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Setting up an online mentoring program

I have certain keywords in my Google Alerts notifications via email, so I know about news articles, blogs and public online discussions that mention virtual volunteering, among various other topics. As you can imagine, with the current pandemic, my daily Google Alert emails are very long these days (before the pandemic, I would go many days with no updates at all).

One thing I’m seeing regularly in these updates are articles about schools that are scrambling to set up online mentoring programs, where adults will mentor or tutor students, like this article out of Florida:
Leon County Schools considers virtual volunteering opportunities in reopening plan.

I’ve been researching and training on virtual volunteering, including online mentoring programs, since the 1990s, and for all of the various school districts and individual school districts out there, I wanted to let you know about some free resources I have that can help you in setting up an online mentoring or online tutoring program:

  • Five free on-demand videos that, altogether, are less than an hour & take you through the fundamentals of virtual volunteering, of engaging volunteers online (policies, creating assignments, safety, confidentiality, support, much more).
cover of Virtual Volunteering book with hands raising up various Internet connected devices

There’s also my book, co-written with Susan Ellis, which isn’t free, but does go into a great deal of detail on how to set up an online mentoring program: The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook: Fully Integrating Online Service Into Volunteer Involvement. One of the most important bits of advice from the book regarding online mentoring or online tutoring, something I learned from two decades of looking at various such programs: don’t try to launch online versions of these programs unless you have been doing ONSITE versions of these programs. If your school had an onsite mentoring program before the pandemic, or you have staff that has experience with onsite mentoring elsewhere, by all means, pursue setting up an online program. But if your school didn’t have an onsite mentoring program already, if your school wasn’t already involving ONSITE volunteers, you need to give online mentoring or tutoring a LOT more thought and I can guarantee that you are NOT ready to start a program in the Fall of 2020!

If you are a volunteer at a school or a concerned parent of a student at a school and you know that school might be considering online mentoring or online tutoring, I hope you will consider buying The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook and giving it to the volunteer coordinator at the school, who may not have the budget for such.

July 9, 2020 update: For those of you wanting to start an online mentoring or online tutoring program, please AT LEAST read the standards for screening participants for an online mentoring program (both volunteers and mentees), from E-MENTORING SUPPLEMENT TO THE ELEMENTS OF EFFECTIVE PRACTICE FOR MENTORING, December 2019, a publication of MENTOR (formerly the National Mentoring Partnership). On a related note, in the UK, SWGfL has issued Safeguarding considerations and guidance when appointing online tutors for Schools in England, that includes a Recruitment Checklist, an Expectations Checklist, and Induction Checklist, and several links to other resources that should be applied to both online mentoring and online tutoring. If you are starting an online mentoring program in the UK, you need to read through at least this web site and what it links to and make sure your program adheres to the guidelines from experts in mentoring. If you are outside of the USA and the UK, both of these resources are still essential reading, in order to keep all participants safe.