The Tutor Mentor Connection (http://www.tutormentorconnection.org/) describes their mission as dedicated to improving the availability and quality of comprehensive, long-term, volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in high-poverty areas of the Chicago region and other large US cities through an ongoing, dynamic exchange of ideas.

“Our organization feels it’s time to give back to the Tutoring community, ” says Diane Palumbo, a press representative for TutorMatch.  “We’re in a helping industry – we connect tutors with parents and students who need additional education.  We can’t forget that there’s plenty of parents who need these services but simply can’t afford them.”

TutorMatch is an online tutor referral service.  Tutors can create a profile about their tutoring services on the website for free or get a premium listing for a small yearly subscription fee.  In turn, parents and students can search the database of thousands of online and local tutors for free.  Tutormatch protects their privacy and doesn’t even require them to register or sign up with the site.  Parents and students then interview potential tutors online and have their choice to meet with them one-on-one in their own neighborhood, or hire them for online tutoring services.

“For there to be tutoring/mentoring in poverty areas we don’t just need tutors, ” says Daniel Bassill, President of the Tutor Mentor Connection. “We need donors who help pay the rent and other costs of making a tutor/mentor program available.”

That’s where TutorMatch decided to step in.  “We’re a small online educational resource site, so we can’t compete with the international conglomerates commercially, ” says Palumbo.  “But we feel it’s just good corporate responsibility to provide support for the most important resource our country has to offer – children in need of education.”
TutorMatch Tutoring and Homework Help is an online tutor referral service which has been connecting students and tutors online since 1996.  Besides their primary online referral service, the company also offers the Homework Help Today blog for both students and tutors.

This video is from the tutor’s perspective, there’s also another video from the student’s point of view.

For a while now I’ve been looking for a way for TutorMatch.com to work with a charitable organization and it seems like this one is a pretty good match, since it directly involves tutors.  I exchanged a few emails with Dan Bassill, the President of the Tutor/Mentor Connection, to discuss the possibilities of working together.

I had mentioned perhaps we could send a notice out to active tutors on TutorMatch asking if anyone was interested in volunteering their time as tutors, but he said what they need most at this time is donations, not just tutors.

According to Dan, “For there to be tutoring/mentoring in poverty areas we don’t just need tutors; we need donors who help pay the rent and other costs of making a tutor/mentor program available. This is what enables us to offer free services to our kids and families. If you can build the connection between those fortunate enough to be able to afford paid tutoring, then many of them might become the donors who also support tutoring for poor kids.”

So that got me to thinking, what if we donated a certain percentage of each TutorMatch Premium Subscription to the Tutor/Mentor Connection?  We don’t make a whole lot, but by giving back and making potential tutors aware of the donation perhaps we can increase tutor signups and help out the Tutor/Mentor Connection at the same time.  Even if we don’t, I think it’s just our resonsibility to help out community improvement programs like this one whenever we can. 

For anyone who is (or isn’t) involved with TutorMatch and would like to donate you can visit their donations page and help them out.  As they say, “if it is to be, it is up to me” … it’s up to you to make a difference!