(1) The demographics of our tutors and students were very different. Many of our high school tutors were white, middle-upper class, and lived in the east side of our city. The tutees were predominately students of color, came from underserved backgrounds, and lived in the west and south side of our city.

(2) Tutors and tutees both listed tutoring availability by day, time, and location. However, there was often a mismatch of availability (primarily by location), which created a waitlist of tutees in need of a tutor, as well as tutors in need of a student to work with. We needed to find a way to bring the tutors and tutees together.

After a variety of attempts to bring our tutors and students together we decided to take a different approach and host an orientation for the parents of tutors. We educated the parents on the divisions in our community, the state of education in our city, the role their student would play in improving it, and the need for our tutors to travel to locations where there was a waitlist of tutees.

(1) More than 90% of tutors and their parents completed this training.

(2) The mismatch in tutor and tutee availability decreased by more than 50% following the training, which exceeded our goal of 20%.

(3) The orientation also improved community engagement in programming, helped the organization spread awareness, and increased individual donations given by tutor parents by over 200%.