Identify Resources

Oregon Mentors recognizes how quality training, curriculum, and other resources can advance the success of mentor and youth relationship, and a program’s ability to adequately support its matches.

A significant role of all Oregon Mentors’ staff is identifying qualified resources and mitigating costs to programs. We disseminate information about these opportunities through our resources and calendar sections of the Web site as well as our Enewsletter.

Example: Recently we partnered with The Respect for All Project which brought two days of continuing education training to Salem. Through our partnership, and other, mentors and other youth workers were able to attend valuable sessions at no cost to them.

Scholarships

Often we can provide value to mentoring programs through scholarship assistance to trainings, events, or activities. Either through our own dollars or the donated resources of others, scholarships can make a significant difference in a mentoring program’s lean budget. Examples of recent scholarship opportunities include our annual conference, and the Making Connections online training created by Portland State University.

Fingerprinting

Legislation in Oregon provides that approved mentoring and tutoring programs can screen volunteers at no cost through a fingerprint-based screening system with the Oregon State Police and the FBI. To be approved, nonprofit mentoring programs must fill out the application on the Oregon State Police Web site. Oregon Mentors can provide application assistance to mentoring programs going through the process. We also partner with select mentoring programs in purchasing fingerprint stations and offering fingerprint training to their staff.

For mentoring programs that do not qualify for the Oregon fee waver, a low-cost alternative is the national SafetyNET pilot program.  Through SafetyNET, each FBI background check costs $18 and results are delivered within 3-5 business days.  To sign up, your program must apply through MENTOR.  For more information, go to MENTOR’s SafetyNET website or contact MENTOR at 703-224-2221 or safetynet@mentoring.org.

Youth Development Networks

Youth Development Networks on our partners page.

Legislative Assistance

As a member of the Oregon Alliance for Children’s Programs, Oregon Mentors has teamed up with other nonprofit organizations including Self Enhancement, Inc., Metropolitan Family Services, New Avenues for Youth, and the Native American Youth and Family Center to explore a legislative agenda for the 2009 session. We hope to raise state investment in strong programs for Oregon’s youth.

Collective Mentoring Program Data

Each year we collect general mentoring program data including how many active matches a program has, the number of children or mentors on a waiting list, etc. This information provides a helpful perspective of Oregon’s mentoring landscape and plays a role in how we talk to the legislature, establish marketing campaigns for volunteer recruiting and advocate for priorities with MENTOR, the National Mentoring Partnership.

Funding

There is often a disconnect between the funding community and mentoring programs regarding what are relevant program outcomes to track and report in a "grantable" project. For many programs, the prevailing assumption of increased academic performance or significant behavioral modification within a certain timeframe is unrealistic.

Oregon Mentors works to encourage mentoring programs to define the accurate outcomes they can achieve in their program and to clearly express those objectives with their funding partners. Additionally, Oregon Mentors staff works to educate the greater philanthropic community that there is never a “one size fits all” mentoring outcome.