National Mentoring Month Posts $3 Million in Public Service Advertising

Tuesday, May 01, 2012 - Local Activities Celebrated Coast to Coast; Creative Ideas Can Be Replicated for 2013
The evaluations and reports are in: This past January’s National Mentoring Month television public service announcements with the theme Invest In the Future: Mentor a Child and national spokesperson General Colin Powell have reached 270 million viewers and leveraged almost $3 million (reported to date) in advertising value.

 

 

In addition to national television advertising, Local Lead Nonprofit Partners (LLNPs) in states across America drew attention to youth mentoring via their own media, corporate and public affairs relationships, as well as social media outreach and special events and activities.

Evaluation highlights include:
 

• Governors in Arkansas, Kansas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Carolina and Oklahoma joined President Barack Obama in issuing proclamations designating January 2012 as National Mentoring Month.
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  With leadership from LLNPs in Massachusetts, California, Minnesota and Vermont, almost 2,000 people attended the first-ever I Am a Mentor Social Media Day on Facebook January 11, posting comments and stories and multiplying awareness of the benefits youth mentoring offers children and the adults who mentor them.
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  Twitter became an even more popular social tool among LLNPs, some with more than 2,000 followers.
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  Thank Your Mentor Day January 26 was popular for numerous activities honoring mentors, including a mentor/mentee day event at Dave and Buster’s in New York City, a celebration dinner recognizing new “master mentors” in Cincinnati, an event with Mayor Luke Ravenstahl in Pittsburgh, a thank-you mentor mixer in Los Angeles, a Youth Villages appreciation dinner with prizes donated by the Grizzlies Mentoring Alliance in Memphis, and an opinion editorial, as well as letters to the editor, in the Richmond Times Dispatch (Virginia).
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  Corporate partners for National Mentoring Month and beyond included AOL in Los Angeles; WSFS and AstraZeneca in Delaware; Deloitte, Accenture and The Washington Post in Washington, D.C.; Staples and First Niagara Bank in Massachusetts; Federated Insurance and the Carlson Family Foundation in Minnesota; Progress Energy and Walmart in North Carolina; Amica in Rhode Island; and Duncan Williams and Ashley Furniture in Memphis.
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  Special personalities involved in National Mentoring Month included former Philadelphia Eagle Kevin Reilly in Delaware; journalist Maria Bennett in Washington, D.C.; Secretary of Education Paul Reville in Massachusetts; Founder and CEO of the National Cares Mentoring Movement Susan L. Taylor in Cincinnati; the Pittsburgh Steelers in Pennsylvania; and Senator Patrick Leahy in Vermont.
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  LLNPs developed relationships with and received National Mentoring Month support from media at all major television network affiliates, cable and radio stations, newspapers and billboard companies.
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  Among the numerous outstanding LLNP activities during National Mentoring Month were:
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    Donated seats for mentors and mentees to attend college or professional sports events in San Francisco, Omaha, Boston, Cincinnati and Memphis.
  • A mentoring phone-a-thon with FOX-5 in Washington, D.C., that generated 200 potential new mentors.
  • Signatures from public and private university and college presidents in Indiana in support of post-secondary education and mentoring as a means to help students attain higher education.
  • Approximately 250 people using State Employee Mentoring Time promoted through the Kansas State Department of Education.
  • Youth Mentoring Day at the Statehouse in Massachusetts, where more than 250 state legislators, mentoring program staff, mentors and mentees attended to raise awareness, thank mentors and celebrate legislative champions of youth mentoring.
  • Mentoring summits and forums in Omaha, Delaware and Massachusetts.
  • Mini-grants in North Carolina, given to promote National Mentoring Month outreach.
  • A “Mentoring Matters” banner displayed in Pittsburgh’s airport.
  • S’mores outreach (“We need s’more mentors like you!”) by two mentoring agencies in Oklahoma.
  • A press conference in Richmond, Va., where seven local school district superintendents joined together to voice their support for the importance and inclusion of high-quality school-based mentoring and volunteer mentor recruitment.

National Mentoring Month partners — the Harvard School of Public Health, MENTOR and the Corporation for National and Community Service — work with LLNPs to:

• Raise awareness of mentoring in its various forms.
• Recruit individuals to mentor, especially in programs that have waiting lists of young people.
• Promote the rapid growth of mentoring by recruiting organizations to engage their constituents in mentoring.

MENTOR’s President and CEO David Shapiro noted, "While National Mentoring Month showcases the hard work, innovation and amazing accomplishments of quality mentoring programs throughout the country, it is inspiring to remember that these activities do not just occur in January, but every day throughout the year to ensure as many young people as possible receive the support of a caring, adult mentor to help them realize their promise. We thank the local partners, including our network ofMentoring Partnerships around the county; they take this campaign to new heights each year."

To learn more about the LLNPs in major media markets across America and to see photos from their National Mentoring Month 2012 activities, visit the "Local Partners" page of the website by clicking here. To learn more about National Mentoring Month in general, go to www.nationalmentoringmonth.org.

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