Our Programs

Scaling College Mentoring Capacity

The Need

According to the U.S. Department of Education, only 20 percent of young people who begin their higher education at two-year institutions graduate within three years. There is a similar pattern in four-year institutions, where about 4 in 10 students receive a degree within six years. And these bleak statistics on national college completion rates are averages. In some institutions, and especially among the economically and socially disadvantaged, the numbers are even gloomier. The benefits of mentoring to increase college retention and success rates are well documented, and yet millions of young people in need of mentoring are not receiving the guidance they need to navigate through the college experience.

The Response

While over 3 million adults are currently serving as mentors in America, over 44 million adults who said they would consider mentoring are not volunteering. The traditional mentoring model asks mentors to make regular visits to their mentee's home community. The Business of Good Foundation believes that this mentoring model rules out thousands of potential volunteers who do not feel they have the flexibility in their schedule to make this kind of commitment. Secondly, TBOGF believes the traditional models make it difficult for mentoring programs to thrive in the most underserved and isolated communities, the same communities that could benefit the most from mentoring. The scaling of a new mentoring model is needed. To address the need, TBOGF recently formed a partnership with College Now of Greater Cleveland and iMentor of New York City to pilot a web-enabled mentoring program in Cleveland.

The Impact

Lack of education and job-readiness are two major factors that tie some of our inner-ring communities to decades of poverty while others parts of our cities, especially the suburbs, continue to prosper. TBOGF intends to use its partnership with College Now and iMentor to build a large-scale mentoring platform, starting in Cleveland, to close this gap. The impact will be measured in the program's ability to positively impact the college retention and success rates by encouraging low-income high school graduates to continue to develop the skills critical to personal, academic, and career success.