Best Practice 1: Recruit the right mentors

Identifying and selecting mentors is similar to hiring someone to work with you—you want to find mentors who are the best fit for your program. Identify potential mentors through a labor market assessment or a community assessment. Develop a one-page fact sheet that realistically describes the purpose of the mentoring, experience/skills you are looking for, benefits, and expectations so applicants understand mentoring and what they can expect from a mentoring relationship. Inviting youth mentees to identify mentors for their business or community project can be an exciting way to leverage youth collaboration in your project. Youth will require specific orientation about the criteria for choosing mentors and how to approach the mentor to make the request.

Best Practice 2: Screen mentors

Meet mentors face to face to assess alignment of expectations about the mentor role, opportunities, challenges, time commitment involved, and the mentor’s hopes. For mentor-mentee relationships to develop, mentors must be able to commit to meet in person with their mentee at least once a week. Clarify that phone calls and e-mail do not count as meetings. If possible, conduct a background check appropriate in your community—that is, run criminal checks, and ask for references from supervisors or references from your program’s stakeholder group.

Best Practice 3: Train mentors

Before they meet mentees, conduct an interactive training program to prepare mentors for their role, help them define their personal goals, and further assess if they are the right fit for your program. Research shows that when mentors’ goals and expectations are met in a mentoring program they are more likely to remain engaged. See the Mentoring Resources page for training ideas and topics. Balancing the private sector’s time constraints with this training is important to ensuring participation of mentors.

Best Practice 4: Keep in touch

A specific staff member should be designated as the mentor’s contact person to share progress and assist with issues. Mentors are busy people so keep contact light, to the point, and enjoyable (so they want to be involved). Plan staff contact via phone with mentors every two weeks at the beginning of a program and then on a monthly basis. Providing brief written resources or e-mail updates with tips can also support mentors along the way. Develop specific and non-burdensome tools such as a three to five-question monthly report to collect information from mentees and mentors about the number of meetings that have taken place and other data you need to assess the strengths and needs of the program.

Best Practice 5: Appreciate mentors

Mentors give their time and energy because they want to. Plan many ways for the program and the youth themselves to appreciate mentors at every opportunity—thank them publicly, send cards midway and at the end of a cycle of service, provide certificates and publish their names and the names of their businesses in the newspaper. When the period of service of mentorship has concluded plan a celebratory closing with the mentees, mentors, business leaders, and other stakeholders from the community including parents.