Volunteer Recruitment

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Comment by Daniel Bassill on September 5, 2011 at 8:28am

During the coming week memorials to the 9/11 tragedy will motivate many people to want to do community service.  If your community has a directory showing volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs like the Chicago Tutor/Mentor Program Locator, media stories, sermons and corporate leadership could encourage more people to seek out tutor/mentor programs to volunteer and to offer dollars. 

If teachers organize service learning and leadership projects at their local schools students can learn what a tutor/mentor program is, where they are most needed, what programs are in their own community, or in poverty communities in their region, and ways to create videos, blogs, community events on a regular basis to help these programs get the flow of resources they need to thrive, and to help youth build the experiences, aspirations and motivations needed to come to school more prepared to learn each day. This blog shows what interns have been doing working with my organization.

Comment by Daniel Bassill on November 1, 2008 at 9:38am

Volunteer and donor recruitment will be ideas shared among leaders and organizers of volunteer-based tutoring and mentoring programs during the November 21 conference being held at the Field Museum in Chicago. If any of you are supporting non-school programs around your school, as a strategy of expanding the community supports kids need to come to school more prepared to learn, I encourage you to participate in the conference, or connect via groups like http://tutormentorconnection.ning.com

If you don't work in a poorly performing school there are many ways your students can help connect with inner city schools, and help them have more of the resources kids need, and which are taken for granted, in more affluent areas.

These are topics for networking, idea sharing, and collaboration and forums like this are ideal platforms for that type of discussion.

Comment by Daniel Bassill on July 12, 2008 at 7:36am

This map shows where poverty is concentrated in Chicago, along with locations of poorly performing schools. In addition, the location of colleges and universities is plotted.

The aim of the Tutor/Mentor Connection is to increase the number of high quality tutor/mentor programs in poverty neighborhoods by improving access to volunteers, dollars, technology and other resources needed by every tutor/mentor program on a consistent basis.

While we share ideas with program leaders in a traditional technical assistance role, our real aim is to encourage teams of volunteers in colleges, business, churches, etc. to create learning and marketing groups, that draw members of their organization into involvement at one or more locations, and then support that involvement so that these people grow in their impact as a tutor/mentor and leader.

Every year we start the school year by trying to help programs get volunteers. I encourage you to read about this here, and here, and consider ways you and your students could use web 2.0 and other service and learning activities to support volunteer recruitment in Chicago, or in any other city or geographic area.

Comment by Daniel Bassill on April 12, 2008 at 7:42am

We're hosting a conference on May 29 and 30 and hope you'll spread the word so that people in your network who want to help inner city kids succeed in school and move to careers will attend the conference, or connect with us in forums like this.

The work we do in May can lead to stronger programs, and more collaboration, in August as thousands of volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs begin recruiting volunteers for the 2008-09 school year.

You can help by actively reaching out to your network to draw participants to this movement.

Comment by Daniel Bassill on March 27, 2008 at 3:38pm

While we have only a couple of months left in the school year, and many people may be thinking of summer vacations, I'm focused on the work we need to do to help volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs recruit volunteers and connect them with kids at the start of the 2008-09 school year next August/September.

Workshops at the May 29 and 30 conference in Chicago will focus on volunteer recruitment. If you're able to attend, this can help you strengthen your own efforts, or build a student led communications strategy that strengthens the volunteer mobilization effort for many non profits in your community.