Mentoring for All Act

Support Growth and Expansion of Mentoring Partnerships and Programs

Legislative Goal:

To create a competitive grant fund of $50 million to strengthen and grow mentoring infrastructure across the country and provide additional support and funding to direct service mentoring organizations.
 

March 12, 2009: Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Arlen Specter (R-PA) reintroduced the Mentoring For All Act (S. 545) on March 9th, with the counterpart House bill (H.R. 1165) introduced earlier by House Mentoring Caucus Co-chairs Reps. Susan Davis (D-CA), Mike Rogers (R-MI) and Betty McCollum (D-MN). The Mentoring For All Act would create a competitive grant fund of $50 million to strengthen and grow mentoring infrastructure across the country and provide additional resources and funding to direct-service mentoring programs. This grant fund would be administered by the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS).

As you may know, infrastructure for mentoring—in the form of our nationwide network of Mentoring Partnerships—is needed to ensure that thousands of local mentoring programs across the country have the resources they need to run strong and effective mentoring programs and serve more children. Among their many roles, Mentoring Partnerships provide training and technical assistance, recruit mentors, and advance research to mentoring programs leading to more programs, stronger programs, and more children in mentoring relationships.

One possible vehicle for the Mentoring For All Act is the National Service reauthorization, which is a major priority in the Obama Administration and in the 111th Congress. This will benefit many critical service areas such as mentoring, but more importantly, it will benefit our nation as a whole as sectors work to endure through the economic crisis. Both the GIVE (Generation Invigorating Volunteerism and Education) Act in the House and the Serve America Act in the Senate are on their way to quick action and passage. MENTOR supports important provisions in both of these bills. We encourage you to lend your support as well.

To contact your Members and ask that they co-sponsor the Mentoring For All Act and to encourage your Members to support mentoring funding in the GIVE and Serve America Acts, click here.

June 27, 2008: Senators John Kerry (D-MA), Arlen Specter (R-PA), Norm Coleman (R-MN), and Daniel Akaka (D-HI) have introduced the Mentoring for All Act of 2008, S. 3200 in the Senate this week. They are circulating a Dear Colleague letter to other Members of the Senate to gain co-sponsorship and support for this new bill.

While there is not currently a companion bill in the House, we do need your help to let your Senators know how important this new bill would be to the mentoring field. To send a letter of support and ask your Senator to co-sponsor S. 3200, please visithttp://capwiz.com/mentor/issues/alert/?alertid=12957161&type=CO
 

Millions of children in our country wait to be matched with mentors because mentoring programs don’t have enough resources to expand their capacity. And, these organizations often need training and support to operate high-quality, sustainable mentoring programs.

Infrastructure for mentoring—known as Mentoring Partnerships—is needed to ensure that thousands of local mentoring programs across the country have the resources they need to run strong and effective mentoring programs and serve more children.

Among their many roles, Mentoring Partnerships provide training and technical assistance, recruit mentors, and advance research to mentoring programs leading to more programs, stronger programs, and more children in mentoring relationships. 
The Mentoring for All Act of 2008 would create a competitive grant fund of $50 million. Over $30 million of this money would be dedicated to grants for local mentoring organizations. The remaining $20 million would support and grow mentoring infrastructure. This grant fund would be administered by the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS).

The following bullets summarize specifics of the bill:

• Create a $40 million competitive grant fund for existing state or local Mentoring Partnerships. New grants would be made to state or local Mentoring Partnerships to significantly increase the number of mentors statewide.
  
  Funded Mentoring Partnerships would sub-grant 80% of the funds to local mentoring programs to support all components of a successful mentoring program (including recruitment, training, screening, matching and ongoing monitoring). Partnerships could focus the grants to best meet the unique needs of their state or locality.
  
  Funded Mentoring Partnerships would use the remaining 20% of funds to carry out activities to grow and strengthen the availability of mentoring throughout their service area, including training and technical assistance, recruitment campaigns, and more.
• Establish a $7.5 million competitive grant fund to create new Mentoring Partnerships in states where they currently do not exist. Funds would support planning and
• Provide $2.5 million for national-level research, evaluation, and training and support for grantees.

You might ask, “Why would we put this new grant program within the Corporation for National and Community Service?” We have chosen CNCS because they are actively engaged in the effort to close the mentoring gap. Mentoring is a priority in CNCS’s Strategic Plan which calls for reaching a national target of providing services to 3 million additional children and youth from disadvantaged circumstances. Furthermore, CNCS is working to advance mentoring research and is currently chairing the Federal government’s Federal Mentoring Council.

In summary, an investment in Mentoring Partnerships will be multiplied many times over, and can help ensure that mentoring programs across the country have the resources needed to change America by connecting kids with the power of mentoring.