Many volunteer literacy tutors in Franklin County, Pennsylvania, have not completed their 1-year tutoring commitment. Consequently, an action research project was undertaken to determine the causes of the high tutor turnover and to identify ways of improving the tutor retention rate. All tutors involved in the program from 1998 onward were asked to complete a questionnaire listing 21 reasons that might make tutors quit tutoring. The project goal was to boost the retention of tutors trained in 1999 to 70%. All 37 tutors asked to complete questionnaires did so. Eighty percent of tutors who completed the questionnaire responded positively to the seven questionnaire items related to the need for further communication between tutors and members of the literacy council's staff. As a result, the tutor training program was revised and office staff worked to adopt the approach of active listening when dealing with tutors and to increase communication with tutors. Although the retention rate of tutors trained in 1998 was only about 40-60 percent, 100% of the tutors trained in January 1999 were still tutoring in May 1999 (the end of the action research project). (The tutor questionnaire is appended.) (MN)