Every year the major papers have headlines reporting that 75% of Chicago elementary schools were being put on a "watch list" because of poor student learning performance. Editorials call for more accountability. Business leaders call for better results. However, few are calling for more accountability from our business, professional and media leaders.

However, the chart on this blog article shows that while parents, educators, tutor/mentor programs and others are "PUSHING" youth to careers, we need industry to "PULL", using their employee-volunteers, their jobs, their technology, and their dollars. We need "scorecards" that show which businesses, faith groups, hospitals and universities are doing better than others.

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Great businesses grow from the ground up, based on their availability to attract consistent resources to fuel their growth.  It takes a consistent flow of operating dollars for great tutor/mentor programs to operate in high poverty areas.  Read most current blog article on this topic.

The map below shows the distribution of 31 volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in Chicago who received $240,000 in grants in 2007 from the Lawyers Lend A Hand Program. In 2008 another $217,000 in grants was distributed to mostly the same organizations. The Tutor/Mentor Connection received $30,000 in 2007 and 2008 from LAH. The Cabrini Connections program (this site is archive from late 2000s) which was part of the T/MC non-profit umbrella also received nearly $5,000 each year.

If lawyers in Chicago can provide part of the money and volunteers needed at many tutor/mentor programs, think of how much stronger volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs would be if engineers, accountants, faith networks, alumni groups, etc. were each raising similar amounts of money and distributing these resources to the same list of programs used by the lawyers.

If every industry uses T/MC maps to plan their distribution of resources, programs in every part of the city will have a more diverse corps of volunteers, and of funding.  This will make every program stronger.

That's the goal of the Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993 to present) and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present). If you support this goal, and would like our help in developing a strategy, please email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .