One of the most proven ways to recruit new volunteers is to have your current volunteers ask friends and co-workers to volunteer with them.  We've created a template letter that you can use. Just personalize it with your own information and experiences.  If  you'd like to have more male volunteers, ask your volunteers to just send this to five men they know who might volunteer. If you're looking for technology help, send it to technology people.

Visit the Discussion Forum to share your own recruitment strategies or to join with the Tutor/Mentor Connection in a citywide volunteer mobilization effort.

This week two events are being held which connect college and business volunteers with inner city kids. You can read about these on the Tutor/Mentor Blog and the Cabrini Blog. 

Our use of blogs illustrates a strategy small non profits can use to tell their story and reach potential volunteers and donors. As you develop your Back-to-School Volunteer Recruitment Campaign, think of using a blog, and of linking your blog to the Tutor/Mentor Blog, as part of a strategy to get the attention of a greater number of potential volunteers.  Just email your web address to us, or introduce yourself with a comment on the Tutor/Mentor Blog or in the Discussion Forums on this site.

If you lead a business, professional group, health care organization, church or alumni group, and want to lead a strategy where you connect your network to tutor/mentor programs in Chicago or in your own community, email tutormentor2@earthlink.net for our help in developing this strategy.

Visit http://cabriniblog.blogspot.com and view photos from the 2007 year end dinner. This celebrates the 15th year of providing tutoring/mentoring to Cabrini Green youth.

View the Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection timeline and see how this organization has grown from the vision of a few volunteers.  Click on the 1965 to 1992 timeline to see how this vision started more than 40 years ago.

On May 31, 2007 Oprah Winfrey, Essence Cares and its partners (including the National Urban League, 100 Black Men of America, Inc., and YWCA), and MENTOR/National Mentoring Partnership launched a call for 1,000,000 new mentors.  View a video clip.

We hope that as this partnership raises visibility for mentoring, it will cause more people to view the infrastructure needed to make comprehensive, volunteer-based tutoring/mentoring programs more available to kids in every inner city neighborhood. That's the goal of the Tutor/Mentor Connection.

While a May announcement of a new campaign to recruit mentors is welcome, we hope it leads to more businesses, churches, hospitals and univertisit providing leadership needed in August to help mobilize volunteers as schools starts, and in November/December, to help  mobilize donors as the  year end holidays stimulate giving. If you'd like to support the Chicago campaign email tutormentor2@earthlink.net or call 312-492-9614.

On Thursday, May 17 and Friday, May 18, more than 200 leaders, volunteers and supporters of volunteer-based tutoring/mentoring programs gathered in Chicago to share ideas, network, and work together to build more and better programs to help inner-city youth succeed in school, and build the adult support network that helps them move to jobs and careers.

The conference web site shows the agenda, speaker list and roster of people who have registered.

In collaboration with the Tutor Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference, the Fathers For The Future Foundation, hoste conference within the Tutor/Mentor Conference, which included two panel discussions and three workshops. A Blueprint for Success was a professional conference that encourages open participation and dialogue from the stakeholders that are directly affected, and can benefit from financially independent young men. Learn more at http://www.tutormentorconference.org./descriptions.asp#blueprint 

While the conference is over, the networking and learning is continuing.  We hope you'll use the resources on this web site, as well as the discussion fourms, to continue to network and learn from each other. We hope this leads to shared actions that mobilize more volunteers for all programs as school starts in August of 2007.

Thank you to everyone who donated their time to participate in this conference. I look forward to working with you in the coming weeks and months.