Issue 249
Build Networks of Support for Youth
This is January so throughout the USA and Canada people are celebrating mentoring through a variety of National Mentoring Month activities and events. In this month's newsletter I'll point you to resources that help you understand why formal and informal mentoring has value, and how organized, ongoing programs that combine tutoring, mentoring and extra learning are needed in areas with concentrations of poverty. I'll also introduce a new event planning map and a tool to help you understand who attends your events.
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!
If we believe connecting a youth with an adult has value, we need to be thinking of how we enable those connections to grow in high poverty areas of big cities like Chicago.
I led one volunteer-based tutor/mentor program from 1975 to 1990, while holding a full-time retail advertising job with the Montgomery Ward Corporation. I led the conversion to a non-profit structure in 1990 and led the next two years of growth. That program is now Tutoring Chicago and is celebrating its 60th year. Visit their website and see all the videos they have created to show their history.
Along with 6 other volunteers I formed a second program in November 1992 to help 7th graders who aged out of the first program have continued support through high school. I led that until mid 2011.
As we formed the second program I realized that one more small program might make a life-changing difference for a few kids, but would have little impact on the more than 200,000 kids living in high poverty areas of Chicago. So we created a second program, the Tutor/Mentor Connection, which aimed to help well-organized tutor/mentor programs grow throughout the city. I still lead that, via Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC.
The graphic above is from a visual essay that shows the "Theory of Change" and "Logic Model" that drives my efforts. You can view it here.
View articles in this section and this section of the Tutor/Mentor Library to build a deeper understanding of where organized tutor/mentor programs are most needed and how these programs can be a form of bridging social capital.
Mentoring Month Activities
Each of these sites lists events and activities.
* Chicago Mentoring Collaborative - click here
* MENTOR Greater Milwaukee Symposium - click here
* Alberta Mentoring Partnership Mentoring Month Tips - click here
* National Mentoring Summit - click here
Read the Mentoring Month articles that I've posted on the Tutor/Mentor blog since 2006. click here
Who is attending your events? Who's missing?
I've been fortunate to be part of an Information Visualization (IVMOOC) class at Indiana University, several times since the late 2000s. In December 2025 I received the final report from a team that worked on a "mapping participation" idea that I proposed. You can see what I asked them to do on
this page.
The team used my registration spreadsheets from the Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking conferences held every six months from May 1994 to May 2015 as a demonstration of ways event organizers can map participation. They showed the data using KUMU, which I've written about several times in the past.
Open
this link and the view that I show below is what you'll see.
The two views below were created by selecting a conference year from the list at the left then enlarging the view to find names of participating organizations (the green nodes). The second image is the result of clicking on a single organization, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metropolitan Chicago, and getting a view that shows each of the conferences where someone from their team attended.
These maps are interactive. That means you can enlarge it and you can pull nodes out from the cluster to focus on single organizations or to create a less dense view. Its free. Try it out.
If you visit this article you will see several more views that I created. If you follow me on LinkedIn, Twitter, BlueSky or Facebook, you may have seen posts that I've made since December that show additional views. There is really no limit to how many ways someone can look at this information.
Any youth program in Chicago (or beyond) could have a volunteer-led activity, where students are learning to create visualizations using KUMU or Gephi, that show that organization's participation in past Tutor/Mentor Conferences. They could be writing blog articles and/or creating videos to show the visualizations they create. They could be learning how to use the new open source tool to map participation in events hosted by their program, or in their city. They could be creating a valuable analytics tool.
They could be learning marketable skills.
Colleges could be doing this work too. This article shows a vision I've shared for many years. If you create an on-campus Tutor/Mentor Connection maybe you can find someone like MacKenzie Scott to fund it!
Are you planning a conference or another type of gathering?
I created this concept map a few years ago to show the planning timeline that I followed as we organized and hosted 20 conferences every six months between May1994 and May 2015. Last week I updated it with information about mapping participation to understand "Who's there? And, "Who's missing?"
Now there is a resource that event organizers can use to gather and map data showing who attended their events.
I asked the fall 2025 IVMOOC team at Indiana University to build an open source template that anyone could use to collect data about who is participating in their events, and easily create network analysis maps that show this information. The 1994-2014 conference participation data used by the 2015 IVMOOC team was used in building the template.
They created an "Open Source Network Mapping" app and shared all the code on a GitHub page. I've created this page on the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC website to introduce this project and share links to the report created by the student team to explain their work and provide "how to" steps for people to use it.
Learn to use concept maps to visualize strategies
I've used visualizations for almost 50 years, starting with my work in retail advertising. I accelerated this work in the 1990s as I was trying to communicate the strategies of the tutor/mentor program I was leading and of the Tutor/Mentor Connection. I began using cMapTools in 2005 and over the past 10 years I've posted many articles showing what's possible using these tools.
My interests in using data visualization to understand who was attending the conferences, and who was missing, was boosted over the past 10 years by posts by people on LinkedIn, who showed their own work. I reflected on much of this in a variety of blog articles.
This concept map should be used as a study guide for anyone who wants to build their own deeper understanding of these data visualization tools.
Here's an example of how I feature these in my blog articles. click here
In another article I show a visualization showing the Global Futures Society Network Map. They describe their purpose saying: "The Global Futures Society (GFS) Network Map is a strategic tool designed to visually represent the member organizations, and individual members in addition to the relationships between them. In a field as diverse and dynamic as foresight, it can be challenging to track ongoing projects, partnerships, and initiatives. The GFS Network Map addresses this by offering a clear, interactive view of how the membership are connected, what they're focused on, and how their efforts contribute to shaping the future."
If you read enough of the articles I share. and dig into this section of the Tutor/Mentor library, you'll build a broad understanding of why this type of mapping is so important. I look forward to seeing work you and your teams do in the future.
Below are resources to use.
(I repeat many of these each month. That does not mean the information is old. These websites keep adding new resources to their own sites!)
* MOTT Million Dollar Challenge - a pitch competition for kids and teens - click here
* Follow Prison Policy Initiative on Facebook, BlueSky and Twitter. If you work with youth in high poverty areas, your kids and families are likely affected.
* Prison Policy alternatives - click here
* Investigative Project on Race & Equity - click here
* Project 990 - data analytics platform to support the nonprofit sector, policymakers and the public, When you visit this site, look at the Smart Charity posts on LinkedIn and the Tableau maps - click here
* Building Trust and Security while enabling large-scale collaboration - click here
* Policy Link - A National Research and Action Institute - 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
* MENTOR celebrates 35 years of support for mentoring in the USA and the world - 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 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
Read These Tutor/Mentor blog articles
(Do you have a blog? Share it on social media.)
* Making Philanthropy Work Better - click here
* Movement Building - Who's Involved - click here
* Mapping Learning Resources - 2026 and beyond/Reaching out to Universities - click here
* Using Concept Maps to Understand Systems - click here
* Same Message. 20 Years Later - click here
* Take a New Look at Ken Burn's The American Revolution - click here
* Targeting Holiday and Year-Round Giving to High Poverty Areas - click here
* Map Your Network! New Example - click here
*Engaging Universities. Who's Connected? - click here
Bookmark these Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC 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
* Newest article on Substack.com - 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.
Happy New Year! Thank you for reading this month's newsletter.
It's been 33 years since we started the Cabrini Connections program on a Saturday morning in January, meeting with five teens in the dayroom of St. Joseph's Church in Chicago. It's also been 33 years since myself and others created the Tutor/Mentor Connection.
I celebrated my 79th birthday last December 19th and I hope I'm still with you as we start 2027.
We have much to do between now and then, to build systems of support for marginalized people, and to stop the fast-moving destruction of the USA most of us grew up admiring. It's never been perfect, but much progress was made since the 1950s. Those gains are at risk, along with many other freedoms and benefits that define what the USA is.
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.
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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.
