William Harper Associates

March 2007 NEWSLETTER: Member Connections

"Member Connections"

This newsletter is a free service to the North American not-for-profit community from William Harper Associates. Its focus is on helping organizations that do good, do better ... by identifying ways that member-driven organizations can improve the quality and depth of their interactions with their members.

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March 2007 Member Connections: Mentorship Programs

This month's 'member connections' idea is to facilitate mentoring among your members.

The term "mentoring" simply refers to a relationship between two individuals, one playing a growth-oriented guiding role for the other. Rather than being focused on technical knowledge or structured learning (though that can be one aspect of the relationship), mentoring relationships often focus on experiences, contacts and 'cultural' issues.

In the context of your association, there is likely a natural mentoring relationship that can be fostered between members, especially in professional or similar groups. But, associations of all types can find a solid basis for mentorship. It is simply a matter of examining the particular interest or focus of your organization. Then, identify the kind of personal growth that a typical member would want to achieve in this area.

What are the benefits to participants?

For the mentor (the more experienced member), mentoring relationships can be very satisfying. Through long membership in your association, these members will typically have achieved something quite valuable. This could be career-wise, in developing a personal interest or quality, or simply in being well-versed in the realm that your association works in. The mentor will often feel that they can and should "give something back" to the association, to fellow members, to colleagues, or to the community in general. After all, they have contributed over the years to the member's success! Mentoring - helping another member achieve what they have achieved - is a natural response.

Also, who doesn't enjoy being recognized - and appreciated - for their expertise, contacts, or wisdom, particularly in the field of their career or interest? Being asked to be a mentor, and being one, both appeal to any normal, healthy sense of self, or ego.

Finally, many mentors find that there is a very real two-way street in mentoring. While they bring contacts, experience, and wisdom to the table, their mentoring partners often bring up-to-date knowledge, skills and infectious enthusiasm to the relationship. This can be of great value to the long-standing member who may not be completely current in all aspects of their field of interest.

For the mentee, or protégé (the less experienced member), mentoring is of clear value. In a career setting, mentorship provides valuable contacts and introductions to people, organizations, settings and issues that they might otherwise wait years to be exposed to. But even in an area of personal interest, benefits abound. The less formal knowledge base inherent in many interest areas can most effectively be shared through informal, one-on-one relationships.

Even where knowledge and skills are well documented and perhaps even delivered through formal education and examination regimes (for example, in most professions), most experienced members will confirm that there is a world of difference between the text-book and real world. Wisdom is rarely found in a text-book!

Mentoring relationships can be either formal or informal. Very often, formal relationships will be found in work settings. Here, new or junior employees are formally matched up with more senior employees in an organization, department or group. These types of relationships may be more difficult for an association to establish without the employment relationship backing up the arrangement.

Less formal relationships can still be valuable. For any mentoring relationship to have maximum effect, there must be a trust, and a 'chemistry' between the parties. Once introduced, a new mentor and mentee will either

find that basis to build on, in which case the relationship is likely to flourish in any event as it will effectively serve both parties' needs and interests, or

not find a basis to build on, in which case even a more formal structure and mandate would not likely yield much in the way of results or satisfaction to the parties.

What are some considerations for designing a mentoring program?

Developing a mentoring program need not be a major, expensive undertaking in many cases. But, it is important that your association develop a reasonable plan and approach to doing so before boldly announcing it to the membership. A number of issues should be assessed prior to committing to launching a program. For example,

will there be children or any individuals of diminished capacity involved in the program in any way at all? (If so, your mentoring program will need to have a much more comprehensive and rigourous process for participation, and advice should be sought from experienced mentoring program developers);

are any of your members in a competitive situation that will impact the matching process?

are any of your members employed in organizations that already have - or might want to introduce - such programs? If so, can you work with them on a partnering basis, or should you limit your program to avoid conflict? Or, might those organizations pay a fee-for-service to your association to operate a program?

what will be the impact of geography and electronic communication on your program and the participants? Does your matching have to provide for face-to-face contact? Will you have to provide support (e.g. e-mail addresses, etc.) to members to facilitate their participation?

do you have local chapters, affiliates or allied groups that you can/should work through or partner with for this program?

are there aspects or attributes of your membership (e.g. areas of interest, specialties, types of member, etc.) that will impact the matching?

what staff support will you be in a position to provide to individual mentor/mentee pairs, if any, and at what cost to whom?

what other tools (e.g. orientation materials, checklists) will you provide to your members to help make the mentoring relationship effective?

what reporting will you want from individual mentor/mentee pairs to monitor the program and assess its effectiveness and value?

What's involved in running a mentorship program?

Like many association activities, mentorship programs are essentially communication-driven activities. Just one more reason to make your association communications-centric!

Once the program and mentorship roles have been properly defined and positioned to be of maximum relevance and interest to members, both potential mentors and mentees, it will be necessary to effectively communicate the program to all members. You'll need to raise awareness, solicit interest, and actually sign-up members interested in either role. And, a key strategic communications objective will be to move the membership as a whole to become more culturally aligned with the notion of mentorship. It will be important to the long-term success of the program that an expectation and a culture of sharing be firmly established in members' minds.

Fortunately, electronic communication tools make this exercise far less daunting. For both broad communications (e.g. through your newsletters, broadcast e-mails, and so on) and targeted communications (e.g. invitations to participate, communications with - and between - participants, etc.), Web and e-mail technologies work like magic. Of course, if you don't have a fully integrated membership database and a properly architected, "Web-native" communication platform, you're in for a(nother) round of headaches … time to update your systems to a communications-centric platform!

Beyond that, any mentorship program will need

a core registrarial function to register the interest of members in participating,

some matching function (which could be very simple or very sophisticated depending on your association),

tools and resources to support and facilitate the actual mentoring activity, and

reporting or feedback mechanisms to monitor the program and derive maximum benefits (see below) from your investment of time and effort.

Ongoing staff resources will be required to some level, to answer member questions, and administer the program.

And, finally, what are the benefits to my association of offering this program?

First off, two happy members for every successful mentoring match-up! But, the potential benefits go far beyond this basic, but important criterion.

Mentorship promotes excellence in practice. For professional or other business-based associations, this is powerful. Mentorship contributes to the mandate of promoting high standards and norms of practice, compliance with prescribed standards, and professional excellence in all dimensions of practice. But, even for associations that are interest-based, this promotion of excellence is positive - excellence advances the art and science of whatever field your group operates in. It helps to build your association's profile and reputation as a thought-leader in your field, worthy of the members' continued keen support.

Mentorship promotes fellowship among members. It encourages more contacts and networking among members. This, in turn, will increase

member satisfaction,

involvement in other member events, whether fellowship or education-based, and

ultimately, member retention through the strengthened sense of community that mentorship promotes.

Mentorship programs can be direct revenue generators. Always be on the lookout for opportunities to recoup your costs and benefit the membership at large by helping other organizations, such as employers, meet their needs for a fee, concurrently with you meeting your members' needs.

Mentorship, through reporting back to the association, or through direct staff involvement, can also be a valuable - and strategic - source of information: What are the emerging problems, issues and trends in your group's field? What new techniques, tools and tips can be gleaned from mentors for the benefit of the entire membership, not just the individual mentee? And what other needs and wants of the membership can be identified and addressed by the association, helping your association to stay ahead of the inevitable question, "what have you done for me lately?"

William Harper Associates has broad experience in developing, implementing and running effective member programs and services. If you are considering a mentorship program for your association, please contact us - we can help!