Daniel F. Bassill

Daniel F. Bassill is the founder and leader of the Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC) and the founder and CEO of the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC. For more than fifty years he has worked to help volunteer-based tutoring and mentoring programs reach young people in every high-poverty neighborhood of Chicago, first as a volunteer tutor, then as a program leader, and from 1993 as the builder of a city-wide network of programs, volunteers and supporters.

Early life and career

Bassill studied history in college and served three years in U.S. Army Military Intelligence, where, he later said, he learned to use knowledge for innovation and decision support. In 1973 he joined the Montgomery Ward Corporation in Chicago as an advertising copywriter. Over 17 years he rose to a senior retail-advertising management post, creating advertising for about 400 stores in 40 states. He also spent four years as a Loaned Executive with Chicago’s United Way/Crusade of Mercy, advising companies on leadership-giving and employee campaigns.

From volunteer tutor to program leader, 1973–1992

In 1973 Bassill answered a cafeteria notice recruiting employees for the Montgomery Ward/Cabrini-Green Tutoring Program, founded by Ward’s employees in 1965, and began tutoring a fourth-grade boy from the Cabrini-Green public housing development. In 1975 he became the program’s volunteer leader, a role he held for fifteen years alongside his full-time job; the program grew from about 100 to 300 pairs of students and volunteers. From 1990 to October 1992 he was Executive Director of Cabrini-Green Tutoring Program, Inc., when enrollment reached about 440 young people and 550 volunteers. That program continues today as Tutoring Chicago, which marked its 60th anniversary in 2025 and interviewed Bassill for the occasion.

Cabrini Connections and the Tutor/Mentor Connection, 1992–2011

In 1992 Bassill and a small group of volunteers formed Cabrini Connections, a program for 7th to 12th grade teens that began in 1993 with five teens and seven volunteers and enrolled more than 600 teens and 800 volunteers over the next 18 years. At the same time he created the Tutor/Mentor Connection to help similar programs grow in all high-poverty areas of the Chicago region, through a program directory and maps, twice-yearly leadership conferences, Tutor/Mentor Week and volunteer recruitment campaigns, and outreach to business, faith, university and civic leaders. He also helped build the Lawyers’ Lend-A-Hand to Youth program at the Chicago Bar Association, from a small award in 1994 to a $2 million foundation by 2007, serving on its executive committee and board from 1994 to 2008.

In 1997 he was one of ten Chicago delegates to the Presidents’ Summit for America’s Future. In 2001 Illinois Wesleyan University awarded him an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters, and Governor George Ryan appointed him to the Illinois Commission on Volunteerism and Community Service, to which he was reappointed in 2007.

The Tutor/Mentor Institute, 2011 to today

In April 2011 the board of the combined Cabrini Connections/Tutor/Mentor Connection decided to stop supporting the T/MC strategy after June 30. In July 2011 Bassill created the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC, a social enterprise, to continue the work. He writes weekly on the Tutor/Mentor blog (since 2005) and the Mapping for Justice blog, keeps a library of links to Chicago-area programs and resources on tutormentorexchange.net, and publishes a monthly eNewsletter. In 2026 he marks his 80th birthday, and he is seeking partners and successors to carry the archive and the strategy forward.

In his own words

“During my first year I did not always want to go to tutoring after a long day at work, but every week I left my one hour tutoring session feeling energized.”

From an interview with Paul DiPerna, about 2006. Read the full Dan Bassill interview and his biography page on the archived website.