In 1993 when we created the Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC) there were four general goals:

Collect and share information about tutor/mentor programs operating in Chicago;

Increase frequency of media stories, so more people looked at the information;

Help people understand the information, so they can use it in their own actions;

Facilitate this understanding so it leads to a more consistent flow of volunteers and donors to all of the tutor/mentor programs in the city, while helping each program constantly improve their own efforts to keep kids and volunteers connected.

Our Theory of Change is that if we take this role, more people will use the information to help good programs grow in every poverty neighborhood.

We've been documenting what we do to achieve those goals since 2000 and this chart shows that we've done close to 1000 actions intended to increase visibility, while we've documented over 600 actions that help people understand and use the information.

You see similar charts at T/MC OHATS . Viewing this works best in Internet Explorer.

We've never had much money to do this work, yet, we've done what we can each year. Imagine if there were hundreds of leaders in business, faith groups, government, philanthropy, etc. with the same four goals, and who were using this system to document actions they were taking each day to help kids in poverty move to careers.

Visit the T/MC OHATS and look at the metrics charts. If you want to log in and read some of what we've documented, and see how the system works, you can log in using GUEST as the username and VISITOR as the password.

If you want to become a partner to the T/MC, and record your own actions toward these goals, we'd be happy to add you as a recorder. That's the aim of this system. We can't achieve these goals if it's just me and my small organization doing this. We won't know what we've all accomplished if we don't have some sort of documentation system to tract the impact of collective actions over many years.

If you think this is valuable, and that the T/MC is providing a needed service, we'd appreciate your financial support.