Posted by eporter on November 30, 2023
How Your Mentoring Program Could Benefit from Mentoring Central’s Annual Membership Plan
Every mentoring program has important training and evaluation needs related to preparing their matches for the mentoring relationship and improving their program’s practices; however, the process of searching for resources or tools to address all of your program’s needs can be challenging and time consuming. Many mentoring programs want to provide staff, mentors, and parents involved in their program with online training and have asked for opportunities to receive easy access to an array of training and evaluation resources. Mentoring Central responded to this need by creating a simple, affordable Annual Membership plan that combines all of its mentoring products into one comprehensive bundle. Mentoring programs can choose which bundle best fits the size of their program.
Cutting-Edge Training for Mentors, Mentees, and Parents.
Our Membership Plan is a one-stop-shop for cutting-edge training courses that your mentoring program needs to help achieve your goals. Whether you are looking to train new volunteers or staff, prepare mentees to begin their mentoring relationship, or teach parents of mentees their roles in the relationship, our membership plan is the answer. Member organizations can access everything from core mentor training courses to advanced courses. With access to our core Building the Foundation for Mentors, Ethics and Safety, and Building and Maintaining the Relationship courses, members can teach mentors the roles of the mentoring relationship, skills to practice safe and ethical mentoring, and strategies to foster an impactful, long-lasting relationship with their mentee. As a member organization, your program could also offer advanced or specialized training to all or some of your mentors for no additional cost, including the Substance of Change course for mentors meeting with mentees impacted by substance misuse; Promoting Enhanced Resilience & Learning to help mentors encourage their mentees’ engagement in school; Building the Foundation for STEM Mentors to prepare STEM mentors to address the unique needs of mentees interested in a STEM education or career; and Building Your Mentoring Skills, an in-person training workshop to help mentors practice solving common problems mentors face.
Through the Membership Plan, you can also offer foundational trainings to mentees and their parents or guardians to help them better understand their roles in the mentoring relationship and set realistic expectations for the mentoring experience. Mentoring Central’s Building the Foundation for Mentees workshop and Building the Foundation for Parents eLearning course are included in each bundle, so you can offer a complete training experience to everyone involved in your program.
Trainings included in the annual membership are provided in a variety of flexible formats to adhere to the varying needs, routines, and practices of all mentoring programs. The membership program includes versions of Building the Foundation for community-based, site-based, group-based, and e-mentoring programs.
Most importantly, as Mentoring Central creates new training, tools, and resources, they are automatically added to the membership plan as part of the package and are made available to existing member organizations. That way, member organizations are consistently receiving all new, cutting edge, valuable resources to support their mission with NO extra charge. Mentoring Central releases approximately one new course or tool per year. This year, Mentoring Central released a new guide for mentors, the Building Assets Together (BAT) Guide, that offers suggestions for activities and behaviors that mentors can do to help build assets in their mentees that are organized around 10 themes.
Resources to Make Your Job Easier.
Mentoring program staff have important responsibilities to prepare, monitor, and support mentors in their program so their matches can achieve positive outcomes, but these tasks may be time consuming and challenging without access to tools to help. The Mentoring Central annual membership provides mentoring program staff with readily available resources to help staff support their mentors and manage a successful program. For example, the Orientation to Mentoring toolkit provides program staff with materials to conduct an orientation with new volunteers to teach them about their program’s policies, procedures, and expectations for mentors. All e-Learning training courses included in the annual membership provide helpful administrative capabilities to allow program staff to indicate the relationship of the new learner to the mentoring program as either a mentor, staff member, parent, mentee, or other. Staff can enroll new learners in one or more courses, track learners’ progress throughout a course, send automated reminders to learners to complete a course, view learners’ responses to open-ended questions, and manage enrolled learners, so you can streamline the training process.
Member organizations are also provided with a license to use the Elements Quality Improvement Process (EQUIP) Program Quality Self-Assessment questionnaire to assess if their program aligns with the benchmark practices described in the Elements of Effective Practice (EEPM) and identify areas in which their program can improve.
Member organizations also receive access to Mentoring Central’s survey developer and data collection software systems that they can use to administer surveys and collect feedback from mentors, mentees, and/or parents or guardians of mentees, so staff can evaluate match progress, determine needs for support, or receive feedback about training needs and experiences.
An Affordable Choice for You.
Not only does the Mentoring Central membership program include an assortment of helpful mentoring resources and trainings, but it is also an affordable option for mentoring programs that want to use more than one Mentoring Central course or resource with their program staff or participants. By becoming a member, your program can access all resources and trainings at a significantly lower cost than purchasing each course or resource a la carte. See the table for the cost savings associated with being a member organization.
The annual membership is available for all different sizes of mentoring programs, ranging from the smallest (XXS) with as few as 15 mentors and 2 staff members to the larger organizations with as many as 200 mentors and 6 staff members. Additional products can be purchased at a discount (when member organizations log in to their account), if your program needs additional licenses, but don’t need to increase their size of your plan.
The annual membership plan offers a simple renewal process, so you can continue providing Mentoring Central’s resources and trainings to your mentors and staff each year.
If you are ready to become a member of Mentoring Central and gain access to all of our cutting-edge trainings and mentoring resources, visit our website to purchase.