13: Program Leadership and Staffing
Standard of Practice: The program has adequate leadership and staffing to implement services with fidelity to the program model and ensures that all staff have relevant experience, knowledge, and professional development needed to implement essential functions of their roles, and that they reflect the full diversity of the community being served.
Practices Supporting this Standard
The program has a board of directors or advisory committee that provides adequate governance, decision-making, oversight, and resource development support to the program.
This group should:
- have clear roles and responsibilities and meet on a regular basis;
- reflect the diversity of the community being served, and regularly assess its composition to ensure adequate representation in race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, ability, and other relevant characteristics; and
- ideally, include youth, caregiver, and volunteer representatives who can share their perspectives.
The program should be adequately staffed by individuals with relevant backgrounds and education to implement key functions of the program.
The program should have enough full-time-equivalent staff to implement the program model as intended for the desired number of participants. Key staff should have experience and/or education in youth development programming, child psychology, education, social work, or other relevant fields.
The program’s staffing reflects the diversity of the community being served, with strategies in place to recruit and retain such individuals over time.
Program staff should reflect the diversity of the community in not only race/ethnicity but also age, gender identity, and other important characteristics and identities.
The program has policies and procedures in place to address discrimination based on race, color, religion, gender identity, sexuality, national origin, disability, and/or age.
These policies should be shared with staff at regular intervals and be readily accessible for reference. Programs may consider requiring all staff to complete training that provides information about their antidiscrimination policies, applicable state and national laws, as well as procedures for reporting discrimination.
The program supports all staff members by providing adequate compensation, job-specific onboarding and training, meaningful supervision and support, and opportunities for ongoing professional development and recognition outlined in a formal staff development plan.
To ensure that program staff have the right skills and competencies, programs should have a formal plan (with dedicated resources) for staff professional development and training. For programs where staff are paid employees, programs should provide adequate compensation, high-quality supervision and coaching, and meaningful staff recognition opportunities. Potential training topics for staff may include:
- how to implement the mentoring program with fidelity;
- best practices for supervision of program participants;
- issues related to supporting program participants, including honoring diversity and fostering inclusion and belonging; cultural responsiveness; attunement to the needs of participants; and other skills related to serving vulnerable populations; and
- other topics specific to the mentoring program model and intended outcomes (e.g., substance use prevention, goal setting and attainment, STEM career paths).
Because there is tremendous diversity in how and where mentoring is delivered to young people, here we offer additional practices and recommendations related to this Element for some common mentoring contexts. Readers should note that there may be overlap in the following categories (e.g., a peer mentoring program in a school or a Boys & Girls Club offering a group mentoring program on-site) and read all that may be relevant to their work. The next recommendations can help clarify staffing needs and support program staff in implementing mentoring models in certain settings.
GROUP MENTORING MODELS
Group mentoring programs have some additional considerations when it comes to building and maintaining adequate program leadership and staffing, including:
- Hiring staff with experience working with or managing groups of youth. The skills needed to effectively manage a group setting differ considerably from those needed for one-to-one focused work, and youth workers with experience in group settings can be invaluable in teaching those skills to mentors and managing the physical spaces where mentors and youth meet.
- Training staff in group dynamics and group management. Not all staff will come with these skills, but it is important that all are provided with training in how to not only manage groups of youth, but also ensure that each participant feels welcome and engaged in program activities.
- Scheduling adequate staff to supervise and support group activities, including working directly with groups that may be struggling. Mentors who are working with a group of youth are juggling many responsibilities and may not be able to leave the group unattended if they need to ask for help or are faced with a situation they cannot manage themselves. Programs are encouraged to make staff available while groups are meeting and to provide real-time supervision and support as needed.
PEER MENTORING MODELS
As with group mentoring models, staff in peer-to-peer programs need to be available to offer support when matches are meeting, as older youth may not know how to handle situations that arise with their younger mentee or may need assistance in completing activities.
Because peer-to-peer mentoring programs also tend to emphasize activities that are youth developed and led, these programs may wish to hire staff who have prior experience co-creating or implementing curriculum or activities collaboratively with youth in other settings.
E-MENTORING MODELS
Given the virtual nature of e-mentoring models, it can be helpful to hire staff who have above-average levels of understanding of software and hardware, online communication skills, and virtual training delivery.
These models are also encouraged to think even more carefully about staffing levels and the amount of effort required to promote online engagement of mentors and youth. In our experience, virtual programs require much more activity guidance for matches, more prompting to get participants to engage, and more support for both relationship challenges and technical support needs. While technology may make some aspects of the mentoring experience easier for participants, the work in building and maintaining such programs is no less than needed for in-person models.
SCHOOL- AND OTHER FORMAL SITE-BASED MODELS
School- and site-based models have many of the same considerations noted above for group and peer programs, including the need to have adequate staff on hand to support matches while they meet on site and the need to prioritize staff skills in working with and managing groups of students. Additionally, school- and site-based programs should prioritize:
- Ensuring that the program has dedicated staffing that is focused primarily on the delivery of the mentoring services. Too often, site-based models rely on faculty or staff who have many other roles and responsibilities to take on the development and implementation of a formal mentoring program. Programs in these broader organizations should ensure that those implementing the program have the availability, capacity, and skills to lead the mentoring services and that they are not unduly pulled away for other responsibilities, which can diminish the quality of the mentoring work. Managing a mentoring program is hard work, and those tasked with the responsibility should be provided with clear roles, professional development that allows them to fill the roles adequately, and additional compensation and recognition, as needed.
- Creating an advisory committee with representatives and champions from the school or site. Not only can this group of champions help situate the program within all the other activities happening at the school or site, they can, ideally, have meaningful influence over the allocation of space and financial resources so that the program is not an afterthought in the larger decisions made by school or site leadership.
INFORMAL MENTORING MODELS
Youth development programs that are offering informal mentoring via staff may want to consider many of the previous recommended practices, including ensuring that mentoring activities do not stretch staffing for other services too thin and providing professional development on mentoring skills and approaches for staff who are expected to mentor as part of their role (see Element 8).
Programs may want to set benchmarks and track progress around metrics such as:
BoardSource.
Repository of resources including guides and tools for oversight and accountability, composition and recruitment, executive evaluation and compensation, and assessing board performance. Of particular interest for mentoring programs are:
Advisory Councils: Nine Keys to Success
Board Chair and Chief Executive Responsibilities
Taking Action on Board Diversity: Five Questions to Get You Started
Building Effective Youth Councils: A Practical Guide to Engaging Youth in Policy Making. Martin, S., Pittman, K., Ferber, T., and McMahon, A., The Forum for Youth Investment.
This guide provides an overview of how to engage youth in policy-making and advocacy efforts through the creation of youth advisory councils.
Nonprofit Human Resources Best Practices. Taproot Foundation and Warner Bros.
A toolkit, informed by nonprofits for nonprofits, that provides recommendations for performance management, recruitment, hiring and retention, staffing, and professional development.
Staffing Calculator for Match Support-User Manual. National Mentoring Resource Center.
Uses an Excel workbook to account for staff time needed to support matches.
