Addressing Participant Safety Concerns

At Mentor Collective, we prioritize the well-being and safety of all participants in our programs. Participants may communicate directly with Mentor Collective’s Support Team through our participant help desk (help@mentorcollective.org) and/or share information through multiple surveys in their Participant Dashboard. In either of these channels, participants may choose to self-disclose potentially concerning information that needs attention and action. 

Mentor Collective Processes

To ensure prompt support, Mentor Collective has the following processes in place to raise any concerns to our partner institutions. 

Support Team Escalation

Mentor Collective’s Support Team is trained to escalate any urgent or safety risk concerns that come through the participant helpdesk.

Urgent matters are those in which the writer/counterpart is facing significant hardship. Examples include:

• • My mentee is dealing with depression.
  • I can’t pay rent this month.
  • I lost my financial aid and can no longer afford tuition.
  • Student death (e.g. “My son just died.”).
  • My family just lost our home.
  • I need mental health resources.

The Support Team will alert the program’s mentee or mentor point person via email.  

Safety risk matters are those that indicate harm to self or others. Examples include:

• • My mentee is at risk.
  • I might hurt myself.
  • My mentee might hurt themself/others.
  • Someone is hurting me.
  • Any type of sexual assault/trauma.

The Support Team will alert the program’s mentee or mentor point person via phone call. If that individual is unreachable, the Support Team will continue to call any program administrator contact(s) Mentor Collective has in the system until they can get into contact with someone at the institution. 

Concerning Keyword Alert System

Every hour, the following surveys are systematically reviewed for a list of concerning keywords: 

• • Matching Surveys
  • Assessment Surveys
  • Post-Session Surveys (or, conversation logs)

*Flags are excluded, as these are already sent directly to the flag recipients for the program. 

If concerning keywords are found, your Mentor Collective's Support Team is notified. The Team will alert the partner in one of the following ways, depending on the severity of the concern:

• • Submit a flag to the Partner Dashboard (mentees only)
  • Alert the program’s mentee or mentor point person via email  
  • Alert the program’s mentee or mentor point person via phone 

List of Concerning Keywords: threatened, kill, assault, harass, suicide, depress, rape

Additional content moderation is under discussion on Mentor Collective’s Product team.

Your Responsibility 

Once alerted to an urgent and/or safety concern, you (the partner institution) is responsible for:

1. Contacting the mentor and/or mentee.
2. Instructing Mentor Collective of any additional next steps.
   • This could include (but is not limited to) unmatching a pair, unsubscribing an individual from messaging, removing an individual from the program, etc. 

Please note that Mentor Collective is able to provide key questions or information to consider, but ultimately it is the school’s responsibility to address these concerns.

Participant Context

To review additional context for the participant who submitted a concerning keyword:

• • Search for the individual in the Participants Page, and view their Profile.
    • The profile page includes demographic information, mentorship information, matching survey responses, and assessment survey responses. 
  • Search for the individual in the Mentorships Page, and view their Mentorship(s).
    • The mentorship page includes details about all conversations and flags for that mentorship.