Tutor/Mentor Learning Network - What is it?

I shared the two visual essays shown below in a new article on Substack.com.  I hope you'll take time to view it and dig into the essays.

The first shows how I've been collecting and sharing information for the past 30+ years, via the Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present) and the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present).  This slide shows how I link to other organizations that represent specific areas of expertise.

My goal is not to have links to "everything" on my website, but to point to other websites who aggregated information about specific topics, or specific groups of organizations.

Open the PDF at this link. 

The second essay shows more of what the Tutor/Mentor Connection has been building since 1993.  I call it a "capacity-building" network.

Note the "mentoring to careers" graphic in the first image and the map of Chicago in the second. Both have photos of kids and volunteers who were part of the programs I led.  These signal an intention to help similar programs grow in every high poverty neighborhood of Chicago and other places.

While many intermediaries collect and share information, I’ve found few who host a list of programs that do similar work, then constantly try to draw attention, volunteers and donors to EACH of these places. That’s what makes the Tutor/Mentor Connection unique, and difficult to understand.

Click here to view the visual essay.

While I've piloted this work since 1993, via a small non-profit (until 2011), I've constantly reached out to convince colleges and universities to adopt the strategy, as a teaching tool, and for their own self-interests.   The second visual essay shows roles students could take.  Many articles on this blog do the same.

This is becoming a much more urgent concern.  I'm 79 and in the early stages of a lung disease that will ultimately end my life.  This blog and the sites it points to are just one entry point into what started for me in 1973 when I became a volunteer in the Tutoring Program hosted by employees at the Montgomery Ward Headquarters in Chicago.  

I studied history in College then spent three years in U.S. Army Intelligence. Both taught me to look for best-available information to support my efforts to constantly improve my work in retail advertising at Wards and my volunteer-role as a tutor, then leader, of the program at Wards.

Through the Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present) and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present) I've been sharing this library with others in Chicago and throughout the world!

These visual essays show much of what I've been doing.  

If you have been blessed with great wealth, and you care about helping solve complex, long-term problems, please consider making a gift to a university, focused on building a Tutor/Mentor Connection-type program, including taking ownership of my archives, websites, blogs and all the work I've been doing.

I'd love to connect on ZOOM with anyone who is interested in helping make this happen.

These photos show me in 1973 with Leo Hall and in 2014 as he celebrated his 50th birthday. We're still connected in 2026.  It's one of many reasons I keep trying to help mentor-rich programs grow in more places.

Thanks for reading.  Connect with me on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, BlueSky and/or Mastodon.  See links here.

Finally, I don't charge people to use these ideas and resources, but there is a cost to me to keep doing this work.  Visit this page if you'd like to help me pay the bills.

Role for alumni of tutor/mentor programs

A few days ago I saw this post on Facebook.  It's from Kaeaiya Holmes, who, in the 1990s, was a student in the tutor/mentor programs that I led in Chicago.  She's now Regional Director of Nursing at Centurion Health.

She was responding to the LOGIC MODEL graphic that I had shared.

She started by saying, "This post resonates with me because I wasn't just connected to the Tutor/Mentor movement, I was impacted by it."

Click on the image and enlarge it so you can read the rest.

She's taking a role that I've encouraged many alumni to take. She talks about the value of mentor-rich programs and says "What I appreciate about this model is that it recognizes that  mentoring isn't just about one relationship.   In communities where poverty affects thousands of children, we need strong organizations, safe spaces, and mentor-rich programs that create opportunities for young people to learn, grow and thrive.  These programs become anchors, providing stability, hope and a sense of belonging."

Every time I post a blog article or on social media I'm hoping that one or more former students will take time to read it, then share it, using their own stories and talents, to encourage others to get involved and help mentor-rich programs grow in more places.

Be like Kaeaiya!

Focus on conditions that affect student performance - new UCLA Center report

Today I read a new article from the UCLA Center for Mental Health in Schools, titled "Disregarding Inequities Fuels Victim Blaming".  It focuses on how "far too little attention is focused on the role that societal and school inequalities play in shaping both student difficulties and school performance outcomes."  I encourage you to open this PDF and read the article. 

6-26-2026 update - the UCLA Center shared another report about the "Cycle of disinvestment in public schools".  Click here to read it.

This is not new information to me. I've been collecting articles like this for over 30 years and sharing them in my library and via posts like this.  

Below is a concept map showing sections of the library that have related information.  I added the new UCLA article to the "Education" research section.

This is something I started doing nearly 50 years ago.  It started as I was interacting with others, talking about ways to build and sustain volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs.  Most conversations would include an introduction of new ideas from the people I was talking to.  In most situations, the ideas might generate interest, but when the two people leave the conversation, the ideas does not necessarily go with them.  

I started writing down ideas on scratch paper, even paper napkins, then putting them in a "ideas folder" in my office.  From time-to-time I went through that folder, reminding myself of these ideas, which often led me to include them in program upgrades.

When I formed the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 I dramatically expanded the range of ideas I was collecting, and made them available to other tutor/mentor program leaders in Chicago.  When I started using the Internet in the late 1990s I moved the library to a website and I've been adding to it for the past 26-plus years!

Thus, if you look in the set of education research articles (at this link) you'll find many articles that point to this problem. It's not new.  

And, if you open the other sections shown on the concept map, you'll find even more information that supports the ideas in the Summer 2026 UCLA Center's article.

I created this graphic in the 1990s to show how anyone can take a role that draws people to this information and begins building understanding and a commitment to long-term, widely distributed solutions.  The big circle represents the library and smaller circles represent groups of people gathering regularly to read, discuss, reflect and innovate.

The map of Chicago at the far right highlights high poverty areas were these conditions exist. A full range of youth and family support systems is needed in EACH of these areas.

In 2011an intern from South Korea, via IIT in Chicago, looked at my graphic, then created her own version.  I show it below.

This is actually shown in two graphics. Visit this 2011 article and see both.   Note that the title of the article is "Volunteer your talent with Tutor/Mentor Institute".   It's an invitation I've shared over-and-over.  

That's because until people in every community are drawing their networks to this information, the problems won't go away.  Too few people are involved.  

Yet, as I wrote last week, students could be doing what interns did for me in past years.  They can look at the information I'm sharing, then create and share their own interpretations.  

They don't need to do this via the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC.  In fact, it really needs to be part of an on-going learning and leadership program embedded into every middle school, high school and college in the country.  There could be hundreds of blogs that aggregate and share student work. 

Thanks for reading. I hope you'll connect with me on LinkedIn and other social media. Share your own ideas and visualizations.  Don't look back in 30 years at the Summer 2026 UCLA article and say, "Why has nothing changed?"

I still depend on a few donors to help me pay the expenses associated with my work. Visit this page if you'd like to help.

Response to post on LinkedIn - re making sense of youth unemployment in Tunisia

 As I scrolled through LinkedIn today I saw this map, posted in this article by Mark Oldenbeuving.

I wrote a comment on LinkedIn, but by the time I finished I was 300 characters over the limit.  So I'm posting it below.

------

Thanks for sharing your work. As I look at your map I say "there are a lot of people and organizations represented" and from your article I think you have a database of them.

Then I ask, "are you holding conferences, meetings and networking/learning events" that invite people from your database to attend? Have you done this once or twice a year for several years? I assume "yes" to the first, and "no" to the second, since your work is so new.

I started building a database of the youth-service/education ecosystem in Chicago in 1994 and begin inviting people to gather for conferences every six months. Last fall and this spring teams of students from Indiana University's Information Visualization MOOC created dashboards, and Kumu maps, using my participation records, that show "who was attending" and "who was missing". I wish I had had that info 20 years ago! You can view their reports at https://tutormentorexchange.net/mapping-participation

Below is a view from one of the Kumu maps. This shows the two 1999 conferences that I held in Chicago. Each green node is a participant.  The nodes in the middle are people who attended both events.

The underlying thinking is that kids need 12 years of support just to go from 1st grade to high school, and more to get into jobs. Maps can show underserved areas where comprehensive, on-going programs are needed for many years. Drawing attention and resources to these places can be a role taken by intermediaries, as well as youth themselves.

I posted an article earlier today showing a role youth could be taking to collect and share this information. 

As Mark indicated, there are many related issues that all make this more difficult. Building the database and starting an invitation process is a beginning.

The 2025 team created a tool that others could use to collect and map participation from their events. It's open source so you and others might try using it. 

Reaching out through social media to connect with others who are thinking about the same problems is one way I've expanded my own knowledge and grown the library of ideas that I share freely with others.

I hope you'll connect with me. 

Changing how social benefit organizations get funded

Last week I shared links to a couple of researchers at different universities in this article. I hope you'll read it then follow their posts on LinkedIn.

Here's another post by Daniel Max Crowley, which you can find here on LinkedIn.

As I thought about this I said to myself, "It does not go far enough."  That motivated me to look up an article I posted in 2007.  It's titled "Many to one. Not one to Many."

I'm reposting it below because the ideas are as important today as they were 20 years ago. Furthermore, the tools to identify where people need help, and what organizations already work in those areas, and who also need help, are dramatically better than in the past.  The articles I point to on LinkedIn illustrate this.

---- begin 2007 ----

The image of the lonesome warrior is one that reminds me of the men and women who are fighting overseas to make this a better world. As we count our blessings, let's pray for the young people in our armed forces.

However, this image is also one that I think of when I think of the people leading social benefit organizations around the world, mostly in isolation, mostly with too few resources to do everything they are trying to do.



Those who lead small non profits, or are struggling to get social benefit ideas launched, may relate to this One-To-Many graphic. We're constantly reaching out in many different directions, trying to find the help we need. We're like fish in a bowl, competing with thousands of others for a limited amount of dollars and volunteers. Unless you've got a powerful marketing machine, or are well connected in donor circles, you succeed some of the time, but not most of the time, and you spend tremendous amounts of emotional capital and energy all of the time.



Through the Tutor/Mentor Connection, I'm trying to change this. I'm trying to recruit leaders in many places who lead strategic thinking process in their organization that aligns social benefit with corporate and organizational strategy. Such leaders will use their own advertising, visibility and resources to support the growth of volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs that lead kids to careers, because it's a core business strategy.

See this concept map at http://tinyurl.com/TMI-Many-to-1

I've been saying this for a long time, but last week I found an article on the Harvard Business Review that reinforces this concept. The article is titled Strategy & Society: The Link Between Competitive Advantage and Corporate Social Responsibility. Written by Michael E. Porter and Mark R. Kramer.

Education and workforce development are of strategic importance for most industries. Thus, if leaders of business, health care, law, journalism, sports and entertainment, etc. are strategic, they can use tools like the Program Locator and Chicago Program Links to choose what part of a city they want to support, and what programs they want to help grow from good to great.

This isn't a strategy to support just one tutor/mentor program, or one brand name like the Boys and Girls Clubs, it's a strategy to help every high poverty neighborhood have comprehensive programs that are one end of the pipeline to jobs and careers for businesses that are strategically engaging their corporate resources to help grow their future workforce.

Over the next seven days millions of people will make charitable decisions, either for good will, or for tax deductions. Choose a program like Cabrini Connections, which I led from 1992 to 2011, or one of the others listed in the Links Library, and this will show the impact of Many to One.

--- end 2007 -----

In April 2024 I posted an article with a PDF essay showing my 30 years of "reaching out to universities".  If you skim through the PDF you'll see some great work done by interns from many different universities.  Now imagine the impact if these had been on-going programs where the work done by interns in one year was carried forward by others the next year, and the year after that.

This was just one of many articles that I've posted on this blog the invite universities to create their own on-campus tutor/mentor connections.  I'd love to help.

Thanks for reading. Please connect with me on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, BlueSky, Twitter and/or Mastodon.  

And, if you'd like to help me pay the bills to keep this information available to you, please visit this page and send a few dollars.

Unleashing Influence of Business School Students

On LinkedIn I'm following a series of posts by Brad Fulton, of Indiana University, showing how they are "Building a comprehensive data analytics platform that integrates information from millions of tax filings, grants and other sources related to philanthropic giving."

I introduced his work and provided links in this article about "Making Philanthropy Work Better".

More recently I've been following LinkedIn posts by Daniel Max Crowley of Penn State University, such as the one I show below. 

Dr. Crowley is challenging universities to rethink how they use their research to increase public impact.  I  introduced Dr. Fulton to Dr. Crowley this week, since getting more people to find and use the philanthropy research, can be part of the strategies Dr. Crowley advocates for.

This is something I've tried to influence for more than 25 years.  Find the graphic shown below in this article, titled "Leaders Needed to Solve Complex Problems". 

In that article I called on more strategic involvement from universities and shared a student-involvement strategy that I began framing in the late 1990s.  In 2006 a Net Impact Fellow from the University of Chicago formalized it in a wiki article titled "Business School Connection".

Here's a paragraph summarizing the goal.

The Business School Connection is an concept strategy created by the Tutor Mentor Connection in the mid 1990s. Its goal is to create a link between business schools and tutor mentor organizations around the nation where business schools and their students use the skills they are learning in an on-going effort to increase visibility and raise operating dollars and volunteers to support volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in the city where a business school is located, and in other parts of the country. The T/MC believes that MBA students have unique ways of thinking and valuable connections that can be used to channel monetary and in-kind resources to tutor mentor organizations.

Below is a graphic showing the year-round public awareness and network-building strategy that I began in 1993 and still follow in 2026.  

Imagine what might happen if students from business schools, marketing and communications classes and journalism schools were running campaigns every year that use data like what Brad Fulton is collecting, to draw attention and resources to every high poverty zip code in the country. Imagine this being a competition between high profile universities, to see who does it better.

If the work done in one year, by one team of students, is saved on a website at the university, all teams could learn from what was done in the past in an on-going effort to do better in the future.  Sharing this resource across many universities would accelerate the innovations and the impact of this program on the well-being of the community surrounding the university.

Imagine the slices of the leadership pie in the upper left side of this graphic being different business schools, who each focus on building more support for youth-serving programs in their communities. See it in this article. 

Last fall and this spring students from an Information Visualization MOOC at Indiana University created dashboards to show participation in the 1994 to 2015 May and November Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conferences that I hosted in Chicago.  This was a follow up to earlier work done in 2014. They showed how data can be collected from registration forms and/or surveys then uploaded into visualization tools like Kumu.io, Gephi and Tableau.  Below is one example.

You can read about the IVMOOC work in articles found here and here.

Now imagine a team of students using the tools the IVMOOC teams have created to identify all of the departments within a university ecosystem that focus on a common issue, which could be very narrow, like tutoring, or much broader, like education and youth development.

Connecting those already doing this work is a step toward identifying those who are not yet involved.  I suspect not many business schools would show up on the first round of surveys if the goal was to find programs aimed at expanding the networks of kids living in areas of concentrated poverty.

Last month this blog recorded 519,578 page views.  That's a huge increase over previous months. I'm not sure what is driving this, but I hope it continues and that it leads to people from more places looking at the ideas I'm sharing.  Maybe one will be someone like Mackenzie Scott, who's looking for new ways to make a lasting impact with their wealth.  

Funding a Tutor/Mentor Connection with Business School Connection at one or more universities would be a great investment.

Thanks for reading.  Connect with me on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, BlueSky and/or Mastodon.  See links on this page.

I depend on contributions from a small group of supporters to fund the work I'm doing.  Visit this page if you'd like to help.

Traffic up on this blog and Tutor/Mentor website

I've been writing this blog since April 2005 and look monthly at the "stats".  Below is the report through June 3, 2026.  Look at how many people visited the site in May.... 518,578!  That's the largest single month ever!

Then visit the home page of www.tutormentorexchange.net and look at the "Who's Online since 7-7-25" box in the upper right side of the home page.

That shows 2,580,506 guests since July 7, 2025.  This has averaged around 250,000 visits a month since last July when the feature was added to the website.

I don't get a lot of comments on the blog so don't know who, or how many, are using the ideas to help volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs grow in the Chicago region or in other cities and states.  I don't know what sparked the huge increase of visits in May 2026.  

I even recorded a large number of views of my visual essays on Scribd.com last month.  Over 15,000!

Below is a graphic that I've used for many years.  The big circle represents all the information that I host on my website and share in my blog articles. The map of Chicago emphasizes my goal of helping long-term volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs reach k-12 youth in every high poverty neighborhood.

The YOU represents anyone who looks at the information I'm sharing, then shares it with their own network.  That can be as simple as just reposting an article.  It can be more sophisticated, by how someone creates their own version of an article or visual essay, then shares it on their own social media platforms.  

As more people take this role, it leads more people to information they can use to build and sustain programs that help K-12 kids through school and into jobs and careers, free of the challenges facing those who live in areas of concentrated poverty.

I'll turn 80 this December. I hope. My lung doctor told me this week that my lung disease is not getting better and that I should be planning for end-of-life activities.  He did not say this was "imminent". But, it was part of the conversation. 

That just means it is more important than ever that a donor steps forward to provide funds that motivate a university to create an on-campus Tutor/Mentor Connection, with my archives, websites, blogs, etc. hosted by them and their students/alumni.  Here's one article where I've extended that invitation. 

If you are the YOU in the graphic shown above, who can you share this with who has the money/influence to motivate one, or many, universities to create an on-campus Tutor/Mentor Connection?  

I don't know how many years I have left.  Even without a progressive lung disease, none of us really knows when our time has ended.  In the meantime, I'll keep posting and keep looking for a way to preserve my 50 year history so others can learn from it after I'm gone.

Please share my posts and connect with me on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, BlueSky, Twitter and/or Mastodon.

And, if you're able, please visit this page and make a contribution to help me pay the bills while I'm still here!

Thank you!