10 Tips for Starting a School Volunteer Tutoring Program

Does your school have a volunteer tutoring program? Does it need one? According to a 2011 study, students who don’t read proficiently by the end of third grade are four times less likely to graduate on time, and those in poverty are at even greater risk. A volunteer tutoring program can help reduce that risk by lowering absenteeism, improving academic performance, and providing guidance, support, and accountability to students in need.

CCPA and Volunteer Tutoring

Founded in 1999, Cincinnati College Preparatory Academy (CCPA) is a charter school that serves an inner-city, under-served, 100% free and reduced-price lunch population of 940 students (K–12). Its tutoring program, launched in 2017, currently focuses on elementary students in the areas of math and reading.

Andrea Granieri has served as CCPA’s Community Resource Director since August 2017. With a background in both nonprofit fundraising and marketing, Granieri had the challenge of organizing and promoting the fledgling program, and then recruiting a diverse group of volunteers who had varying comfort levels with one-on-one tutoring. She didn’t meet these challenges alone, however, and she credits and active board and a supportive administration for the program’s early successes. In 2017–2018, CCPA gained 50 regular, consistent volunteers, as well as additional volunteers who served less consistently or for special projects. Granieri shared her experience with us recently, offering some tips for starting your volunteer tutoring program from scratch.

Have Advocates at the Top

It sounds obvious: A program’s success depends on having the leadership on board. Granieri consistently gave credit to CCPA’s leadership team, which consists of both the Board of Directors and the administration (superintendent, principals, etc.). “The job would be a lot more challenging if they were not 100% bought into the idea,” she emphasized. Any new program will have skeptics, so the voices and influence of the advocates is vital. It helps if you can point to similar programs that are experiencing success, too. Because CCPA’s leadership was already aware of other tutoring programs among Cincinnati’s public schools, they were motivated to develop one of their own.

Be Flexible in Your Scheduling

Many schools only have after-school tutoring, but CCPA offers tutoring all day long. Granieri respects the schedules of willing volunteers, saying, “Whenever [a volunteer] can come, we will find a kid that [they] can tutor during that time.” A wider range of shift times makes it easier for community members to commit to volunteering, and it also benefits students who may not be able to stay after school

Take Care of Your Tutors … and Your Students

School tutors come from a variety of backgrounds and experience — and not all them have experience working with children! Be aware that tutoring may be a new experience for your volunteers. Granieri is sensitive to the needs of new tutors, sitting in on first sessions as needed, and providing positive feedback and suggestions. She has worked with highly educated tutors who are “terrified to tutor third graders.” “They don’t want to do it wrong,” she explains. “They don’t want to mess it up. They want to do it exactly right.” A bit of hand-holding early on can help tutors gain confidence in this new experience and turn once-terrified tutors into enthusiastic, consistent volunteers who truly care about the children they help.

“If [the tutor isn’t] happy, if it doesn’t work for them, then it doesn’t work for us either.”

It also helps to pair the students with the right tutors. “If [the tutor isn’t] happy, if it doesn’t work for them, then it doesn’t work for us either,” she said. “So we take lots of things into consideration: schedules, their comfort level, the subject area. And then I work with the school leadership [to determine] which students are most going to benefit, which ones are most in need of the support.

With volunteer software, you can learn volunteers’ subject and age-level interests beforehand, making it easier to find that perfect match.

Use Workbooks

Granieri found that workbooks were a boon to both tutors and students. They gave tutors ready-made materials to work with, and they gave students “different content and different sample problems” that were still “parallel to the tasks that they were on in the classroom.” Workbooks also helped the teachers, who no longer had to take time to prepare worksheets and instructions for tutoring sessions. Tutors could “work … with the student at whatever pace the student needs,” said Granieri, adding that the workbooks feature “excellent explanations” of concepts, taking some of the pressure off the tutor.

Tutors can “work … with the student at whatever pace the student needs.”

Allow Tutors To “Jump In”

Granieri finds it important to tap into the enthusiasm of new volunteers and get them started quickly. While some basic training is valuable, it’s also important that tutors meet the children who need them so they can all get to work. Also, training can only go so far. “Every single child that you’re tutored with is a different situation, a different case,” Granieri explained, and tutors often “just need to jump in. They just need to do it.”

She finds that, once they get started, tutors realize that yes, they can help the child because they know the subject and they have tools in the form of workbooks, flash cards, and other learning resources.

Find Tutors with Friends

CCPA’s program started with a board member who had tutored the year before. That person “did a phenomenal job of recruiting his friends,” said Granieri. “He had just retired, and a lot of his friends were starting to retire, and he was kind of grabbing them at right about retirement point, saying you’ve got to come in and help.”

This volunteer’s success in recruiting is not surprising, if you look at volunteerism research. One out of four people who don’t volunteer say it is because no one asked them to! So encourage your volunteers tell their friends about the important work your program is doing. Ask them to invite those friends — they may be surprised at how many say yes!

Host a FRIENDraiser

Your volunteers may be shy about asking friends to help, but they be more willing to invite them to a fun event that serves the school community. CCPA hosted a “friendraiser” in January of 2018 as a way to showcase the program, meet the faces behind it, and share volunteer opportunities with the friends of its board members and volunteers. “We made it very clear,” she said. “We’re not asking anybody for money. Just come in. And that was successful. And really, it’s that personal touch that’s more effective than anything.”

Offer Opportunities Outside of One-on-one Tutoring

While your main focus is tutoring, chances are you could use help in related areas. For instance, Granieri “did a lot of placing volunteers in the classroom, and so they weren’t tutoring the same kids week after week.” Instead, “they were pulling out small groups of students from the same classroom, working with the same classroom” each week. Other volunteers were recruited to help stock and organize the school library, which grew from zero books to “six or seven thousand” in a single school year. By offering a variety of opportunities, you can recruit volunteers who want to help but don’t yet feel qualified or comfortable with traditional one-on-one tutoring.

Invest in Volunteer Software to Streamline Recruitment

Your community may have a wealth of potential volunteers who don’t have connections to your school community — and who may not even know your tutoring program exists. With volunteer software, you can both publicize the opportunities and find volunteers with skills and interests in tutoring, STEM education, working with children, and the like. Share your posted opportunities on community boards and in social media to make it easy for volunteers to find you, learn what your program is all about, and sign up to help!

Track Volunteer Data from the Start

With a background in nonprofit fundraising, Granieri recognizes the importance of tracking volunteer data to show results, gain support, see improvements over time, and even learn from mistakes. Many volunteer coordinators use multiple spreadsheets for this kind of thing, but robust volunteer-management software can make it easier to report on volunteer sign-ups, hours worked, level of students tutored, academic subjects, and more. If you are having trouble getting buy-in for your program at any level, good data — however recorded — can help make the argument for continued support and funding.

In Conclusion

While leadership support is vital to getting a tutoring program off the ground, listening to your volunteers is vital to keeping it going. Be flexible in your scheduling, and make time to reassure and coach volunteers as needed. Offer non-tutoring opportunities, too — who knows, maybe those volunteers will be inspired by your tutors and decide they’d like to tutor a child after all! Use a variety of approaches, including word of mouth, social media, and volunteer software, to promote your program and find the best volunteers. And remember to track your data from the very beginning!

“It is so incredibly rewarding to match kids who want help, who want to see some positive results, [and to work] with adults who are going to fall in love with the kids.”

These approaches can result in a volunteer tutoring program that benefits the students, the volunteers, the teachers, and more. As CCPA’s Community Resource Director, Granieri has experienced an important benefit of her own: “It is so incredibly rewarding to match kids who want help, who want to see some positive results, [and to work] with adults who are going to fall in love with the kids,” she said. “I’ve always worked for nonprofits, for social service. I’ve always worked for the underdog. But there is just nothing like seeing the connection that both parties end up having.”

Many thanks to Andrea Granieri for talking with us and sharing her experience as a first-year Community Resource Director with Cincinnati College Preparatory Academy.