Every year from 1975 to 2011 I repeated the same cycle. We recruited students and volunteers in August, starting with asking participants from the previous year's program to return for another year. We received a trickle of volunteer applications in August, but many more in the first two weeks of September.

We organized volunteer and student orientations and training sessions the second and third week of September and held student-volunteer matching sessions the fourth week of September. By the first week of October, most of our volunteers were matched, and began meeting weekly for the next nine months..

Actually, this process continued through October. We either had more kids signed up than volunteers, or more volunteers than kids. We tried to recruit more volunteers so we would not need to put kids on the waiting list, but by early November we shut off new enrollment. For the rest of the year new additions were replacements for people who dropped out.

Once kids and volunteers were matched, we supported weekly sessions with on-going coaching and a set of events and activities that helped build relationships and keep interest high, so participation also remained high. Our weekly handouts (printed then via the Internet), provided guidance on activities to expect, speakers, report cards, resources, etc.

We used Excel spreadsheets to track attendance so we could see when a student or volunteer was beginning to miss sessions. Follow up calls determined if that was a permanent loss, or if we were able to rebuild participation.

This was on-going.

Visit this page and read the articles about starting a program, annual planning, operating principles, and what's required each week to keep kids and volunteers involved.

This concept map shows homework help and learning resources in the Tutor/Mentor Library.

Between now and November most of traditional and social media will focus on the November elections in the USA. That means it will be much more difficult for individual volunteer-based organizations to get noticed, and to recruit volunteers and donors. The information in the sections above points to resources organizations can use to build collaborations that work together to raise visibility for the entire sector, thus increasing resources for each organization.

However, elections have a purpose. Hopefully each state and city will elect representatives who study the information I share in the "Law, Justice, Poverty and Prevention" section of the Tutor/Mentor library and will work to undo the structural barriers that make it more difficult for poor and middle income people to thrive. View the concept map at this link.

View my complete collection of concept maps on this page. Create your own versions using cMapTools or some of the tools I point to in these articles.