National Mentoring Month 2010

Mass Mentoring wrapped up another successful National Mentoring Month (NMM), and we have lots of great news to share!


Recruitment & public awareness results

  • More than 130 referrals in January 2010 were distributed to more than 40 mentoring programs.  
  • MMP’s website received nearly 4,000 unique visits, a more than 90 percent increase from 2009. For the first time, the “Be a Mentor” page was the second-highest visited page
  • MMP worked with Boston City Councilors Pressley and Murphy to create an order for a Boston City Volunteer Leave Policy that was presented on January 27. Councilor At-Large Pressley announced the policy during her video address at the Youth Mentoring Forum. 
  • MMP submitted the mentor/mentee pair that was chosen to be featured in NMM public service announcements (PSAs) as part of the national REEL people contest. As a result, Deborah and Becky of Big Friends Little Friends in Fall River attended President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama’s mentoring event at the White House.
  • Through online and print PSAs and media pieces, Mass Mentoring reached an audience of more than 4.5 million (does not include audience reached from TV and radio airtime).
  • MMP executed a strategic social media plan, including the launch of an MMP blog, and daily posts to Facebook and Twitter highlighted pertinent mentoring topics and program success stories. 
  • PSAs aired on WHDH Channel 7, thanks to Bernie and Phyls Furniture, and on FOX 25, COMCAST, and local news stations in the Springfield market.  Radio scripts aired on JAMIN 94.5 and WEEI. 
  • Eight new partnerships in Springfield yielded news coverage by local NBC, ABC, FOX, and CBS stations; radio promotions on two stations, and numerous feature articles and editorials in the Springfield Republican.


Staples, Inc. public awareness and recruitment campaign

This year, we received a $25,000 grant from Staples, Inc., to create collateral and run a statewide awareness campaign to recruit new mentors. The campaign included online and print PSAs that ran in Boston, Lowell/Lawrence, Western Massachusetts, and Brockton media outlets; media outreach; and Staples' presence at MMP special events.

Key highlights include:

  • Four media articles highlighted the grant and partnership.
  • Staples executives had speaking roles at MMP special events in Boston and Springfield.
  • Campaign reached more than 3.4 million prospective mentors through online and print mediums, contributing tremendously to the increase in MMP website traffic.
  • Overall click-through rate for online PSAs was .06 percent (industry standard is .06 percent). 
  • Click-through rate in targeted areas of Lowell/Lawrence and Brockton exceeded industry standard with an average click-through rate of .08 percent. 
  • Public awareness efforts in January continue to impact current recruitment numbers with nearly 100 percent increased referrals for February 2010 compared to 2009.


Special Events

  • Youth Mentoring Forum with State Street Corporation & University of Massachusetts - Boston: More than 150 foundation, corporate and other sector leaders, plus mentoring program representatives attended the fourth annual event designed to create awareness about timely issues in the Massachusetts youth mentoring field.

    Highlights included a presentation of breakthrough research on guiding ethics for mentors by local and nationally recognized researchers, Dr. Belle Liang, Dr. Jean Rhodes, and Dr. Renee Spencer. Other speakers included J. Keith Motley, Ph.D., Chancellor of UMass Boston; George A. Russell, Jr., Executive Vice President, State Street Corporation; and a video address from Boston City Councilor At-Large Ayanna Pressley.

  • Youth Mentoring Day at the State House: More than 200 people, including state legislators, mentoring program staff, mentors and mentees from across Massachusetts, attended Youth Mentoring Day at the State House on Jan. 21 to raise awareness and celebrate legislative champions of youth mentoring. For the first time, MMP scheduled meetings with legislators for mentoring programs and throughout the day, programs met with more than 40 different legislators.

  • Mentor Recruitment Celebration at Basketball Hall of Fame – Six Western Massachusetts programs gathered at the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield to raise awareness and recruit mentors. More than 70 people attended, including prospective mentors and the Mayor of Springfield, Dominic Sarno.


Mentoring program support and highlights

  • MMP held regional conference calls for programs to learn about leveraging NMM, and share ideas and resources. More than 40 percent of programs participated in these conference calls and many shared event and awareness ideas (for example, Southcoast programs replicated the recruitment rally held each year by Brockton mentoring programs).
  • MMP created a detailed section of the website with templates for press releases, information on how to receive materials, and more. 95 percent of mentoring programs reported they found the website helpful and referred to it for NMM news.
  • MMP garnered and distributed more than $10,000 worth of free match activities to more than 30 programs across the state, including 200 tickets to a Springfield Armor basketball game and 60 tickets to Celtics games. 
  • MMP sent weekly NMM updates with program highlights, match activity ideas, and suggestions for leveraging the campaign. 
  • MMP created and administered a survey for all mentoring programs that participated in NMM. The survey focused on the resources and events mentoring programs felt were helpful. In addition, it asked for suggestions to improve NMM 2011. 56 percent of mentoring programs completed the survey and results showed: 
    • 80 percent of mentoring programs reported using at least one of the resources MMP offered during NMM. Free recruitment materials, free match activities, participation in conference calls, and meetings with legislators were the most utilized resources. 
    • 80 percent of mentoring programs attended at least one of MMP’s special events in January with almost 70 percent of programs attending Youth Mentoring Day at the State House. 
    • 95 percent of mentoring program reported they found the website helpful and referred to it for NMM news and updates. 
    • 20 percent of programs recruiting during NMM reported an increase in mentor referrals compared to 2009. 
    • Suggestions for 2011 included hosting more networking opportunities for program staff, making evaluation of NMM available to mentoring programs so they can see what worked well for MMP and other programs, and providing additional support around mentor recognition for programs not actively recruiting in January.   
Website built by Talance, Inc.