Tips for Success

Why Mentor Your Peers?

An Agreement

Time Commitment

The Connection

Mentoring Described

Why Mentor Your Peers?

• As a way to give back.   Perhaps you were helped earlier in your nonprofit career (or life), and want to be that positive influence on somebody else.
• As a way to gain training experience, and build your own teaching skills.
• As a way to network with someone from another type of or size nonprofit organization - or build a relationship with someone from a similar organization.
• As a way to strengthen another nonprofit organization - and the sector as a whole.
• As a way to gain insights which you can take back to your organization - you'd be surprised how much you can learn from your mentee!
• As a way to build your resume.  Also, mentor-mentee pairs may have the opportunity to be featured in the periodic NPO Connect eNewsletter, thereby raising your visibility.

An Agreement.  When sending a request for another user to become your mentor or mentee, use the Elaboration text box to specify what you envision the mentoring relationship would look like.  For those looking to gain or hone a skill, provide detail about your current knowledge and skill level, where you hope to be at the end of the relationship, and how gaining that knowledge will help you in your current or future non-profit role.  For those interested in sharing a skill another user is looking to gain, be specific and realistic about the help you can provide and your availability.

After the online connection has been made, each pair should have a phone or in-person meeting to discuss what the peer mentoring relationship will look like.  Then, we highly recommend each matched pair draft and sign off on a brief agreement specifying mutual roles, time commitment and learning/teaching objectives.  Please click on the file attachment at the bottom of this page for an Agreement Template, which you can modify to suit the needs of your specific relationship.  The agreement is yours to keep and refer to; it does not need to be shared with the Metrowest Nonprofit Network or NPO Connect.

Time Commitment.  This will vary depending on the nature and complexity of the skill.  Further, we are sensitive to the many demands on the time of a non-profit professional, so make sure you outline a time commitment that is realistic for both people.  For example, you may want to consider meeting once a month, 3 hours per meeting, for a 6 month period.  Whatever you decide, this should be clearly delineated in the mentor agreement you create and sign off on. 

The Connection.  This could be in person, over the phone, via email, this site's internal messaging tool, or another online communication tool - or a combination of these.  Some of this will depend upon the pair's geography.  If you decide to work together in person, please meet in a public place like one of your workplaces or a cafe.

Mentoring Described.  From Sonic.net:
"Mentoring is a tool that organizations can use to nurture and grow their people. It can be an informal practice or a formal program. Protégés observe, question, and explore. Mentors demonstrate, explain and model. The following assumptions form the foundation for a solid mentoring program.

• Deliberate learning is the cornerstone. The mentor's job is to promote intentional learning, which includes capacity building through methods such as instructing, coaching, providing experiences, modeling and advising.

• Both failure and success are powerful teachers. Mentors, as leaders of a learning experience, certainly need to share their 'how to do it so it comes out right' stories. They also need to share their experiences of failure, ie., 'how I did it wrong'. Both types of stories are powerful lessons that provide valuable opportunities for analyzing individual and organizational realities.

• Leaders need to tell their stories. Personal scenarios, anecdotes and case examples, because they offer valuable, often unforgettable insight, must be shared. Mentors who can talk about themselves and their experiences establish a rapport that makes them 'learning leaders.'

• Development matures over time. Mentoring -- when it works -- taps into continuous learning that is not an event, or even a string of discrete events. Rather, it is the synthesis of ongoing event, experiences, observation, studies, and thoughtful analyses.

• Mentoring is a joint venture.Successful mentoring means sharing responsibility for learning. Regardless of the facilities, the subject matter, the timing, and all other variables. Successful mentoring begins with setting a contract for learning around which the mentor, the protégé, and their respective line managers are aligned."

According to the U.S. Coast Guard Mentoring Program, research reveals that the best mentoring connections are those in which protégés select their mentors themselves. Research is also revealing that e-mail connections are proving successful, which can be helpful for people in different geographical locations.

Please note: A Mentor is not someone who will help a mentee complete the mentee's daily work tasks!

Did You Know...?  The original Mentor is a character in Homer's epic poem, The Odyssey.  When Odysseus, King of Ithaca, went to fight in the Trojan War, he entrusted the care of his kingdom to Mentor.  Mentor served as the teacher and overseer of Odysseus' son, Telemachus.

Questions?  For any technical questions or questions about the mentoring relationship, please contact us at info@npoconnect.org.  We will get back to you shortly!