This report on historical trends and recent findings in the literature on academic tutoring is the first step in a community-based research collaboration between faculty and students at a small liberal arts college, the local public school district, and a nonprofit foundation that supports public K-12 education. Each year, this nonprofit administers a program that pairs over 200 public school students with academic tutors while overcoming limited resources for accessing and synthesizing the research on best practices in the field. Our partnership seeks to provide community members and volunteers with foundational knowledge and practical guidelines for promoting student success through tutoring. In subsequent phases of the research we will use these guidelines to implement and evaluate changes in the tutoring program. Here, we present accumulated evidence from researchers across disciplines, synthesizing a set of best practices in tutoring for use by community engagement practitioners. Additionally, we incorporate recent findings suggesting that factors beyond typical academic outcomes, so-called non-cognitive skills like motivation, perseverance, and mindset, could be important components of tutoring for more broadly defined student success.