2026-02-13
By eporter
A Decade of Collaboration: Mentoring Central and the National Urban League’s Work on Project Ready Mentor
Mentoring Central is dedicated to using our mentoring expertise to help organizations build and maintain mentoring programs that promote impactful mentoring relationships. As part of this mission, Mentoring Central has developed a strong partnership with the National Urban League over the past 10 years by supporting the development, improvement, and ongoing success of their signature mentoring initiative, Project Ready Mentor.
What is Project Ready Mentor?
Years ago, a team at the National Urban League had a vision to close the gaps in the United States’ education system that impact African American and other historically underserved youth. Their goal was to develop mentoring programs that provide a context for young people to receive support from a caring adult and access new opportunities to become youth leaders and prepare themselves for college and a successful career. In 2008, the team brought their vision to fruition in the Project Ready Mentor program.
For 17 years, Project Ready Mentor has evolved and is now a large, national, multisite program serving 11- to 18-year-olds through three different program models: a Magnet Model supporting students outside of school, a School-Based Model serving students at school after regular school hours, and an Expanded Day or year model adding learning and development time to the school day. There are now thirty affiliate programs across the United States, and nearly 9,500 mentees have received mentoring through the program since 2020.
Mentoring Central’s Collaboration with the National Urban League.
As the National Urban League was planning for the development and standardization of Project Ready Mentor across the nation, the National Urban League had aspirations for what operations could look like for the program, and they needed technical and subject matter experts that could help them bring their vision to life. For more than a decade, Mentoring Central has partnered with the National Urban League to design and strengthen Project Ready Mentor at every level, from developing the program’s infrastructure at the national level to working one-on-one with local affiliates. Mentoring Central has assisted the National Urban League with the development and improvement of Project Ready Mentor in three main ways:
- Preparing Project Ready Mentor Affiliates and Mentors for Success:
Managing a large-scale program meant that that the National Urban League needed a strategy to ensure that all affiliate programs were able to uphold the standards of Project Ready Mentor and operate at their highest potential. To fill this need, Mentoring Central created an Operations Guide with a standardized set of operating procedures to direct National Urban League affiliates as they implement a Project Ready Mentor program at their location. We have continuously improved this Guide to promote the use of Project Ready Mentor best practices that support the National Urban League’s goals by all participating affiliates. Mentoring Central has also managed the onboarding of affiliates new to Project Ready Mentor to help the National Urban League ensure the delivery of consistently high-quality mentoring services across all locations.
In addition, the National Urban League requires all mentors to complete Mentoring Central’s pre-match training to learn evidence-based strategies that will help them create and maintain strong, supportive mentoring relationships. By implementing Mentoring Central’s training, the National Urban League is able to feel more confident that their matches are engaging in high-quality mentoring.
- Developing a Streamlined Mentor Recruitment and Onboarding Process:
The National Urban League knew that Mentoring Central’s ability to streamline and automate mentor recruitment and onboarding processes would give Project Ready Mentor staff more time to provide high-quality support to matches and focus on other important program operations. This is why Project Ready Mentor affiliates utilize Mentoring Central’s cutting-edge Learning Management System and administrative dashboard to automatically enroll mentors in our web-based trainings and send reminders and communications to mentors.
In addition, Mentoring Central created recruitment materials that could be customized for each affiliate program and a standardized mentor application for beginning the enrollment and screening process of new volunteers. Mentoring Central developed automated processes for initiating background checks for volunteers and assigning mentors to an affiliate program. We also provided the National Urban League with written procedures that their affiliates could follow to match mentors with mentees.
Mentoring Central’s automations have allowed Project Ready Mentor programs to become more efficient and accelerate processes that would otherwise take important time away from staff.
- Supporting the Maintenance and Growth of Successful Programs:
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the National Urban League had to respond to new challenges to ensure that Project Ready Mentor affiliate programs were still able to thrive in a changing atmosphere. Their team worked with Mentoring Central to initiate more one-on-one technical assistance with affiliates so they could receive extra support to navigate changes in mentoring due to the pandemic. Since 2020, Mentoring Central’s experts have had monthly technical support and capacity-building conversations with affiliates to discuss challenges their unique program experiences and provide them with suggestions based upon experience and research findings that may help affiliates overcome challenges.
Mentoring Central also contributes to Project Ready Mentor program staff development to help the National Urban League sustain the quality of their mentoring programs. Our team has hosted webinars on mentor training and program management as well as led presentations at the National Urban League’s annual Whitney M. Young Jr., Leadership Conference for affiliates. Mentoring Central has created surveys to help the National Urban League check in on affiliate programs’ practices and needs as well as surveys that affiliates can deploy to mentees, mentors, and parents of mentees to help evaluate their mentoring services and the needs of their matches. Our team also provides regular reports on mentors’ training use to the National Urban League and makes ongoing updates to our training programs based on the needs of programs.
A Partnership for Real Impact.
The National Urban League is consistently developing new ideas to enhance the Project Ready Mentor model and help their affiliate programs provide the highest quality mentoring experience to impact the lives of youth. Before partnering with Mentoring Central, they did not have the resources to bring those ideas to life. Through this long-term collaboration, Mentoring Central and the National Urban League have strengthened one of the nation’s largest mentoring initiatives for urban youth. By building a strong mentoring system for affiliates and continually improving Project Ready Mentor’s practices, this partnership has helped thousands of young people receive support they need to thrive. Mentoring Central is proud to continue supporting the National Urban League as they work to support youth and strengthen communities.
What’s Next for You?
Partnering with Mentoring Central and utilizing our innovative technologies, evidence-based trainings, years of expertise, or mentoring services could help you make the changes you have been wanting for your program.
If you are interested in working with Mentoring Central for help strengthening or scaling your mentoring program, contact us at MentoringCentral@irtinc.us.
