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Chandler FrenchDr. Christa TestonEnglish 4567S4 May 2015Constructing Quality Mentorship ProgramsABSTRACTMentorship has become an increasingly prominent feature of many professional and nonprofit organizations because of the proven benefits they confer to the mentees. However, it can be difficult to convince successful individuals to enter into a mentorship partnership as a mentor. I have done research in the following paper on how mentorship programs might better attract suitable individuals to get involved and give back; and how nonprofit programs like the Womens Leadership Councils E3 initiative might make better use of their mentor-mentee partnerships to benefit all participants. This paper proposes solutions such as organizational appeals to potential volunteers by highlighting the benefits that mentorship affords to the mentors in addition to the mentees, as well as recommending the incorporation of informal mentorship techniques in terms of participant input into the matching process to better identify compatible mentors and mentees for partnership. KeywordsMentorship (mentor, mentee), volunteering, nonprofit engagement1. IntroductionMentorship has become a token feature of quality professional development programs, both on the individual and organizational levels (Allen, Eby, and Lentz 567). Mentorship programs in the modern sense are a relatively new phenomenon of the 20th-century with the explosion of urban, industrialized centers in America (DuBois 15). In the last few decades, though, such programs, both formal and informal, have increasingly gained prominence in the landscape of career development agendas, despite their effectiveness not being explicitly supported with scientific data (DuBois 20). The effectiveness of mentorship is generally assumed from the myriad of personal accounts of its positive effects, as well as its foundations in psychological principles (Allen, Eby, and Lentz 570). Nevertheless, many organizations have begun implementing mentorship programs, with varying degrees of success. There are many obstacles facing any mentorship program- not the least of which is creating a program that is compelling enough to convince individuals to act as mentors. While a significant amount of scholarship can be found on the benefits on the mentee side of such partnerships, the benefits of involvement for mentors is much less thoroughly explored and highlighted when recruiting volunteers (Allen 123). Beyond recruitment, organizations implementing mentorship programs face the obstacle of astutely matching mentors with mentees to promote mutually beneficial partnerships.2. Background

While conducting my own interviews with members of the E3 initiative of United Ways Womens Leadership Council, I found that a few factors had an impact of the individual successes or failures of mentorship relationships. One of the first factors was the perceived relationship between the occupation of the mentor and the future career goals of the mentee. Mercy Otieno spoke during her interview about her partnership with her mentor Alice Palmer. Alice was working as an attorney at the time that she was matched with Mercy, an aspiring IT professional. Mercy expressed her original concern upon being matched that her mentor did not work in the same job arena as she was pursuing. Another concern came from Trae Booker who mentioned that having a mentor who was younger than her contributed to a sense of disconnect that may have hindered some of the potential benefits from their partnership from taking their full effect. 3. SolutionsMuch research has been done on the benefits of working with a mentor for people attempting to advance themselves in an organization or along their career paths (Allen 123). However, the benefits that mentorship offers to its mentors are equally important, and highlighting those benefits could be critical to attracting new individuals to volunteer for mentor partnerships. Volunteering in general has been shown to have positive effects on the mental dispositions of those who participate (Wilson 198). The decision for individuals to participate as mentors often comes down to the perceived relationship between costs vs. benefits of participating. According to Tammy Allens article on Mentoring Relationships from the Perspective of the Mentor, benefits to those in mentor roles can be diverse and significant, ranging from improved job attitudes, to relational job learning wherein a mentor comes to better understand the context of their job within a greater organizational whole, and many more. If an individual feels that the program will require more time, energy, resources, and so on, then it offers in return to its mentors, then they are less likely to participate (Allen 127). My recommendation to the Womens Leadership Council and other organization attempting to motivate successful individuals to join their programs as mentors is to advocate for the program by highlighting the many benefits of participation, as well as making attempts to streamline the mentorship process so that it demands the least amount of costs to its participants as possible. A program with a clear-cut mission and defined guidelines for their partnerships will have more success attracting mentors because they will not feel that they will have to put in extra time and energy to develop a curriculum or strategy for the partnership. Clearly delineating goals of the mentorship program offers specificity and still leaves room for individual partnerships exceed to minimum guidelines of the program.

Once enough volunteers for the mentor role of a particular program are recruited, the challenge for an organization such as the Womens Leadership Council becomes how to best make use of such an influential element of their programming as the mentorship feature is. There are numerous theories concerning the most effective ways of pairing mentors with mentees. An organization like the Womens Leaderships Council must determine which theory best fits within the affordances of that particular organization, in terms of their mission and resources. The right pairing of participants is a critical factor in the success or failure of any mentorship program, and as such, I believe it is worth taking time to evaluate carefully and, if possible, taking into consideration the input of both mentor and mentee. Mentor partnerships being decided by third parties outside of the individuals involved in the mentorship tend to not foster compatibility or liking between participants because they tend to focus solely on the basis of job function, not taking into account factors of mutual liking or differences in characteristics (Allen, Eby, and Lentz 568). By contrast, I advocate a process of selection where both mentor and mentee have input into their pairing; so that the foundations of their partnership might be better suited to their specific needs- whether that be career advice necessitating common career ground, emotional and psychological support fostered by mutual liking and identification, or some combination of both. By giving participants a voice in the selection process, both parties might feel more invested in the partnership initially, and the mentorship program might be able to avoid some of the issues I uncovered in my interviews by establishing expectations as far as career similarities and age-relationships prior to assigning partners.4. ConclusionMentorship programs remain in the early stages of development for most professional organizations. But with further research on their long-term effects in conjunction with the extensive anecdotal evidence of their benefit already at our disposal, they stand to become a veritable hallmark of future corporate business models, but also will continue to have a place in professional development programs such as the Womens Leadership Councils E3 program. It is important that organizations implementing these programs are open to the experimentation necessary to find the most effective model of recruitment and mentorship. Advertising mentorship as a mutualistic relationship will combat the perceived time and energy costs that potential mentors use as barriers to keep them from volunteering. In terms of combating the already visible flaws in the system, such as unrelated mentor-mentee occupations and incompatible personality types, I recommend a more inclusive approach to the mentorship paring process; one that values the input of all involved parties as opposed to leaving the decision to random assignment or a third party outsider.

Works CitedAllen, Tammy D., Eby, Lillian T., and Lentz, Elizabeth. Mentorship Behaviors and Mentorship Quality Associated with Formal Mentorship Programs: Closing the Gap Between Research and Practice. Journal of Applied Psychology Vol. 91, No. 3 (2006) : 567-578. Web. 15 April 2015.Allen, Tammy D.. Mentoring Relationships From the Perspective of the Mentor. (2007) : 123-147. Web. 18 April 2015.Booker, Trae. Personal Interview. 8 April 2015.DuBois, David L. "Mentoring in Historical Perspective."Handbook of Youth Mentoring. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, 2005. 15-20. Print.Otieno, Mercy. Personal Interview. 30 March 2015Wilson, J. "Volunteerism Research: A Review Essay." Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly 41.2 (2012): 176-212. Web. 18 April 2015.