise, they “had improved relationships with their peers.”

The study is careful to point out that not all programs are equally effective, and suggests "prerequisites" for “effective mentoring programs.” Take a look at what Public/Private Ventures cites as prerequisites to building quality mentor programs that are effective in fighting crime, and then compare them to the building and leadership strategies at Tutor/Mentor Exchange.

Then urge your spiritual and political leaders to do the same, contacting us for maps that will help them locate areas of need, and strategies that they can use to build new quality programs that support your community’s safety and well-being.

And if you feel T/MC mapping technologies are important...

===============================

We at Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC) have spent the past several years using maps to identify and analyze areas of our city where support for at-risk youth needs to grow, in order to make our students brighter, our workforce stronger, and our streets safer.

We operate on a non-profit budget and rely on donations and charity to continue our work, using state-of-the-art GIS technologies in support of our community-based mission.

Please consider a small tax-deductible donation to this important charity this holiday season.