Connect your mentor recruitment strategy to other programs and other cities

I encourage you to visit this page and review the calendar of events that we organize each year in Chicago.

You'll see a conference in May, a recruitment campaign in August, as school is starting, and another conference in November, just before the holidays when donors are becoming more generous.

At this link you can read about a Chicagoland tutor/mentor volunteer recruitment campaign that we have organized each year since 1995, some times with greater support than others.

While some forms of mentoring are recruiting on a year-round basis, those that align their programs with the school calendar, are all looking for volunteers in August and September. Thus, the goal of the T/MC campaign is to get as many people as possible talking about where and why to volunteer during August, so that more potential volunteers use on-line directories, like the Chicago Program Locator, to find programs in neighborhoods close to where the volunteer works, or lives, and contact those programs to shop for where they get involved.

The Conference in May, and the Conference in November, as well as on-line forums like this, are places where programs can talk about what they need to do to make sure volunteers can find them, and know what they do, and to make sure that when a volunteer calls, or sends an email, someone can respond, who can answer questions and find a role for that volunteer within the organization. Not all people can be tutors/mentors, but many people have talents that can help the organization build the infrastructure needed to support their tutors/mentors more effectively.

Thus, since we're in April, I want to encourage programs to brainstorm ways they can tell the story of their program more often, and more effectively, and ways they can link their web site and blog to other programs in their own community, and to forums like this, so that together we build greater visibility that draws more attention from potential volunteers and donors who choose what city, and what program, based on links from aggregator sites like the T/MC, the Mentoring Partnership, and VolunteerMatch.org

If you're in the Midwest in May, come to the conference and attend panels which will focus on volunteer recruitment. If you're in other parts of the country and hosting your own conference, link your participants to each other, and to these on-line forums.

The competition for attention, volunteers and operating dollars is so stiff, that if we don't find more ways to band our messages together, more and more programs will disappear in the coming months.

I look forward to hearing from you.