How Prince's Trust Canada scaled its mentoring program for young people and Veterans with Mentorly
Mentorly is the mentoring platform Prince's Trust Canada chose to scale its mentoring program for young people and military Veterans. It is software for charities and organizations that need to grow a mentoring program without adding administrative work.
About the organization
Prince's Trust Canada is a national charity that empowers young people and Veterans to build resilient, future-ready communities. Its programs help military Veterans overcome barriers to entrepreneurship and find meaningful employment, and mentoring is central to that work.
The challenge
Febbie Shikongo, Manager, Mentoring and External Engagement, describes mentoring programs as admin heavy, with bottlenecks that drain their momentum. Before scaling, the charity looked for software that would improve four areas: efficiency, professionalism, human relationships and data. It chose Mentorly after a long selection process of meetings, trials and demo sessions.
How it uses Mentorly
Prince's Trust Canada uses Smart Matching, a manager portal with progress insights, and program announcements with mass messaging to give mentors and mentees a consistent service. Participants meet through in-app video conferencing, chat and messaging, with calendar integrations for Google and Outlook. Sessions can be one-on-one, in groups or as masterclasses.
Results
Mentorly saves the charity administrative hours while increasing its capacity to grow. Its team reads the real-time dashboard to make decisions while the program runs, and the program kept its personal, human feel as it grew. Febbie Shikongo points to the platform's interface, its admin dashboard and its real-time insight into mentoring impact.
What other programs can take from it
For a charity preparing to scale, the lesson is to choose software on the parts that break first as a program grows, administration and data, without giving up the human side of mentoring.
Questions
What mentoring software does Prince's Trust Canada use?
Prince's Trust Canada uses Mentorly to run and scale its mentoring program for young people and military Veterans.
How can a charity scale a mentoring program without more staff?
Prince's Trust Canada scaled its program on Mentorly by moving matching, messaging and reporting onto the platform, which saves its team administrative hours.