Encouraging Mentorship Engagement

You’ve recruited your participants, and everyone is matched. Congratulations! Now, what? While you hope and expect to see a natural progression within each mentorship - it’s also important to provide the necessary support to encourage ongoing engagement. 

Ongoing (Re)Engagement Efforts

Mentor Collective’s platform and mentorship programs include multiple touchpoints and resources to aid participants in getting and staying connected. 

Sending Automated Reminders

After a participant has been matched, they will automatically begin receiving ongoing, automated messaging, which provides reminders to log conversations and/or submit flags, and encourage participation from those showing signs of not connecting.

Addressing Lack of Connection

Participants have agency over their mentorship if it's not meeting their expectations. If a participant is having trouble connecting with their mentorship, they can take immediate action in their Participant Dashboard. For each mentorships, participants can click on “I Can’t Get in Touch” and will be given the following options:

• Remove me from the program
• I don't know how to reach out
• I want to talk to someone at my institution
• Unmatch me and find me a new counterpart
• [Mentors only] Unmatch me and don't rematch me

You can learn more in this short video!

Providing Program Resources

Mentor Collective provides 40+ standard resources for participants to help guide them throughout their mentorship, including the following examples that address getting and staying connected:

• Tips for your First Message
• Mentor Briefing: 10 Things to Know About Ghosting
• Introductions and Setting Expectations

Partner Monitoring & Interventions

We know that mentors and mentees have the resources they need to stay engaged. It’s equally important that partners have insight into this engagement data, and can take additional action if needed. 

How Can I Monitor Engagement? 

The Partner Dashboard is your resource for all participant and mentorship data - including data on engagement. These are a few places to start when monitoring both individual and aggregate engagement data:

• Overview Page - Engagement Tab, which displays:
  • Aggregate flag and conversation data
  • Aggregate text messaging data
  • Mentorship re-engagement results 
• Mentorships Page, which displays:
  • Individual mentorship conversation and flag data
• Conversations Page & Flags Page, which displays:
  • Individual conversations and flags (respectively) reported

What Can I Do With These Insights? 

Engagement data is not only insightful information about your program, but can also inform participant support and interventions to boost engagement:

• Provide timely and relevant resources. Share resources in alignment with your participants’ flag topics. You may also consider adding custom resources that address common student questions, needs, or requests.
• Intervene with less engaged mentorships. Filter your Mentorships Page to identify mentorships with 0 conversations, and send them a custom message encouraging them to connect. Consider using incentives for extra motivation! 
• Identify and celebrate highly engaged mentorships. Filter your Mentorships Page to identify mentorships with 3+ conversations and celebrate them! You could consider highlighting the pair in a mentorship newsletter, or simply sending them a thank you message for their active participation.