Where would you like to start?
Start here
Five steps to understand what T/MC was and why it mattered.
I was part of T/MC
Find your year, the photos, the conferences and campaigns you were part of, and tell us what you remember.
I’m researching
Sources, complete records, data downloads, and how to cite and reuse what you find.
I run a program today
The strategies, maps, research and lessons T/MC built up over 30 years, ready to reuse.
The archive in numbers
About T/MC
Mission
What the Tutor/Mentor Connection set out to do, and how it worked.
Dan Bassill
Daniel F. Bassill: volunteer tutor from 1973, founder of Cabrini Connections, the Tutor/Mentor Connection and the Tutor/Mentor Institute.
The story
How a 1965 tutoring program at Montgomery Ward became the Tutor/Mentor Connection.
Origins
The Montgomery Ward/Cabrini-Green Tutoring Program: its yearbooks, newsletters, plans, letters and photos.
Timeline
Every activity T/MC logged from 1993 to 2006, searchable.
Year by year
Everything in the archive for any one year: events, news, documents, slides, photos, maps, awards and dated original files.
Cabrini Connections
Cabrini Connections, the teen program started in 1992: students, volunteers, art festivals, surveys, grants, annual reports and letters.
Annual reports and yearbooks
Cabrini Connections and T/MC annual reports 1994–2009, the 2008–09 yearbook, and annual-report slide shows and covers.
What T/MC did
Leadership conferences
Planning files, programs, attendee and workshop lists from the Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conferences.
Workshops
How attendees rated the Leadership Conference workshops.
Volunteer recruitment campaigns
The Chicagoland Tutor/Mentor Volunteer Recruitment Campaigns, 1995–2005, and later recruitment work to 2012: a final report for every year, planning-meeting notes, press releases and conferences, media stories, host-site and program sign-up reports, “Voice of the People” signature pages, letters to and from officials and sponsors, brochures, handouts and photos.
Newsletters and eNews
T/MC’s email newsletters from the first message in 2000 to the 2020 eNews, as Word files and PDFs, and the printed T/MC Report newsletters.
Chicago program directory
The Chicago tutoring and mentoring programs T/MC listed and tracked: the 2005 Program Locator and the 2021 lists. These were other organizations’ programs, not T/MC’s own.
Maps of Chicago
Programs mapped against poverty, schools, violence, businesses and districts.
Neighborhoods
Chicago’s 77 community areas and what the archive holds about each: programs, events, news, documents and maps.
Ideas & research
Themes
T/MC’s six goals and the ten topics that come up most, each with its events, documents, news, maps and links.
Ideas, graphics and visual essays
Strategy graphics, concept maps, visual essays, network maps and the images Dan used in blogs and presentations. Also the Visual Essays slide decks and PDFs and the Year-Round Strategy slides from the October 2026 download.
Presentations
T/MC’s own slide decks and the 1995 slide show.
Research and network analysis
Research files and social-network analysis of T/MC’s network: data, charts and reports.
Library
The links T/MC collected for program leaders, 2002 and 2021.
Recognition
People
Staff, workshop presenters, partners and public officials named in T/MC’s records.
Partners
Lend-A-Hand, MENTOR, Serve Illinois, Thrive Chicago, CPS and more.
Awards
Awards and honors, 1967–2014.
In the news
Newspaper stories about T/MC and the issues it worked on, 1982–2023.
Archive
Photos
Captioned highlights and every photo and graphic in the archive.
Documents
Strategy papers, partnership files and newsletters, page by page.
Letters and correspondence
Letters written and received by Dan Bassill and T/MC over the years, to and from supporters, partners, officials and programs.
Planning and correspondence
T/MC’s planning folders and letters, 1990–2018: media, Mayor Daley, universities, faith groups, other cities, OHATS, and Dan Bassill’s meeting notes.
Technology and online tools: documents
Plans, letters, program and library lists, slides, spreadsheets and pictures from T/MC’s websites and online tools (the Program Locator, OHATS, the Tutor/Mentor Exchange site and the 2021 website). Website code and databases are not included, and files already elsewhere in the archive are not repeated.
Website 2008–2026
Every page of T/MC’s and the Tutor/Mentor Institute’s website, with the eNewsletters 2021–2026, the library and program links, and the story pages.
All files
Every original file in the archive, sorted into collections.
How this archive was built
Sources, OCR, how maps and photos were chosen, and how the files are organised.
Contact
Where to find T/MC’s work today, and who to contact about this archive.