The Heart of Our Work
Mission
MENTOR leads, expands, and strengthens the mentoring movement, building capacity to make high-quality relationships accessible to all young people.
Vision
MENTOR’s vision is a future where relationships power opportunities for all.
Values
MENTOR’s core values are established on a foundation of relationship-centered practices:
Collaboration: We work in relationship with one another.
Diversity: We value the perspectives, backgrounds and approaches of others.
Innovation: We create and apply new ideas to elevate the mentoring movement.
Transformation: We transform mentoring systems.
Trust: We can count on one another.
Why Us?
Potential is equally distributed; opportunity is not. A major driver of healthy development and opportunity is who you know and who’s in your corner. MENTOR was created more than 35 years ago to expand that opportunity for young people by building a youth mentoring field and movement, serving as the expert and go-to resource on quality mentoring. The result — a more than 10x increase in young people in structured mentoring relationships, from hundreds of thousands to millions.
Today, we activate a movement across sectors that is diverse and broad and seeps into every aspect of daily life. We are connecting and fueling opportunity for young people everywhere they are – from schools to workplaces and beyond.
How We Do the Work
- Advancing Local Field Leadership: Supporting the effectiveness of new and existing MENTOR Affiliates to scale our geographic footprint and deepen the impact of the mentoring field.
- Expanding the Movement: Motivating civic leaders, employers, and individual stakeholders to prioritize and invest in ensuring all young people have access to mentoring relationships.
- Prioritizing Quality: Identifying, promoting, and driving the implementation of evidence-based practices combined with community wisdom to increase the quality of mentoring relationships for young people.
- Influencing Systems: Creating and guiding innovative solutions that integrate relationship-centered practices and policies while driving resources for the adoption of mentoring structures and mindsets within youth-serving systems.
Impact
After rigorous screening for proof of impact and ability to scale, MENTOR was included as a member of the Social Impact 100 (S&I 100 Index), signifying that we are one of America’s top-performing 100 nonprofit organizations on this first-ever broad index of US nonprofits.
MENTOR also has a 4-star rating from Charity Navigator, the largest and most-utilized evaluator of charities in the United States.
Financial Information
MENTOR is a nonprofit, 501(c)3 organization.