Mentoring Programs Toolkit: Equipping Your Organization for Effective Outreach
With the passage of welfare reform in the mid-1990s, many religious congregations and faith-based nonprofits have launched initiatives to provide practical and emotional support to low-income families making the transition from welfare to work. Many FBOs are finding that mentoring programs capitalize on their ability to mobilize caring volunteers to forge new friendships with struggling families. This toolkit offers a variety of practical resources that can be used by faith leaders just starting a program or those already engaged in such programs that are looking for ways to further improve their efforts. The tools are “tried and tested,” drawn from experienced mentoring programs around the nation.
Project Development Tools
These articles and forms will help program leaders get organized, cast vision, and put in place the necessary agreements with volunteers and mentees.
1. What Mentor Teams Do…And How Their Congregations Benefit
This tool can be used to communicate the value of launching a church-based family mentoring initiative and to describe the kinds of activities church mentor teams will be involved in.
2. Sample Participant Recruitment Flyer
This tool can be used to help you advertise your mentoring program among potential mentees.
3. Sample Volunteer Mentor Agreement Form
One effective practice in successful mentoring programs is to make the expectations clear for your mentor teams, and then to have volunteer mentors complete “covenant” that articulates these. This tool can serve as a sample covenant form to adapt for use in your mentoring program.
4. Sample Client Agreement Form
Like the mentors, program participants also need to know what is expected of them. You can use this tool as a basis for developing your own covenant agreement with clients.
Project Implementation Tools
Practitioners will find these sample forms extremely helpful once the new mentoring program is up and running.
1. Sample Family Assessment Form
Prior to matching a client family with a mentoring team, basic information about the family needs to be gathered. This is a sample “intake” or assessment form that can be used to do so.
2. Mentor Team/Family Covenant
After a mentor team is matched with a client, both should complete a covenant that outlines their mutual responsibilities. This tool is a sample form of such a covenant.
3. Sample Confidentiality Agreement
Maintaining confidentiality is critical to the success of any mentoring program. This sample form describes the expectations of both clients and mentors as regards confidentiality. By listing these in a formal agreement and having both mentors and clients sign it, both parties will be assisted in seeing the seriousness of this topic.
4. “Getting to Know You” Activity Guide
To help things get started on a good foot during the early meetings between the mentor team and the participant, use this guide to help you create an atmosphere that facilitates the two parties “getting connected.”
5. Sample Client Goal Sheet
As the mentor teams and participants work together to formulate goals, these should be recorded. This sample form can be used by the mentor teams to identify specified goals and the action steps and deadlines related to them and to track subsequent progress.
6. Sample Monthly Progress Form
The mentoring program coordinator needs to be kept informed regularly as to the progress of each of the mentor teams. This sample monthly progress form can help.
Project Evaluation Tools
Print these forms to gather feedback from volunteers and program participants so you can continually improve your program.
1. Sample Mentor Training Evaluation Form
Good mentor training is important to the success of your program. You can distribute this form (or one based on it but shaped by your own program) to your mentor teams to use to assess what went well, and what could be improved, in your mentor training sessions.
2. Sample End-of-Year Evaluation Form
This form can serve as a basis for your own end-of-project evaluation form to assess the progress made by the mentored family during the course of the mentoring program.
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