TL;DR: Our mentorship year is grantee-led & fully customized to the needs of each grant recipient. Each person/team gets an awesome mentor with expertise in their industry and/or areas of focus and connections with other folks to fill gaps where needed.

When we get to the “face-to-face” meeting process in each grant cycle, a lot of people want to know what the year of mentorship looks like. Which like, fair question. The answer? It depends!

We don’t believe in a one-size-fits-all approach to mentorship.

• There isn’t some standard curriculum we use to guide our grantees.
• Each grantee gets an experience tailored to what they need and where they’re looking to grow.
• We do our best to match grantees with a mentor who has experience in their industry and/or has knowledge in the areas where they want to grow.
• We view sharing connections & resources via mentorship as another form of wealth redistribution to go hand-in-hand with the funds grantees receive.

When folks apply for the grant, we ask about the areas they’re looking for support in over the next year. We ask that question to help us see where we might need to expand our grantee support network if we don’t already have someone who would be a good fit for that mentee’s areas of focus. If we’re bringing in someone new, we vibe-check any potential grantee mentor before we ask them to support someone. We wanna make sure each pairing is gonna be a good fit and that any potential mentors are values-aligned before we put folks together. And, so far, we’ve successfully found mentors for all our grantees and it’s been groovy.

Once a mentorship match has been made, from there it REALLY depends on where a grantee needs support.

• The mentorship year is grantee-led, so each grantee sets their focuses. Making the year grantee-led is one of the ways we challenge traditional power dynamics & capitalistic hierarchies.
• The mentor is there to help with support, knowledge-sharing, and making connections to others in the TRANSFORM who can support their assigned grantee with their goals.
• Mentors and grantees will decide on a meeting cadence that works for the grantee. Some mentor/grantee pairs will set a regular meeting cadence and others will meet as needed – as a grantee-led mentorship experience, it’s all up to the grantee.

Throughout the course of the mentorship, the mentor will help the grantee work through the focus areas they called out in their application. If there’s areas where the grantee wants to work through that the mentor doesn’t have the expertise to help with, we’ve got ‘em covered. We keep a roster of folks in our grantee support network who are willing to donate their time and skills to our grantees, free of charge. Any support a grant recipient receives during their mentorship year is always pro bono. You don’t have to be a business expert to be a great mentor or pro bono contributor, you just have to have knowledge & time to share with our grantees.

But ya know, a year’s a long time. What if something changes for our grantees over the course of their mentorship year? Literally nbd, not a problem at all. We know our grantees are dynamic humans with needs that shift and change, both personally and professionally. So the areas of focus for the mentorship absolutely can and will change to support them if needed. As we’ve already shared, this year is grantee-led, so if a grantee’s focus shifts, we shift with them. 

When the year of mentorship ends, we keep in touch with all past grantees and invite them to TRANSFORM community events. We also have a Discord community for all grantees, past and present to connect and run ideas by each other. Just because the year ends doesn’t mean the support comes to a stop.

And that’s it! If you’re interested in becoming a grantee mentor for future grant recipients or if you’re willing to donate your time as part of our grantee support network, learn how to get involved here.