Mapping Northwestern University for Tutoring/Mentoring Programs

So as I've mentioned in previous posts, Colleges and Universities are full of valuable assets for Tutor/Mentor Programs like ours. They are chock full of smart and engaged people who want to make a difference. However, for better or for worse, universities are multifaceted communities, with a wide variety of buildings, departments, offices...etc. They also have an unfortunate tendency to be composed of various organizational silos that inhibit communication between different parts of the university. In fact many a program coordinator has been frustrated by the seemingly endless amounts of emails and phone calls necessary to reach the right administrator who can actually begin to help forge a mutually beneficial relationship.

Therefore, after facilitating a workshop about ways to constructively engage Northwestern University at our May Conference, I decided it would be beneficial to put together a concept map of all of the different parts of NU that could help a tutor/mentor program like ours. From the various service learning, work-study, internship and practicum opportunities available for non-profits to secure skilled and committed volunteers to the various philanthropic wings of the university, consider this map a guide to the assets of Northwestern University. Don't forget to click through to the links embedded on each item to find out more. The JPEG above is just a static graphic, click here to access the map complete with all its links. Hope you like it and pass it on to people and organizations you think it could benefit.

According to our tutor/mentor program locator there are 8 programs currently operating in the 60201 area code and about 10 more close by in Rogers Park. Programs like these could greatly benefit from knowing what parts of the university to build relatoinships with, I know Cabrini Connections certainly can, and is benefiting from our connection to Northwestern. Anyway, stay tuned for more useful concept maps in the near future!

Find the map at: www.tinyurl.com/northwesternmap

A few of the many uses of the Tutor/Mentor Program Locator

If you haven't already, I strongly encourage you to visit our interactive tutor/mentor program locator and take a look around. Whatever your aims, it's a powerful tool that allows you to visualize complex sets of information and draw new and exciting inferences about. Though we created it as a tool to help potential leaders in youth tutoring/mentoring build capacity and relationships with other non-profits and community assets, you can just as easily use it to look at your neighborhood and see who your neighbors are, or learn about neighborhoods that you've heard mentioned in the news but never actually bothered to look up. There are as many potential uses for the interactive maps as there are potential users, the key is taking the plunge and visiting www.tutormentorprogramlocator.net and taking a look around. For inspiration, check out the following case studies, which provide some examples of potential uses of the interactive maps.

Anyone can make maps! (That means you!)

For those interested in learning more about the many applications of our free online, tutor/mentor program locator, check out Tutor/Mentor Connection's President/CEO Dan Bassill's blog, where he demonstrates how you can use it to create your own maps that help you better understand the news, the geography of Chicago's many unique neighborhoods and ways to get involved in improving opportunities for the youth of these neighborhoods. In his post, Dan explains how he used the interactive maps to create a map showing the location of failing schools and tutoring/mentoring programs in relation to census data about the amount of poverty in these neighborhoods. This helps him and others make sense of the recent ranking of Washington Park's intersection of State St and 55th as the 2nd most dangerous neighborhood in America. His map shows a clear relationship between increasing amounts of poverty and increasing numbers of underperforming and underresourced schools, while highlighting the few programs that are present in these areas where people like you and I can get involved.

Instead of encouraging people to avoid the neighborhood for fear of being victims of crime, an act that only serves to further isolate and deprive its residents of vital commercial activity and positive media attention, mapping the news in this way helps us to understand what positive steps we can take to help the neighborhood's residents change the violent face of their neighborhood through engaging its youth in constructive tutoring/mentoring activities. Though we may not live in these neighborhoods, we can play a role in helping foster their future success by informing our US and IL state representatives as well as aldermen of the positive benefit of tutor/mentor programs that youth tutoring/mentoring programs are already having in these communities. For example, using the interactive tutor/mentor program locator, you can easily look up your congressional district, see what high poverty neighborhoods fall within its borders and identify programs that are already making a difference there. As a constituent, you can contact your rep and encourage them to support these programs.

For example, residents of some of Chicago's most affluent communities, including: Lincoln Park, The Loop and Oak Park share the same 7th district representative, Danny Davis, as residents of some of Chicago's poorest communities: Austin, Washington Park, Garfield Park and North Lawndale (see map above). As Rep Davis' constituents, residents of these affluent neighborhoods have a uniquely powerful voice that can be used to encourage Rep Davis to support programs like ours. I encourage you to go to www.tutormentorprogramlocator.net and map your congressional district to see who your political neighbors are. You might be surprised!

campusCATALYST and the future of our GIS mapping

So as I've offhandedly mentioned in this blog, over the past dozen or so weeks, a campusCATALYST team of 5 Northwestern students have been working with us to develop a marketing strategy for our GIS mapping capacity. For more information about our use of GIS mapping see my rockstar friend and coworker, Mike Trakan's "Mapping for Justice" blog. Over the past year he has been creating static maps using his GIS skills that help us "tell the rest of the story". That is, in the wake of a tragic shooting or a piece of investigative journalism that highlights high-poverty neighborhoods, Trakan creates maps that can be used to help show leadership strategies that can help individuals and organizations improve their strategy, fundraising and knowledge.

Since the budget for continuing this mapping project has run out and we are struggling to secure funding to keep him on, we had this team of undergraduate consultants, working in tandem with a Kellogg Graduate student, Diego Ibanez, develop an earned income strategy for our use of GIS technology to create a sustainable income that would permit us to contine and hopefully expand our mapping capacity. After a number of meetings with us they decided that the best course of action would be to survey a variety of people affiliated with our organization to see if they would find any value in our mapping were we to offer it via a fee-based service. So they sent out a survey to our databases and received just shy of 100 responses. From these responses and their own marketing coursework and experience, the team concluded that the best course of action would be for us to serve in a consulting role to provide GIS mapping services at a cost of $250/map. They suggested that we market these maps to other non-profit organizations through one-on-one conversations with potential customers.

In order to successfully market these services, they recommended that we create a webpage on www.tutormentorconnection.org dedicated to selling our mapping services that clearly lays out our services and their cost. One major finding of their survey was that many potential customers are unclear about the benefits of using this mapping technology to their organization. For this reason, we should include testimonials and examples of how this analysis can be utilized to benefit their organization. This site should also have examples of ways that organizations can benefit by utilizing our maps to help us make our case. They also advocate clearly connecting these mapping services to the underlying mission of the T/MC in order to justify to potential clients why we're offering this service. Since we are going to be marketing these maps primarily via one-on-one conversations with potential client organizations, I think this is particularly important, particularly given that it's rarely clear at first glance how exactly GIS mapping relates to our underlying mission. I for one constantly find myself explaining the many ways that GIS mapping helps our organization try to more effectively tell our story and develop leadership strategies that bring in volunteers, dollars, policy change and media awareness. For more info, stay tuned, or check out Mike Trakan's blog at http://mappingforjustice.blogspot.com/