- 1965–1973
Employees at Montgomery Ward’s Chicago headquarters start a tutoring program for youth in the Cabrini-Green area in 1965. Daniel Bassill joins Wards as an advertising writer in 1973, becomes a tutor that year and leads the program from 1975.
- 1988–1990
More than 340 volunteers serve over 260 children a year. In 1990 Dan leaves the company and the program becomes a nonprofit, the Cabrini-Green Tutoring Program.
- Oct 1992
Seven-year-old Dantrell Davis is shot and killed walking to school in Cabrini-Green. Seven volunteers respond by forming Cabrini Connections, a new program for teens.
- Dec 1992
IBM writes to Daniel Bassill at Cabrini Connections about using the City of Chicago's new GIS system to map where help is needed. The quote for a workstation: $35,850. Mapping is part of the plan from the very first letter.
- 1992–1993
Cabrini Connections and the Tutor/Mentor Connection start as one organization. Cabrini Connections runs a program for Cabrini-Green youth. T/MC works to help similar programs grow in every high-poverty area of Chicago.
- Sept 1993
A public-relations plan from Public Communications Inc. is the first document to use the name “Tutor/Mentor Connection.” It plans the first Tutor/Mentor conference for spring 1994.
- Nov 1994
Mayor Richard M. Daley proclaims Chicago’s first Tutor/Mentor Week, organized with the Chicago Bar Foundation’s Lawyers’ Lend-A-Hand to Youth. The 35mm slide show T/MC uses to recruit support dates from these years.
- 1993–1995
The first entries in the activity log record media coverage and grants for Cabrini Connections, including a $15,000 American Express grant covered by the North Loop News in July 1994.
- 1997–1999
Colin Powell invites Dan to the Presidents’ Summit for America’s Future. T/MC signs a partnership agreement with MENTOR in 1999, and State Senator Barack Obama speaks at the spring 1999 Leadership Conference.
- 2000–2003
The busiest years in the log, with 707 recorded activities. Staff log what happened, why it mattered and what came of it: Leadership Conferences each May and November, volunteer recruitment campaigns, media work and fundraisers.
- 1997
Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago publishes a case study of T/MC as a model for building support infrastructure for after-school tutoring and mentoring.
- 2001
Conference attendees file more than 900 workshop evaluations, rating what they learned and whether they would replicate it.
- 2004
The Associated Colleges of Illinois name Dan Bassill a Shining Example of Liberal Arts for Leadership. T/MC newsletters reach issue 30.
- 2005–2006
The Program Locator lists about 500 Chicago-area tutoring and mentoring programs, searchable by neighborhood, grade level and type.
- 2008–2010
The Program Locator is rebuilt with interactive maps. T/MC produces the Map Gallery, which shows programs alongside poverty, schools, churches, businesses and political districts.
- June 2011
The board votes to focus only on the Cabrini Connections program. The Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC is formed to carry on the work of the Tutor/Mentor Connection.
- 2013–2018
Through the Tutor/Mentor Institute, Dan works with the Illinois Mentoring Partnership and Thrive Chicago and keeps hosting conferences. Volunteers move the old site to a new server and plan a rebuild of the Program Locator in 2015.
