We Can't Believe It!

Because of all your incredible support, The Mentoring Project won a $20,000 grant from Chase Bank!

In the end we finished in 33rd place with 2,971 votes. Not bad eh?

Thank you to those who voted for us, passed it on to their friends, posted it on their Facebook wall, and made all of this happen. We couldn't have done it without you!

So now the big question: What are we going to do with the money?

Glad you asked. 

Over the last year, we've had nearly 600 churches across the country ask how they can begin a TMP Mentoring Program in their church community. With the demand this high, we realized we needed to create dynamic training & resource materials to ensure that each of these churches can begin mentoring fatherless boys in their area.

The $20,000 grant has been allocated to produce high quality training videos and an extensive mentoring toolkit so these churches can hit the ground running!

So thank you for all your support. Your votes and advocacy of TMP will ensure that thousands of boys will receive mentors in the future.

Thank you!

Dr. John Sowers, President of The Mentoring Project 

A special guest blog from TMP Founder Donald Miller:

Could you do me a favor?

So about once a month, a friend's non-profit starts lighting up twitter and facebook asking people to go and vote because somebody somewhere might give them some money. The Mentoring Project has never had a huge twitter following, so we’ve never entered one of these contests. And to be honest, I normally ignore these twitter requests. It just feels like a teen thing, some sort of popularity contest amongst non-profits.

That said, The Mentoring Project President Dr. John Sowers called me a few days ago to say that Chase was giving away 20k to the top 200 non-profits that get voted on on facebook. John said we really need the money to shoot training videos that will allow the 600 churches on our waiting list to start mentoring programs. What that means is, if we get 20k from chase, thousands of fatherless boys will get role models because we can franchise the mentoring program we are currently running here in Portland. We don’t yet have that money designated in our budget.

So now I am THAT GUY. I’m the guy asking people to vote on twitter and facebook. And to be honest, I don’t even have a facebook account. So I’m DOUBLE that guy. I guess I never put together those little votes with actual social change until it became personal. So please accept that as a confession.

As I write this, we are 30 votes from being in the top 200. The voting ends about ten days from now, so we will need a lot more than 30 votes, but would you mind being one of the people who spends a few seconds and votes for us? It would honestly mean thousands of kids lives are changed through really great relationships.

Thanks so much. You can vote here.

http://apps.facebook.com/chasecommunitygiving/charities/270170750-mentoring-project

And a very special thank you to CHASE bank. Very cool of them to do this.

- Don

"I say this as someone who grew up without a father in my own life.  He left my family when I was two years old. I still felt the weight of that absence. It is something that leaves a hole in a child’s life that no government can fill.”- President Barack Obama

For the past three years, President Obama has strongly advocated for fatherhood and healthy families.  Last summer, The Mentoring Project President, John Sowers, participated in a White House Fathers Day event that included top politicians, celebrities, actors, and leaders of national non-profits organizations.

For the past three years, I had the privilege of mentoring a young guy named Oz. I usually picked him up after school and we would go get a burrito, or to the carwash, or to hit wiffle-balls. Sometimes went to Chuck-E-Cheese and I would dominate on the Skee Ball. Oz liked the tickets. And the cool prizes. Like laffy-taffy. 

I remember once, after I picked up Oz from school, the first thing he asked me was, “Are you an Uncle now?” His mother had told Oz about my nephew, and Oz and his mom had been praying for him and his health. I was impressed that he remembered and had been praying for us.

As made our way to the Cold Stone Creamery, I asked Oz the usual questions: 

"How is math going? How are you treating your mother? How is track?" 

That week, Oz won a track race with the other first graders in his school, and he was pumped to show me his gold ribbon. I listened to it several times and told him how proud I was of him.

Oz also had a new green-and-blue football that changed colors when you held it. But I knew that Oz was struggling some in school and his mother had recently hired a tutor, so I asked him how that was going. He talked about how hard it was, but I told him that I was proud of him for trying.

Later, while Oz was downing his chocolate fudge ice-cream cone, I decided to ask him about his father, as Oz never spoke of him. I asked him if he ever saw his dad.  

Oz said: 

“I don’t have a dad. Will you be my dad?”



I sat there. Stunned. Not really knowing what to say. After a moment, I managed to get out, “I am here for you buddy and I love you,” to which he replied, “I love you too.”