Celebrate Dan's Birthday

tutor, mentor, volunteer, learning, library, research, poverty, workforce development, youth development, non-school hours, planning, fund raising, capacity building, intermediary, public awareness, concept maps

Dan Bassill, founder of Tutor/Mentor Connection and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC, turns 79 on December 19, 2025.

Dan2021

Every year since 2011 I've invited friends and supporters to
help me celebrate my birthday by "lighting a candle" on my
birthday cake. Each candle stands for one year,
so a $7.90 gift lights one candle.

Use the PayPal button at bottom of this page to contribute using PayPal or secure credit card.

Dan Bassill has received many awards and recognition for the work he has done to help Chicago kids. However, the best recognition comes from the "Thank you, Dan" messages he recieves from former students and from people in other programs who I've helped over the past 50 years.

Please help Dan celebrate his 79th birthday with a gift that enables him to continue this service into another year.

DanAwards

Dan Bassill became a volunteer tutor in 1973 when he joined Montgomery Ward Headquarters in Chicago. In 1975 he became leader of the program at Wards. In 1992 while forming a new program (Cabrini Connections) to help teens he also created the Tutor/Mentor Connection to support the growth of similar programs in all high poverty areas of the Chicago region.

Dan shares ideas weekly on the Tutor/Mentor Blog and the MappingforJustice blog and maintains a library of links to Chicago area tutor and mentor programs in the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC Library

In 2025 Dan was honored to be interviewed for Tutoring Chicago's 60th Anniversary. That is the program Dan led in the 1970s and 80s. Watch the video. Also in 2025, Phil Shapiro, a librarian from the Washington, DC area, shared an interview he did with Dan several years ago. You can listen here.

In July 2011 Dan created the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC to continue this vision in a new structure. A birthday gift is NOT tax-deductable, but does recognize Dan's vision, long-term service, and gives you a share of Dan's vision.

See complete list of awards and recognition
at http://www.tutormentorexchange.net/awards-and-recognition

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If you share the same vision Dan does, then please share some of the responsibility for financing this work and providing a salary for Dan to cover his own personal and family expenses.

Dan seeks sponsors, investors and partners to take ownership of his history and archives and help build a new Tutor/Mentor Connection in Chicago and other cities with high concentrations of persistent poverty.

However, the first step to winning is to get into the game....and staying there. If you can help Dan keep this vision growing in 2026 and beyond with a Birthday or year end contribution .... please do.

If you can become a sponsor or investor or help find such people, please take that role. Connect on LinkedIn, Instagram, BlueSky, Mastodon, Facebook and offer other ways you can help.

Or, Mail contributions to
TUTOR/MENTOR INSTITUTE, LLC
c/o Daniel F. Bassill
932 N. Salem Ave
Arlington Heights, IL 60004
(note: the PO Box is no longer available)

* Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC is not a 501-c-3 non-profit.
It is a social enterprise dedicated to making good things happen for inner city kids.

October 2025 T/MI News

Issue 246

institute newsletter

Ideas to Help Tutor/Mentor Programs Reach
K-12 Youth in More Places.

In retail advertising, campaign themes mirror calendar events. Thus there are Halloween themes in October and Thanksgiving themes in November. These repeat every year.

The themes in this newsletter also repeat every year, as it seeks to support volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs that reach K-12 youth in high poverty areas.

It's October, which means many volunteers are in the first weeks of getting to know their mentee and many others are building on relations that began one or more years ago.

My newsletters point to an extensive library that can be used by volunteers, students, staff, parents, educators and more.

Visit https://tutormentorexchange.net/

Share these with your network and you'll provide extra "what do I do tonight" ideas.

While the primary focus of this newsletter and my website and blogs is to help volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs reach more youth in areas of persistent poverty, many of the sections have information that can be applied to any issue that needs support from many people, for many years.

These resources can be used by anyone, in Chicago, or around the world.

Please share this so others in your city can find and use these resources!

Teach youth and volunteers to use resource libraries

Use the homework help section of the Tutor/Mentor Library

At the bottom of each node on this concept map is a small box with a link to a section of the 'Homework Help' portion of the Tutor/Mentor resource library. Volunteers and staff should review these resources on a regular basis so when a student is looking for a specific type of support, you know where to direct them.

In others parts of the library you'll find additional resources that leaders, staff, volunteers and students can learn from:

Resources for training volunteers; for parents; and for program leaders - click here

Blogs by educators, youth programs, network builders, and fund raisers - click here

"View new articles posted on Substack that show elements of concept maps and visualizations created over past 30 years..

I've used visualizations and concept maps to share ideas and strategies for more than 30 years. I probably built the habit during my 17 year retail advertising career with Montgomery Ward. Most of my graphics share a set of ideas and can look confusing to viewers. In many blog articles I've tried to show the elements of many of these. In August 2025 I began posting a series of articles on Substack.com to show this collection.

Visit this link to view the first one.

Visit my profile page to view the collection..

Are you using a blog or social media to tell the story of your youth-serving program?

Share the link and I can add it to my lists.

Check out the new links added each month to the Tutor/Mentor library.

Visit this page on the Tutor/Mentor website and you'll find a list of 'new links" added to the library in 2025, with the most recent shown first. Below are two of them.

One is an article on the SocialRoots website that shows a vision of 'rewilding the Internet', supporting connections across movements from different fields that already exist.

The second is a "Bank of Ideas" website from Australia that has build a huge resource library to support "the development of caring, health, inclusive, sustainable and enterprising communities and local economies (primarily in Australia).

Some of my first experiences with online information sharing came in the 1990s when I participated in a listserv that focused on youth development in Australia. Good ideas can be found in every part of the world. Use them to innovate solutions to problems in Chicago and your part of the world.

Tutoring Chicago Celebrates 60th Year

I led the program that is now Tutoring Chicago, from 1975 to 1992, when it was the Montgomery Ward/Cabrini-Green Tutoring Program. I'm thrilled to see how they have continued to serve Chicago youth in the years since I left and was honored to be interviewed as part of this year's 60th Anniversary Celebration.

Watch the video here.

Read my blog article - here

Several other Chicago area tutor and/or mentor programs have long histories, too. Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metropolitan Chicago, Chicago Lights, Midtown Education Foundation, Chicago Youth Programs, Inc., etc. are just a few that you can find on the lists I host on the Tutor/Mentor website.

Intermediaries who support youth-serving programs in Chicagoland

I created this concept map many years ago and update it often. It shows organizations who serve as "intermediaries" helping networks of youth-serving programs that operate in the Chicago region. Under each node is a small box with a link to that organization's website. Ideally, if you visit any of these sites they would have a page with links to each other, and to this map, so our collective voice could have a greater impact in helping youth-serving programs grow in all the places where they are needed.

The bottom part of the map has nodes for businesses, faith networks, universities and philanthropy. I don't really have an extensive library showing how organizations in these categories are mobilizing attention and support to help tutor/mentor programs.

In the lower right corner is a yellow box with the headline "Help update this". That's been an invitation for a long time. Sadly, too few have responded. Yet, unless other people are helping aggregate information showing "who" is doing "what" to help Chicago kids, others will have a difficult time finding such information.

You can reach me on many social media platforms. If you know of anyone hosting this information, or want to suggest additional links, just share your ideas with me in one of these forums.

Below are resources to use.

(I repeate many of these each month. That does not mean the information is old. These websites keep adding new resources to their own sites!)

* Community Mapping Toolkit - click here
* Grantmakers for Education - click here
* AfterSchool Alliance resources - click here
* Why nonprofits struggle to network -- and how that's holding us back - click here
* National Mentoring Resource Center - click here

* UCLA Center resources - click here; Guide to Learning Supports pdf - click here

* Every Hour Counts - network of intermediaries building after school systems - click here

* MyChiMyFuture - Chicago youth programs map and directory. click here; visit the website - click here

* Chicago Mentoring Collaborative - click here

* Chicago Learning Exchange supports Out-of-School-Time community in Chicago - click here

* ACT Now - Championing Quality Afterschool Programs in Illinois - click here

* To & Through Project website - click here

* Center for Effective Philanthropy - click here

* Forefront -Illinois' statewide association of nonprofits, foundations and advisors. click here

* YouthToday online magazine - click here

* South Side STEM Asset maps - read about using maps - click here

* Incarceration Reform Resource Center - click here

* Prison Policy Initiative - click here

Read These Tutor/Mentor blog articles

(Do you have a blog? Share it on social media.)

After the March, Do the Planning - click here

Seek and Support (youth-serving programs) - click here

Connect with other out-of-school-time leaders - click here

What issues unite us? - click here

Follow Me on Substack.com - click here

New example of using maps in planning - click here

Tipping Point articles - add Vu Le to your reading. - click here

Explore the maps. Create your own stories. - click here

Bookmark these Tutor/Mentor Resources

* Lists of Chicago area, volunteer-based tutor, mentor programs - click here

* Homework help and volunteer training resources - click here

* Resource Library - click here

* Strategy essays by Tutor/Mentor - click here

* Work done by interns in past - click here

* Maps and Map-Stories from past 30 years - click here

* Political Action resources - click here, and click here

* Featured collections on Wakelet - click here

* Tutor/Mentor Institute Videos - click here

* About T/MI articles on blog - click here

* History of T/MC - T/MI articles - click here

* Create a New Tutor/Mentor Connection - click here

* Reaching out to Universities to adopt the Tutor/Mentor Connection strategy - click here

* Chicago Youth Serving Organizations in Intermediary Roles - click here to view a concept map showing many organizations working to help improve the lives of Chicago area youth. Follow the links. If you know of other intermediaries that should be added please share that information with Dan Bassill.

Thank you for reading this month's newsletter.

Please share this with people you know who work in non-school youth serving programs, or in sectors that should be strategically supporting such programs, such as business, philanthropy, education and public policy. If they are not receiving these newsletters then we have no way of engaging them. Also encourage friends, family, co-workers to sign up to receive this newsletter.

I encourage others to duplicate what I'm doing. Write a blog and share your own vision, strategy and challenges. Share your link and I'll add it to this list in the Tutor/Mentor library.

View current and past newsletters at this link.

To subscribe, just Click here.
(If you subscribe, don't forget to respond to the confirmation email).

Please help fund the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC

Visit this page and add your support so I can keep this information available to you and the world.

Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present)
Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present)

Serving Chicago and the world since 1993. Connect with Dan Bassill, founder and leader on one of the social media platforms.

eMail Dan at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to schedule a ZOOM call and learn more about the strategies and resources he is sharing.

Social Media Connections

Do a web search for "tutor mentor" and you'll find us on many platforms.

Connect with Dan at

BlueSky - https://bsky.app/profile/tutormentor.bsky.social

Dan Bassill on LinkedIn

Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLCon Facebook group

Dan Bassill on Facebook Page

Dan Bassill on Mastodon - https://mastodon.social/@tutormentor1,
https://mastodon.garden/@tutormentor1 and @This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Dan Bassill on Instagram and on Twitter (X)

Dan Bassill on Medium - https://medium.com/@danielfbassill

September 2025 eNews

tutor, mentor, volunteer, learning, library, research, poverty, workforce development, youth development, non-school hours, planning, fund raising, capacity building, intermediary, public awareness, concept maps

Issue 245

institute newsletter

Support for Volunteers Creates New Leaders.

School has started and that means volunteer-based youth tutor, mentor and learning programs are in the middle of recruitment, orientation and start-up activities. My newsletters point to an extensive library that can be used by volunteers, students, staff, parents, educators and more. If you provide on-going support to volunteers they become more effective tutors and mentors and some become advocates and leaders. This issue shares some learning resources.

Visit https://tutormentorexchange.net/

While the primary focus of this newsletter and my website and blogs is to help volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs reach more youth in areas of persistent poverty, many of the sections have information that can be applied to any issue that needs support from many people, for many years. These resources can be used by anyone, in Chicago, or around the world.

Please share this so others in your city can find and use these resources!

Teach youth and volunteers to use resource libraries

Use the homework help section of the Tutor/Mentor Library

While September focuses on recruiting, training, orientating, matching and other start-up activities, this is only the beginning of what volunteer-based organizations need to be doing throughout the year to support matches and create new leaders. Open the links below and explore the resources.

Homework Help and Learning Resources - click here

Resources for training volunteers; for parents; and for program leaders - click here

Blogs by educators, youth programs, network builders, and fund raisers - click here

What's Your Strategy for Supporting Volunteers?

When I led a volunteer-based tutor/mentor program in Chicago from 1975 to 1992, I learned that I could not do everything that needed to be done. I also learned, that volunteers who stayed with the program for longer than a year often grew to take on leadership and capacity-building roles. This graphic was created in the late 2000s to show the result of effective, on-going, volunteer support. A few years later an intern from IIT and South Korea created an animated version of this, which you can see in this Tutor/Mentor blog article.

Retaining Volunteers in Tutor/Mentor Programs - click here

Tips for Volunteers in Tutor/Mentor Programs - click here

Do you write a blog? Can you share your own strategies for training and retaining volunteers?

"Enough is Enough". Follow these steps.

I studied history in college, then served three years in US Army Intelligence. Both focused on collecting best-available information and using it to support innovation, actions and decisions. I've applied this since I first became a volunteer tutor/mentor in 1973, to support my own efforts, and I've shared it to motivate others to do their own learning, drawing from a growing library of resources that I was building.

In the late 2007 I used the word "ENOUGH" to create steps for learning that anyone can follow. You can view it in this article.

Build habits of learning among your students and volunteers

In the mid 2000s I created this concept map to visualize goals for using the Internet to support youth and volunteers and keep them connected in the years after they finished the program.

The Internet was still a relatively new resource at that time, but in the tutor/mentor program I led, we'd already had a computer lab with Internet access since the late 1990s. I used it as a "teaching and learning" tool, aimed at the youth, volunteers, staff and donors who were part of our program, and aimed at every other youth-serving program in Chicago and the world.

I understood that I could never teach "everything" that our stakeholders needed to know, but if I could build learning habits, they would know where to go on our website to find usable information when they were looking for new ideas and resources.

I also understood that as our kids and volunteers left the program we had too few resources to track them and know long-term outcomes, but that if we could build habits of "getting and giving" information from our website, many would continue using the resource in future years, enabling us to stay connected, continue helping, and show donors the long-term impact of our work.

I left the program in mid 2011, too early for these goals to take root. Those who took my place did not have the same commitment to on-line learning and networking, thus did not continue this effort. Yet, I'm now connected to several dozen alumni, who share posts showing their own kids finishing high school and college. Some even say "Thank you Dan". One recently posted on Facebook, "The tutoring program was the best. I wish you could do that again for the kids. They really need programs for the younger generation."

Here's one of many articles where I share this "learning goals" concept map.

Creative ideas that can be used by tutors, mentors, educators, youth and parents.

The "Fluffy Ducky" graphic was shared on social media by Sheri Edwards, a retired teacher from Washington State. It's one of an on-going series of posts where Shari shows her own learning as she explores the challenges of "making art everyday".

The ideas she shares could be prompts that volunteers, educators and/or parents use to engage with young people. They can be prompts young people use for creating their own art. Follow Sheri on BlueSky or subscribe to her blog posts.

Another creative activity is the DS106 Daily Create (at this link), which has offered daily creative challenges every day since January 12, 2012. Each assignment should take no more than 15-20 minutes, so they could fit into school or non-school timeframes. You can find them on Mastodon at https://mastodon.social/@This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and on other social media platforms. Share your own creations.

Follow me on https://mastodon.cloud/@tutormentor1 or @tutormentor.bsky.social and view the daily posts from educators I've been following for more than a decade. Encourage your volunteers to do the same.