Pro bono mentoring for charity and community group leaders across Oxfordshire
We help charity leaders reach their potential and achieve their goals.
We do this by matching them with an experienced mentor in a confidential and supportive environment to work on opportunities and strategic challenges.
This strengthens the leader, their organisation, and its beneficiaries.
Our mentoring is short-term (usually between 4 and 6 months), strategic – all projects involve challenges at the strategic level - and specific. It’s focused on achieving clearly defined goals that lead to meaningful strategic outcomes. We work with not-for-profits of all sizes and with leaders from many different backgrounds, with a wide range of experience and confidence.
Who do we mentor?
To ensure impact, the individual being mentored must be involved at a strategic level within their organisation - you might be a CEO, executive director, charity manger or board chair. Some of our mentees have been very experienced leaders (possibly even acting as mentors for other people themselves) and some have been people just starting out as CEOs or in the not-for-profit sector. We always seek permission from the Chair of the organisation before engaging.
Please note, our service is only available for organisations based in Oxfordshire.
What do we cover?
Our mentors will encourage and help a mentee to think through issues and assist them to come to their own solutions and conclusions. We have an extensive team of experienced mentors, most of whom have held senior roles within their chosen field. Here are some of the areas where mentors have helped previously:
Decisions about the future development and direction of the organisation
Decisions concerning organisational structure and staffing
Exploring how an organisation might move to the “next step” in terms of growth and sustainability
Positioning the organisation to enable strategic focus
Support with strategic plans including fundraising strategy given current funding environment
Getting the best out of the CEO/Chair relationship
Working with trustees more effectively
Governance issues, including policies
Valuing and developing the organisation’s volunteer workforce
For new CEOs, developing confidence to lead staff and shape strategy
Team building
How does the process work?
Connecting with us
Contact Charity Mentors and arrange an exploratory meeting with our Executive Director to establish whether your project is suitable and, if so, outline what your objectives might be.
Seeking Chair or Board approval for mentoring
It makes sense in an organisation with collective responsibility that everyone is aware of support at a strategic level. If you’re the CEO or Director of your organisation, we ask that you share the fact that you’re thinking of working with us with the Chair of your board. If you are the Chair, it would be sensible to share your intention with the other trustees. We will need email confirmation from them that they are on board before we move forward.
Connecting with a mentor
We will then help you find the best mentor for your needs so that you can arrange a meeting. The aim of this first meeting is for you and the mentor to decide if you would like to work together on a project and to clarify your goals. You are not committed to working with Charity Mentors until after you have had this meeting.
Mentoring with a focus
If you both feel that you can work together productively, you then have a period of around 4 to 6 months in which to complete your mentoring project. This might entail just a couple more meetings, or five or six. The whole project is designed around you, your organisation and your needs. The important thing is that you use your mentor effectively whilst you have them!
Sharing your feedback
At the end of the project, we will ask you and your mentor to complete a feedback form so that we can assess the impact of our mentoring on you and your organisation. We will also follow up with you again after a period of 6 months to assess any further impact and to check whether you might need any further support. We will always encourage you to share the project outcomes with your trustees and to feed back to Charity Mentors any comments you feel might help us to improve and develop our service.
Spreading the word
Our mentoring service is free-of-charge and completely confidential between yourself and Charity Mentors. In return, we do ask if you would help us to spread the word to other charity leaders in Oxfordshire so that they too can benefit from our support.
Some mentoring projects
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Yellow Submarine
The challenge for Yellow Submarine was to become a more sustainable social enterprise. Their CEO and founder wanted to reduce the organisation’s reliance on grants and trusts whilst trying to grow and expand its range of services for its beneficiaries.
Running the day to day operation meant that the CEO found it very difficult to devote time to achieving this aim. Our mentor supported him to focus on this challenge and to assess and redefine the strategy of Yellow Submarine.
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Reducing the Risk
Reducing the Risk was looking to make a step change in their service development. Their aim was to move from a small charity to developing an enterprise with training ‘packages’ and national networks.
The challenge was to bring their many ideas together in an effective way.
Our mentor’s role was to help the trustees articulate their shared values and to develop a sense of shared ownership in their strategic direction and goals.
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South Oxfordshire Food and Education Alliance (SOFEA)
SOFEA’s co-founder and CEO approached us for a mentor at a privotal time in the organisation’s development. They needed help with how successfully to amalgamate two organisations to effect the best outcome for the young people they served.
This involved developing a strategic plan for the bringing together of the two organisations, combining their Boards and working carefully and systematically through any governance issues resulting from the change.
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Talking Shop
The Talking Shop project was only four years old when Charity Mentors got involved. It was at an exciting but demanding stage of growth. There were so many new things they wanted to develop but never enough hours in the week to achieve the new developments and improve the running of their existing services. Our Charity Mentor worked with the chair of Talking Shop to help her with the task of leading the team and achieving the focus and development desired.
“Charity Mentors gave me exactly what I needed: space to reflect, strategic clarity, and the extraordinary calibre of a mentor whose insight and challenge were transformative. I’m so grateful for the experience.”