New service matches industry mentors with charity staff
Howard Lake | 12 January 2017 | News
A new service launches later this month that will help people working in charities find a mentor from industry.
The service, provided by Cohort, is designed to help charity staff gain a new and external perspective, learn new skills and find new ways to solve problems. The mentoring relationships run for three months.
Cohort focuses on getting more people to share their skills and experiences together. It helps the mentee identify objectives for the mentoring, finds an appropriate mentor, and then supports the mentoring process to ensure that the objectives are met.
Cohort’s founder Chris Walters, explained:
“We know it can be challenging for people working in charities to develop new skills and how powerful it is to get the guidance and validation of an experienced person working on similar problems outside of the charity sector. We also know there are many experienced people out there who would love to use their skills and experience to help a good cause. We bring these people together and give them some support along the way to help them have focused and productive mentoring relationships.”
Advertisement
Pilot scheme
Saint Albans-based Cohort has been running a pilot of the scheme in the past few months.
Lisa from World Child Cancer took part and said of her experience of mentoring:
“Phil has given me so much confidence in my abilities and it has been great having a mentor outside of my organisation to go to for advice and words of wisdom! I would recommend this to experience to anyone.”
Receive mentoring
Cohort is inviting applications for mentoring from individuals who work in charity or nonprofit organisations. Applications can come from individuals or organisations.
Provide mentoring
It is also inviting enquiries from businesses which want their employees to apply their skills in a new context while fulfilling the business’s social responsibility objectives.
Experienced in business development? Would you give a little time each month to mentor someone working at a charity?https://t.co/cBomQ8yCvk
— Cohort (@teamcohort) November 7, 2016
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.