Make Mentorship Magic: How to Create a Mentorship Program ✨

8 min readDec 27, 2022

After running Community at First Round Capital for the past 3+ years, I’ve had the opportunity to work on six mentorship cohorts and create thousands of mentorship relationships. Through my personal experience, I’ve seen firsthand the transformative power of mentorship and the impact it can have on an individual’s career. After receiving requests from a range of organizations — startups, ERG groups at big tech companies, schools, and alumni groups — to help them with their programs, I decided to put together this guide to support other communities in creating their own mentorship programs.

As Denzel Washington said, “Show me a successful individual and I’ll show you someone who had real positive influences in his or her life. I don’t care what you do for a living — if you do it well I’m sure there was someone cheering you on or showing you the way. A mentor.”

Mentorship can take many forms, from formal programs to casual relationships. It can provide a wider network of connections, new learnings and opportunities, and even lifelong friendships. As a community builder and leader, you have the opportunity to make a positive impact on others by creating a mentorship program, and the steps in this guide will help you build one from start to end. Can’t wait for you to spread some of your own mentorship magic!

💡Program Goals💡

Before you kick off a program, it’s important to define your goals. Here are some questions to consider:

Why do you want to start a mentorship program? Everyone says they want to help their students or employees, but are there any specific challenges or opportunities that you are seeking to address?
What do you hope mentees will gain from the program? For example, do you want to help mentees improve in their current role, support them as they explore different career options, or something else?

🗓️ Logistics 🗓️

Once you have established the program’s goals, you can start to plan the program’s length and the frequency of mentorship meetings. Here are a few factors to consider:

Meeting Cadence - The frequency of mentorship meetings should tie back to the program’s goals. For example, if the mentee is working on job applications, they may benefit from meeting with their mentor on a weekly basis, while a mentee who is seeking guidance on long-term career development may benefit from monthly meetings. Mentors may also want to assign homework to keep mentees on target between sessions.
Program Length - It’s important to find a balance between providing value and being reasonable in terms of the required time commitment. A program length of three months can be a good compromise, as it allows for a structured period of support without requiring a ton of time investment from participants. Those who have a great experience can choose to continue the relationship beyond the formal program length.

📝 Application Creation 📝

Once you’ve decided on the program’s goals and timeline, you can create the applications. It may be helpful to create two separate applications or a single application with different sections for mentors and mentees.

When writing the application, tie the questions back to the program’s goals. Here are some examples:

The mentee-mentor pair is the foundation of any mentorship program. By thinking carefully about your application questions, you will have a better chance of creating impactful matches.

You should ensure the questions in the mentee application parallel those in the mentor application. For example, if you are asking mentees about their industry, you should also ask mentors the same. By making the questions comparable, you can more easily evaluate the fit between potential mentorship matches.

Once you finish drafting the application, it’s time to spread the word and send the application out. Make sure to promote the program to the right audiences and make it easy for people to learn more.

✨ Matching Magic ✨

Matching is the most essential part of a mentorship program because the mentor-mentee pair is the key to the program’s success. Regardless of the size of the program, whether you’re making a couple, dozens, or hundreds of pairs, you need to focus on each individual match.

Over the years, I’ve tried several methods to pair folks: utilizing algorithms, allowing mentees to choose their match, and manually matching every single pair. Despite it taking the most time, I find that manual hand-matching leads to the most impactful and strong matches (and thus, the most effective program as a whole).

When manually matching, decide which 2-3 areas will make the matches most effective and then prioritize those top factors when going through applications and making matches. For example, if you are matching students who want career help, the top areas should be their career goals, school major, and types of industries/roles they are interested in. That should be the foundation for most of your pairs.

Once you’ve made the matches, you should get approvals from both the mentee and mentor before you officially make the match to ensure both participants are excited to move forward.

🤝Match Introduction 🤝

Once you’ve done the hard work of matching your applicants, it’s time to make the connection! One effective way to do this is to connect the pair over email rather than requesting one of them to reach out to the other. This guarantees that all of the introductions are made on the same day and that all of the program instructions are in one place.

In this email, introduce them, include their LinkedIns, and share the next steps. I recommend using a mail-merge tool to send these emails quickly. You can find an introduction email template below:

Hi {Mentee Name} and {Mentor Name},
We’re so happy to introduce you to one another! We’re excited for you to embark on this three-month mentorship experience.
Here are some important reminders:
- From January 1 to June 1, you’ll meet every month for ~1 hour, six times total.
- Mentees are responsible for reaching out, sending out agendas ahead of time, and making the most out of each meeting.
- Mentors are responsible for listening, coaching, and being a sounding board.
Here are the next steps:
- {Mentee Name}- Introduce yourself and decide on your first meeting time. Share the top 2–3 goals you’d like to work on over the next six months.
Congratulations on embarking on this journey!

📖Mentorship Training 📖

Host a training session to ensure the program kicks off with a strong start. Here are the areas that you should cover:

Program goals: Cover why you organized this program and reiterate the purpose.
Program logistics: Cover dates, meeting requirements, and communication channels.
Mentorship tips: Provide tips on how mentees/mentors can get the most out of their time.

With so many moving parts, it’s important to clearly explain the most crucial aspects at the start of the program.

📝Making the Most of Meetings📝

Put the responsibility on the Mentee.
Mentees should take the initiative and manage up in these relationships. Since the mentors are volunteering their time and the mentees are looking to learn, mentees should put in the extra effort to get the most out of every meeting.

What does this mean exactly? Here are some tips for mentees specifically:

Before the first meeting, mentees should think about their goals and what they want to get out of the program. You can read some goal-setting tips in the next section.
Mentees should set the agenda for every meeting and send it to their mentors in advance.
Mentees should follow up after the meeting with their notes and any next steps.

Create a conversation agenda to support your participants.
To help guide your participants, create a conversation template that your mentors and mentees can use throughout their sessions. This can be a helpful resource for those who are new to mentorship programs or who are shy about opening up. It can also help ensure that their conversations are productive. Here’s an example conversation guide:

Meeting 1
Agenda:
- Introduce yourselves! Share context about who you are.
- Why are you participating in this mentorship program?
- Share two big measurable goals that you’d like to work on throughout the program.
Notes: [Fill in]
Follow-Ups: [Fill in]
Meeting 2
Agenda:
- What actions are you taking on to get closer to your goals?
- How are you managing your time and your calendar to get the most out of your day?
-Are there any resources that your mentor can suggest that you read?
Notes: [Fill in]
Follow-Ups: [Fill in]

These conversation guides can also be a great way for mentees to track their progress and learnings throughout the program.

➡️ Before the First Meeting ➡️

Encourage your mentees to spend time before their first meeting thinking about their goals and areas of development. For mentees struggling to determine goals, here are some suggestions you can share:

They can get feedback from their managers, coworkers, teachers, etc. This can provide a valuable external perspective on their strengths and areas of opportunity.
They can reflect on these questions: What did you do really well over the past month? What are your strengths? What have you struggled to do over the past month? What are your areas of opportunity? What are some current challenges you’re working through?
They can think through their short-term and long-term career goals and aspirations.

🏆Understanding the Impact 🏆

Community managers know the challenge of showcasing their work’s ROI, and they run into similar challenges when running a mentorship program. To measure the short-term and long-term impact, use feedback surveys with qualitative and quantitative questions.

For short-term impact, you can ask questions like:

Would they recommend this program to a friend (NPS)?
Would they recommend their mentor to a friend?
How would they rate the quality of their mentorship pair?
How much has your mentor helped you attain your initial goals?
How many times have you met?
What was your favorite part of the program?
What is one thing you learned from your mentor that you can apply today?

For long-term impact, you can ask questions like:

Did folks actually refer their friends to join a future cohort?
Are participants sharing about the program on social media?
Are the number of applicants increasing for programs over time?
Are mentees and mentors returning to participate again?
Have the mentor and mentee met since the program ended?
What type of impact has the mentor had on the mentee 6 months / a year later?

👋 Wrap-Up 👋

As the mentorship program manager, make sure you take the time to get to know your participants. This will make the experience more impactful for you and help folks feel even more connected to your community.

Mentorship can be a powerful and transformative experience for both mentors and mentees. These relationships often become mutually beneficial over time, with both parties learning and growing from each other. I’m excited for you to create your own mentorship magic!

Please send over any mentorship success stories to me — I’d love to hear them :)

About the Author

I’m Julia, a Chief of Staff and the former Senior Community Manager at First Round Capital. Over the past few years, I’ve had the opportunity to run multiple mentorship programs and create thousands of mentor/mentee pairs. Through my personal experience, I’ve seen firsthand the transformative power of mentorship and the impact it can have on an individual’s career.

Thanks to all of my mentors who have supported me in my own career, including Whitnie Narcisse, Emma Cappiello, Stevie Krouse, Heston Berkman, Nina Roth, Willa Tellekson-Flash, and Erik Martin. I’m also grateful to my mentees, Jenna Pearlstein and Julia Klayman, who I’ve had the pleasure of watching grow and have learned a ton from. Thanks to Rachel Cantor and Sarah Wood for inspiring me to publish this piece. And lastly, thanks to the amazing Jessi Craige Shikman and Emily Stanford for helping me get this guide off the ground.