04: Recruitment of Mentors

Standard of Practice: Program recruits a diverse pool of appropriate mentors (either volunteers or paid staff mentors), in sufficient numbers, by implementing a formal recruitment plan. 

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Practices Supporting this Standard

The program has a written recruitment plan with multiple strategies for attracting mentors.

This plan should include:

  • a target goal for the number of mentors to recruit;
  • information about the types of individuals the program is seeking and where they might most easily be reached;
  • messaging designed to attract qualified mentors;
  • ideally, multiple strategies and activities to present the opportunity to potential mentors; and
  • procedural information about who conducts recruitment, when and where it occurs, and how progress is tracked.

The program uses recruitment messages that realistically portray the mentoring experience, the program’s expectations, benefits to youth and mentors, and the supports mentors receive.

Recruitment efforts can help set reasonable expectations for mentors by accurately describing the mentor’s role and the program supports they can expect to receive.

The program recruits mentors whose skills, values, motivations, and backgrounds best match the program’s services and goals, as well as the characteristics and needs of the youth being served.

Depending on the goals of the program and the backgrounds and needs of the youth being served, programs may be looking for individuals with particular skills or lived experience to step into the mentoring role.  

The program has publicly available eligibility criteria and requirements for mentors.

Programs are encouraged to develop a mentor “job description” that details the mentor’s role, the contexts in which they will be mentoring, eligibility criteria, behavioral and participation expectations, and important program rules so that prospective mentors can gauge their fit for the program. Making these criteria available to partner organizations can help ensure that they refer mentors who would be a good fit for the program.

Recruitment messages and materials represent the full diversity of the community being served and ensure that eligible individuals from all walks of life feel welcomed and accepted in the program.

Even if the mentoring program is looking for a fairly specific group of mentors (e.g., women who work in STEM fields), it is important to make sure all recruitment materials are fully representative of the community served, as there are other markers of diversity that may matter. 

The program encourages current and former mentors to assist in recruiting new mentors by providing them with resources to recruit individuals they know. One of the best ways to recruit mentors is to have current mentors reach out to friends, family, and coworkers who may also be interested in the experience. Programs should make sure to provide mentors with talking points, fliers, or other materials that can help them spur the interest of people in their social networks. Testimonials about the program and mentoring experience from current participants can pique interest and answer key questions for those considering getting involved.

As appropriate, the program supports young people in recruiting their mentors from their existing social network using a “youth-initiated mentoring” approach. This approach may be particularly meaningful for programs looking for mentors who have specific lived experience, who are from the youth’s community and thus can provide more frequent or consistent support, or who can support youth as they transition from the program. These mentors will still need screening, training, and formal acceptance into the program, but youth can nominate individuals with whom they have some prior engagement.

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 may help ensure the right individuals hear about and respond to the opportunity to mentor in the program.

GROUP MENTORING MODELS

Group programs should consider these additional strategies when developing mentor recruitment messages and materials:

  • Highlighting mentor skills and experiences that lend themselves to working successfully with groups, such as group facilitation skills, prior experience working with youth, strong social skills, and experience implementing a curriculum or leading activities in a group setting. The program may also want to describe training that would be provided on these topics so that mentors without prior experience feel comfortable joining the program.
  • Describing the experience of mentoring in a group setting and why it might be a good fit for the applicant (e.g., reaching more young people, leading fun activities, having the support of other mentors, strengthening group facilitation skills). Describing how co-mentors collaborate in team models may also be useful in spurring interest.

PEER MENTORING MODELS

Programs recruiting older youth to serve as mentors will need to carefully describe the mentor role and the expectations for participation, as young people may have less familiarity with what it means to be a dependable mentor and might not fully understand the opportunities they have for their own growth from the experience. Additionally, peer programs may consider:

  • Recruiting youth with a wide variety of backgrounds to serve as mentors. While it may seem logical to solely focus on recruiting high achieving youth to fill the mentoring role, they may have less to gain from the experience than others. They may also be engaged in more extracurricular activities than the average student, making consistent participation a challenge. The truth is many types of young people can serve as reliable and relatable mentors and program outreach should reach a diverse pool of peer mentors.
  • Recruiting youth who exhibit strong (or emerging) social skills and leadership qualities in other settings.
  • Seeking out youth who were prior mentees in the program to serve as mentors when they are older.

E-MENTORING MODELS

When recruiting individuals to serve as virtual mentors, programs are encouraged to:

  • Describe any software or hardware requirements for participation, as well as the technical support offered by the program to prevent the technology from being a barrier to program engagement.
  • Provide information about the mentoring experience and how e-mentoring offers many advantages to developing a mentoring relationship with a young person (e.g., ease and flexibility of communication, time to be thoughtful in responses). Online programs should provide information explaining that virtual mentoring relationships can be as rewarding and in-depth as those that take place in person —testimonials from current mentors may be especially impactful. Programs are encouraged to anticipate mentor questions about the experience and provide information proactively in recruitment messages and materials.

SCHOOL- AND OTHER FORMAL SITE-BASED MODELS

Programs operating at a school or other site-based location may consider the following in their recruitment messages and materials:

  • Providing information about what the mentoring experience looks like within the organizational setting. Some prospective applicants may be anxious about coming into in a school or other institutional location and recruitment messages can alleviate concerns by describing where and how the mentoring takes place and the support offered by site staff to facilitate the experience of being “on-site.” If mentors are expected to partner or communicate with other school or site personnel, a brief but positive description of that collaboration may also be helpful in recruitment messages.
  • Explaining how the activities of the program support or complement the overall goals of the site/school that houses the program.
  • For school-based programs that have an academic focus, emphasizing the recruitment of individuals who can support youths’ academic skill development and progress, including those who have prior experience teaching or working with youth or who have mastery of an academic subject. While school-based mentors are not tutors in the formal sense, they can support educational progress (e.g., Herrera et al., 2007; McQuillin & McDaniel, 2021). Programs located at other sites may emphasize different skills or lived experiences of applications as needed in recruitment messages.

INFORMAL MENTORING MODELS

If staff will be serving as informal mentors, the organization may decide to “recruit” a variety of staff to fill that role. Prospective staff mentors should be provided with information about how this role differs from, or complements, their other duties; how the mentoring is intended to supplement or enhance the overall program experience and outcomes for youth; and the training and support they will receive for taking on this role.

  • Who are we serving, and what are the outcomes we want them to achieve? How does that influence the types of people we are trying to recruit?
  • Who is the “perfect” mentor for our program? How do the biases of our own staff members influence who we view as the “perfect” mentor? Are we limiting our consideration of some individuals for reasons that don’t matter or are grounded in biases?
  • Have we asked our youth who they would want as mentors?
  • What motivations or mindsets are we looking for in our mentors?
  • How does our recruitment messaging invite mentors who share our program’s values of inclusion? How do we invite mentors and help other potential volunteers opt out if they do not share our agency’s values and commitment to serving all young people in our community?
  • What kinds of lived experience, education, or backgrounds will be helpful in serving as a mentor in our program? Are certain skills (e.g., teaching, advocacy, group facilitation) or characteristics (e.g., race, ethnicity, neighborhood, disability, gender identity, etc.) must-haves or nice-to-haves for our program?
  • Where are the places in our community where we can reach the types of prospective mentors we are looking for? Are there places (including online) where we can find them most easily?
  • What are the right messages to entice prospective mentors? How do we describe the goals of the program and the experience of being a mentor? How do we talk about our young people? Do we offer a strengths-based, multifaceted picture of the young people we work with? Do these messages accurately reflect our values?
  • Are our recruitment materials inclusive of the full community we serve? Do our materials show diverse representation? Who might be missing? How do we talk about our inclusivity in our recruitment messaging?
  • Would youth-initiated mentoring (YIM) be a good fit for our youth and program goals? What would the pros and cons of such an approach be?
  • Ask young people in your program what characteristics they are looking for in their mentors as they enroll in the program. This can help both in finding them a suitable mentor from your candidates, as well as in building a picture, over time, of who your young people generally want as mentors. This can inform your recruitment focus and descriptions of the mentor role.
  • As appropriate, ask youth to identify potential mentors, either for themselves (YIM) or for other program participants. Youth and caregivers often have networks of other caring adults who may be looking for a way to give back, and a personal ask from your participating families might be very effective in building interest in your program in the community.
  • Similarly, ask mentors to support the recruitment of other mentors. They can help refine your messaging and where you are concentrating your efforts in the community. They might also be able to directly tap into their networks of friends, family, and coworkers to help bolster your recruitment efforts.
  • Ask youth to review (or even develop) your mentor recruitment materials. Make sure they are comfortable with how they are portrayed and how the mentoring experience is described to those who will be signing up to work with them.

Programs may want to set benchmarks and track progress around metrics such as:

  • Total number of potential mentors reached with specific recruitment messages or presentations. 
  • Total number of applicants in a given time period.
  • Total number of recruited mentors waitlisted in a given time period, if relevant.
  • Total number of mentors referred from each referral source.
  • The percentage of applicants who meet eligibility, diversity needs, and other criteria. 
  • The sources that led to each mentor’s application (where they learned about the experience). 
  • The percentage of all recruited individuals who end up mentoring in the program.

Effective Mentor Recruitment: Getting Organized, Getting Results. Garringer, M., Mentoring Resource Center.
A how-to book on mentor recruitment.

Messaging for Male Mentor Recruitment: A Brief Introduction. MENTOR Michigan and Michigan Community Service Commission.
A brief guide that offers a collection of talking points, targeted messages, and strategies for recruiting male mentors.

Tips for Recruiting and Retaining Mentors. MENTOR New York.
A set of documents including tips for recruiting mentors, a list of documents to include in a recruitment package for mentees and mentors, and a sample mentor recruitment plan.

Youth-Initiated Mentoring (YIM) Practice Review. National Mentoring Resource Center
This review provides an overview of the evidence base for YIM including evaluation outcomes and guidance for implementing this practice.