00: Introduction

Defining Mentoring: For the purposes of this resource, we have adapted the definition of mentoring proposed by Drs. David DuBois and Michael Karcher in The Handbook of Youth Mentoring, 2nd edition: Mentoring is a series of collaborative activities and conversations between young people and older or more experienced persons (i.e., mentors) who are acting in a helping capacity to provide support that benefits one or more areas of the young person’s development.

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There is perhaps no action that better symbolizes and honors our collective humanity and our obligation to one another over time than when one person offers a mentoring relationship to another, especially to a young person who is in the early stages of their life journey. From elders ensuring that wisdom, values, and culture are passed down to subsequent generations, to a coworker “showing the ropes” to a new hire, to a teacher taking a struggling student under their wing and offering more than a lesson plan, the act of mentoring is one that helps each human being reach their potential, learn valuable wisdom, have amazing new experiences, and thrive in the face of life’s ups and downs. Mentoring relationships enable young people to build on their strengths and take advantage of opportunities—they also enrich the lives of mentors, who often get as much personal growth (and valuable memories) from the experience as the young person. Mentoring matters, not just to individuals, but to entire communities and societies. (See sidebar for our definition of mentoring.)
Young people today find mentors through many pathways: through aunts, uncles, and extended kin who offer love and wisdom beyond what parents or other caregivers can provide; through faith leaders and spiritual institutions; through coaches, counselors, teachers, and other professionals who dedicate their careers to helping young people grow and thrive; and through neighbors, family friends, and other caring people who happen to be in a young person’s orbit and decide to offer more help than might have been expected. These naturally found mentoring connections are invaluable — often life-changing — and serve as shining examples of our human commitment to one another.

Young people also find mentoring relationships through programs and services that are designed to facilitate these connections between youth who could benefit from a helping hand on their journey and adults who want to join them and offer support along the way. In some ways, mentoring programs aim to intentionally create relationships that, under different circumstances, would form naturally in our communities. A mentoring program is a purposeful attempt to bring new and different types of people into the life of a young person to supplement the web of support that already surrounds them and provide them with opportunities and guidance they may not have experienced otherwise. These mentoring programs play an important role in our society — they represent a deliberate and focused attempt by a community of caring adults to step up and offer additional support to young people. A mentoring program can also be an invaluable and life-changing thing, and the relationships it creates bring more joy, love, and meaning to the lives of young people and the adults around them.
This resource is a celebration of these mentoring programs, as well as an attempt to strengthen them and better support the tens of thousands of individuals who design and deliver these services to youth across America. Much in the same way mentors offer guidance and wisdom to young people, this resource offers those who develop and implement mentoring services meaningful guidance on the programmatic practices that contribute to a high-quality mentoring experience for young people. This resource reflects the collective wisdom of our field, drawing on both the experiences of mentoring professionals who do this work, day in and day out, and research evidence that highlights the most effective ways to build and implement a mentoring program.

In the pages that follow, we will explain more about who this resource is for, the many considerations that go into designing and delivering meaningful programmatic mentoring experiences for young people, and specific practices we believe will make mentoring programs more effective, enjoyable, and sustainable now and in the future. We also hope you see this resource as a way of honoring and celebrating the mentoring work already happening across this nation, as the guidance offered here builds on decades of programming and research, and the efforts of millions of program staff, mentors, young people, and their families and communities. We hope this resource is a meaningful summation of what we have learned about the mentoring that can happen in program contexts, while also empowering leaders to build the mentoring programs of the future so that youth can adapt to an ever-changing world.

Mentoring programs come in all shapes and sizes, differing in their setting, the characteristics of the youth served, the focus, frequency, and duration of the mentoring support, and many other factors. It can be quite challenging to develop one resource that speaks to all those variations perfectly.

Yet the value for our field of a resource like the Elements of Effective Practice for Mentoring (EEPM) lies mainly in providing some common starting points that almost all mentoring programs share. Every program needs to determine how they will find participants and get them engaged in their services, how and when mentors and youth will meet and what they might do together, and how these relationships will be supported and eventually dissolved. And while the resources programs need to operate and grow will vary considerably, just about every mentoring program will need to engage in fundraising, staff development and retention, communicating with stakeholders, and other practices that support running and sustaining a healthy program.

Thus, the recommendations included here will apply to most readers in their programmatic context and should serve as a starting point for what constitutes running a solid mentoring program. Your program may not implement every practice in this resource. In fact, depending on your setting and circumstance, there may be many practices discussed that are not applicable to your work or are not applicable in the ways described here. That should not be a cause for concern. What matters is that you, the reader, think carefully about these practices and how and when they apply to your work, and understand where and when it makes sense for your work to look different.

FORMAL MENTORING PROGRAMS FOR YOUTH

The practices recommended in this resource will be most applicable to mentoring programs that:

  • Offer mentoring as a formalized service, either as a standalone support (e.g., a Big Brothers Big Sisters or similar nonprofit) or as one component of a multi-intervention youth-serving organization (e.g., a youth development organization that offers a mentoring program in addition to academic, job training, mental health counseling, or other services).
  • Serve youth 18 years of age or younger, although the majority of the guidance here is perfectly applicable to mentoring models for older young people (e.g., up to age 24).
  • Involve mentors who are community volunteers or paid mentoring staff. Although many of the practices described here assume the program’s mentors are adults, much of the advice is applicable to peer-to-peer mentoring models, as well.
  • Purposefully match youth with mentors in mentoring relationships, either one-to-one or in groups of several youth working with one or more adult mentors.

However, we know that mentoring programs come in all shapes and sizes and that they will differ across many characteristics (see below for more information). We encourage those planning or implementing different configurations of mentoring services to reflect on how the advice offered here aligns with, or perhaps differs from, the services they are planning or already offering. Each chapter provides advice for a variety of program models and contexts.

YOUTH DEVELOPMENT ORGANIZATIONS AND SETTINGS

We recognize that many readers will represent a broad variety of youth development organizations, likely falling into one of two categories: 1) The aforementioned youth development organizations that intentionally operate a formal mentoring program, using volunteers or staff member mentors, alongside many other distinct services (mentoring programs embedded in a larger organization); or 2) Those that offer informal mentoring, typically via staff members, as an enhancement to their typical work with youth (mentoring is happening, but there is no formal program). It is increasingly common for after-school programs, camps and recreation programs, sports teams and clubs, and other youth development providers to build this kind of informal mentoring role into the general work of staff members. Both of these approaches — embedded programs or informal staff mentoring — can be beneficial to young people.

However, for those in youth development organizations, the practices highlighted in this resource will be most helpful if the organization is offering mentoring as a formal service in which there is structure, common approach, staff planning, implementation, and oversight to how mentoring is provided. Many youth development organizations may choose not to implement that kind of formal mentoring service, instead taking the less formal approach and asking staff to “switch hats” on occasion and mentor youth in the program more organically. These organizations can also find value in this resource, especially in considering how practices such as training or caregiver engagement can improve those less-structured mentoring experiences. (See MENTOR’s Becoming a Better Mentor [Herrera & Garringer, 2022] for more information about how any staff member or caring adult in a community can build their mentoring skills.)

In general, while mentoring services do come in all shapes and sizes, this resource is most applicable to those who are offering a mentoring program with a level of purposefulness, structure, and formality in how services are delivered. For these programs, the practices here can increase the odds that the youth you serve will benefit from meaningful mentoring experiences.  

APPLICABILITY TO FUNDERS AND POLICYMAKERS

The other audiences that will find value in this publication include those who help fund the development of mentoring programs, both in the public and private sectors. We encourage these audiences to approach the practices here with the following in mind:

  • These practices can promote more impactful investments in mentoring. The recommendations here draw on both research evidence and practitioner wisdom suggesting they make a difference in the quality and sustainability of a mentoring program. Those who are starting mentoring initiatives or providing funds to existing programs may wish to ask service providers how they plan to meet the EEPM recommendations, as they represent a solid base for building quality services.

  • These practices are not part of a one-size-fits-all, cookie-cutter model, and programs will need adaptation and innovation to thrive in their unique context. One of the truisms of youth-serving programs of all types is that what works in one school, community, or organizational setting may not work perfectly in another, especially when considering the unique contributions of staff members, the differences across communities in the mentors, youth, and families served, and myriad other factors that make programs unique. The EEPM was not created to identify inherently “good” or “bad” programs, but rather to give practitioners, funders, and policymakers access to the strongest evidence we have around programmatic practices and decisions that are linked with positive mentoring outcomes. While the EEPM offers a strong starting point for defining what a quality mentoring program looks like, please remember that all programs will do things slightly differently and that local adaptations and nuances are to be encouraged and celebrated. It can be helpful to remember that most “innovations” in mentoring over the last 30 years have been the result of local mentoring professionals trying something new or implementing a practice “incorrectly” to better meet the needs of their youth and community. It is only later when they, or external researchers, realized that their approach was actually an improvement, that these new ways of doing something became codified as a “best practice.” So, encourage your programs to strive for the practices listed here, but also encourage them to go above and beyond and do things differently if their youth, mentors, or communities need something that looks a little different.

Evaluate your investments in mentoring. While the practices recommended in this resource will certainly give your programs a strong foundation, they are no guarantee of success or meaningful impact. Much in the way that having a mentor is no guarantee that a young person will reach all their goals, engaging in all the practices described here will not automatically lead to perfect results — although research strongly suggests these practices matter a great deal (DuBois et al., 2002; Kupersmidt et al., 2017; Keller et al., 2023). Thus, we encourage funders and policymakers to support robust evaluation activities (see Element 16) that include not only examining outcomes, but also tracking how well the program’s practices are being implemented on the ground, in day-to-day reality. No collection of “best practices” matters if programs aren’t actually implementing them. Evaluation also contributes to our understanding of how mentoring programs can improve — much of the advice in this resource comes from studies that asked, “Is what this program doing working? And if so, how is it working?” These are the questions you should consider when you invest in mentoring.

As noted, mentoring programs are almost as varied as the youth they serve, differing tremendously across many characteristics and service delivery options. Because we take a “big tent” view of mentoring, we have tried to ensure that most mentoring programs will find meaning and value in the practices recommended in the chapters that follow. And while not every practice noted here will be relevant to their unique context, we want every reader to feel empowered to reflect on the information in this resource and build the programming that your youth and community need. It may look remarkably similar to what we suggest here; it may not. What matters is that you and your staff and other stakeholders build the services that will work for the youth, mentors, and community you support. Recognize that while we have provided a road map for your services, you are in charge of the journey of your program. We hope this resource makes that journey easier and more impactful.

CONSIDERING CHARACTERISTICS OF PROGRAMS THAT INFLUENCE PRACTICES

Variations in several characteristics of mentoring programs may influence how you, the reader, engage with the recommended practices detailed in the chapters that follow. These characteristics represent the many ways programs differ and decision points or considerations that will influence how and why staff implement mentoring services the way they do. (See Appendix B for a deeper discussion of the characteristics noted below.)

As you read through this resource and reflect on the recommended practices, we encourage you to think about the context of your program and where it sits in relation to characteristics such as:

  • Programs that are starting up, or those that are well established. Service providers will relate to these recommendations differently based on whether they are just getting started or have been running for years with entrenched ways of doing things.
  • Programs that serve youth with a wide range of characteristics, or programs that are focused on specific groups of youth. Some programs are designed to serve wide ranges of youth and their varying needs, while others are much more focused on specific groups and their more focused goals.
  • Programs that emphasize a strong, caring mentoring relationship as the main goal of the program, or those that see the relationship as a context for more focused interventions. While all mentoring programs hope for meaningful relationships, in some models that deeply supportive relationship is the main goal, an end or outcome unto itself, while in others the relationship is viewed more as a context to deliver other, more specific interventions (e.g., transition planning or mental health supports). (See Cavell et al., 2021, as well as Karcher & Nakkula, 2011 for more information about the distinctions between these types of approaches.)
  • Programs that let mentors and youth choose their activities, or those that prescribe activities. As noted above, some programs are highly focused and purposeful, while others let the young person and mentor figure out their activities with minimal guidance.
  • Standalone mentoring services or mentoring embedded in a broader organizational suite of discrete services. In many instances, an organization will offer only mentoring, while in other organizations mentoring will be one of many services and supports offered, which means that mentoring needs to fit in alongside those other activities.
  • Group approaches or one-to-one models (and variations in between). Research suggests that group mentoring models (in which groups of youth are mentored by one or more mentors) actually serve as many young people in the United States as more traditional one-to-one models (Garringer et al., 2017). While both approaches can be successful, as can “hybrid” approaches, they will obviously differ in how the staff facilitates those interactions.
  • Volunteer mentors or paid staff as mentors. As noted, we have created this resource primarily for programs using volunteers in the mentoring role, but we also recognize that, for many programs, paid staff provide the mentoring. That circumstance will inherently influence the nature of some of the practices recommended here.
  • Delivering mentoring in-person or online. Online mentoring experiences are growing in popularity, but they also inherently require some differences in how the staff implements those services.  
  • Site-based models or community-based models. Mentoring programs that allow mentors and youth to meet unsupervised in the community will require different practices in many instances than those where all mentoring activities take place at a set location, such as a school, Boys & Girls Club, or summer camp.
  • Adults as mentors or other youth people as mentors. Peer-to-peer mentoring models take advantage of the strong connections youth can form with one another, but placing young people themselves in the role of a mentor requires some additional and distinct work on the part of the adults running the program.  
  • Formally matched mentoring relationships, or more informal “opt-in” mentoring relationships. Lastly, we note that most mentoring programs create formal “matches” between youth and adults, either one-to-one or in small groups. But in many youth-serving organizations, mentoring is an optional and informal support provided by staff members or volunteers. That distinction will also influence how mentoring experiences are provided.

There is no “right” or “wrong” place for your program to be based on the characteristics noted above, but they will all influence how your program implements the practices recommended in this resource. We provide considerable guidance in the chapters that follow, which will help you make informed decisions about what works for your unique context.  

CONSIDERING WHO YOU SERVE

In addition to the program characteristics noted above, it should also be stressed that the characteristics and voices of the youth and families you hope to serve are perhaps the most critical inputs into designing and delivering good mentoring. There will be unique configurations of young people in every mentoring program — some the result of geography or neighborhood demographics, some based on need, some the result of focused recruitment of specific individuals. Regardless of that composition, all mentoring programs should engage with and listen to the youth, families, and community that surround them and build a meaningful program together. Programs should also pay attention to the diversity within the youth and families they serve. There will be many types of young people in a mentoring program. Staff should understand how their services can be delivered safely and inclusively to all.

APPLYING THESE PRACTICE RECOMMENDATIONS IN YOUR WORK

When examining the practices and program building blocks recommended in this resource, we encourage readers to consider contextual factors that will help you determine how your program should develop and deliver aspects of your mentoring services. Answering questions such as these can be helpful: 

In what ways are we generally strong or weak in these practices? Can we use the description of these Elements as a self-assessment tool that tells us what we can improve or what we are already doing well?

  • Does this practice seem relevant to our organizational context? Is there something about our program that suggests we wouldn’t need to implement a particular practice or activity?
  • Do we have the resources to implement these practices? Do we have the staffing or funding needed to do them adequately?
  • If we already implement these practices, how well are we implementing them? Are we doing them only minimally? Are there certain practices for which we are doing exceptional work?

This resource is organized into three major sections:

  • Section 1: Foundations of Quality Mentoring Programs –This section covers the importance of strong foundational values and program design as cornerstones of any successful mentoring effort.
  • Section 2: Elements of Effective Mentoring Services – This section covers the practices that help participants build meaningful mentoring experiences and guide their time in your program.
  • Section 3: Practices to Support Organizational Health – This section addresses practices in aspects of organizational development and management that build capacity and enable a program to grow, improve, and thrive over time.

What’s New in this Edition?

Readers familiar with prior iterations of the EEPM should note that there are new practices and recommendations throughout all the sections of this fifth edition. However, the following sections offer the most significant new additions:
Element 1 – Program Values
Element 2 – Strong Program Design and Theory of Change
Element 10 – Ongoing Caregiver Engagement
Element 13 – Program Leadership and Staffing
Element 14 – Community Engagement
Element 15 – Program Infrastructure and Sustainability
Element 16 – Program Evaluation

Within each of these sections, you will find chapters focused on each Element of effective practice, meaning the major categories of activities and tasks that lead to a high-quality program. Within each Element, you will find the following information:

  • A standard of practice definition that lets readers know what they are ultimately expected to have in place.
  • A list of the specific practices that support getting to that standard, with brief descriptions for each.
  • Suggestions for adapting the practices for several common types of mentoring models and settings: group mentoring, peer-to-peer mentoring, e-mentoring, school- and other formal site-based models, and informal mentoring in youth development programs.
  • A discussion section that highlights the relevant research and practice wisdom explaining why these practices are important to consider.
  • A list of questions practitioners should be able to answer as they figure out how to meet the standard of practice for an Element.
  • Tips for incorporating youth or community voices into the delivery of the practices.
  • Recommended metrics that programs may wish to track to see if they are implementing their practices well.
  • A list of recommended resources and readings that can help programs implement these practices.

As you read through the rest of this resource, please keep a few things in mind:

  • Remember that mentoring, especially provided through a formalized program that facilitates and shapes the experience, is hard work. We often think of mentoring relationships (and by extension services that provide it) as being these simple, joyful experiences that enhance our lives. And they often are! But like all human relationships, they require effort and intentionality to maintain, and they often come with ups and downs and moments of synchronicity and disconnection. The responsibility of providing a youth with a mentor is not to be taken lightly. A mentoring program is something that is, by definition, attempting to intervene in the trajectory and outcomes of someone’s life — and perhaps the lives of multiple people when you include mentors and caregivers in that equation. It is important that the work is done with extreme humility, attention to detail, and application of strong ethical values and principles. This is why the very first Element in the pages that follow focuses on asking programs to define the values, beliefs, and principles that will inform their work. It’s also why we emphasize evaluation so strongly throughout. It is imperative that your program knows how well it is doing this work and understands how it is changing people’s lives, in both subtle and obvious ways. We encourage you to start small, learn about how participants are experiencing the program, and adjust accordingly.
  • As said several times in this introduction, it is normal that your program will want to vary from the recommendations in this book to better meet the needs of your community or to maximize the resources you have at your disposal. Innovations and different approaches are fine! Just make sure that you are evaluating how those choices work out so that you can be assured your program is genuinely helping people and giving good returns on the investment that many people have made in your work.

Remember that help is available!

  • One of the strengths of the mentoring field is that there are many sources of support for your work, especially in helping mentoring professionals learn new skills and try new approaches in their programs. A few options you can turn to if you get stuck using the information in this resource include:
    • MENTOR Affiliates – MENTOR offers localized support, training, coaching, convenings, and other forms of support through a network of Affiliate organizations at the state or regional level across America. These organizations are your best source of local support and direct help in improving and growing your mentoring program.
    • The National Mentoring Resource Center – This national training and technical assistance initiative is funded by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and operated by MENTOR. This initiative offers free technical assistance and program improvement support to any mentoring program in America that is primarily serving youth under the age of 18. This is an excellent source of support for mentoring programs that are outside the footprint of MENTOR’s network and can connect any mentoring program to high-quality coaching and information regardless of where they are located.

We hope the remaining sections of this resource help your program be the best it can be and that your work brings love, joy, health, hope, achievement, and meaningful change to the communities you care about.