April 2026 T/MI eNews

My yearbooks from the 1975 to 2000 period show how volunteers made these programs possible.

All of the people shown in this 1974-75 yearbook page were volunteers who held full-time jobs at Montgomery Ward or other companies. These were the people who worked behind the scenes to keep the program available to youth and volunteers.

During the 1970s most of our leaders came from our base of Montgomery Ward corporate office employee/volunteers. However in the 1980s as our volunteers began to come from more companies in the Chicago region our volunteer leadership group expanded to include more than Montgomery Ward employees.

We were able to do this because the program provided a structure that encourage youth and volunteers to connect and build relationships and that encouraged them to return from year-to-year. The program at Wards served 2nd to 6th grade kids. By 1990 parents were telling us that a program for older kids was needed. In late 1992 I and six other volunteers created that program. It was called Cabrini Connections and I led it until mid 2011. This PDF report shows a decade of service from 2000 to 2010.

This Tutor/Mentor blog article shows many of the mentoring connections that were built over the 1975 to 2011 years and includes links to yearbooks and year-end reports.

 

Does your organization have a volunteer-growth strategy?

This graphic shows how many volunteers will become leaders of a tutor/mentor program and resource builders, too, if they are well-supported and stay involved for multiple years. View it in this article, and see how interns created new versions.

Read:
- Retaining Volunteers in Tutor/Mentor programs - click here
- Tips for Volunteers in Tutor/Mentor Programs - click here

Recently a friend on Facebook suggested that I should be sharing more with a podcast and with You Tube videos. I have created some videos in the past and here's one where I read the text on one of my blog articles.

While I could spend time creating more of these that does not guarantee that anyone will view them. Instead, you'll see an invitation at the end of many of my blog articles, inviting you and your students to create their own blog articles, podcasts and/or videos to share the ideas with people in their own networks. And, if they are not in the Chicago area, they can focus the attention on helping kids in their own cities, states and/or reservations.

On this blog I point to work Interns did while working for me in past years. I'd love to be pointing to pages where youth and volunteers from other programs are doing similar work. Just send me the links to your projects!

 

"State of Chicago Youth - 2026 report" continues to show need for more out-of-school time programs for Chicago youth.

For the second consecutive year A Better Chicago has released a "State of Chicago Youth" report. It shows Chicago's low availability of out-of-school-time programs. Find a link to the report and my follow up comments in this blog article.

You'll also find a link to a page on the MyChi. MyFuture. website, that shows community networks that in 2023 and 2024 developed strategies to support growing youth serving programs in their areas.

While I welcome the renewed focus put on this problem, the reality is entrenched poverty has been with us for a long time and that won't change until we find ways to connect people from beyond poverty, with people living in high poverty areas, in ways that build greater empathy, understanding and a commitment to use personal wealth, resources and votes, to remove the barriers and provide more long-term programs that help kids move from birth-to-work.

Visit the RESEARCH section of the Tutor/Mentor library and read articles that I've aggregated over many years.

Visit this section of the Tutor/Mentor library for many more articles about poverty, race and inequality in the USA.

 

Volunteer recruitment and retention resources

One section of the Tutor/Mentor library has links to many websites related to volunteer recruitment, retention and management. These include links to organizations like Volunteer Alberta, which has an extensive library of resources on its site. This graphic point to a PDF essay titled "Volunteer Alberta's (Re) Engaged: Volunteerism Report".

While the school year is just ending now's the time to be digging into research that can help you with your fall 2026 volunteer-recruitment campaigns.

Don't forget to visit this section with ideas for starting and sustaining volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs.

 Site-based tutor/mentor programs can offer many types of learning  

This article on the Wallace Foundation website is titled "How can Arts Programs Help Young People Thrive?" If you operate a site-based program where kids and volunteers meet on a regular basis, you can offer more than weekly one-on-one tutoring/mentoring sessions. At the programs I led volunteers from different industries created our computer lab, our video creation program, along with writing and arts club activities.

These two visual essays show the potential of expanded learning in site based programs:
- Mentor Role in Larger Strategy - click here
- Total Quality Mentoring - click here

-Are you creating visual essays and/or videos that show the extra learning opportunities offered by your youth-serving program? Please share the links.

 New resources for understanding of philanthropic giving

Thanks to the vast power of artificial intelligence there's some exciting work being done to build a better understanding of philanthropic giving. In this article I point to work being done via Project 990 at Indiana University. The Smart Charity website is where they are sharing their research.

In the same article I also point to the Nonprofit Ecosystem Mapping Project on the GivingTuesday Data Commons website.

Both are gathering data from 990 reports filed by every nonprofit in the USA and are beginning to sort and map this, leading to a better understanding of what's being funded, who's being funded, where funding is going, and who's being overlooked.

If you have examples of other research and websites like this please share them.

 View latest links added to the Tutor/Mentor library - click here