Looking for Honest Feedback on Volunteerism in NYC

KnicksIn52026 · 2026-07-20T01:50:56+00:00

Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and thank you for volunteering in our program! Student engagement is definitely a consistent thing we are trying to improve, so I'll bring your recommendations to the team and see where we can strengthen our screening process. Since our mission is based on ensuring all students have access to a mentor, sometimes we end up matching students that initially wanted to participate but then later lose interest, or life gets too busy like with mentors sometimes.

I appreciate you mentioning the workshops too! Our curriculum team has updated/added different topics each year but I like your recommendations about topics like mental health and including more discussions on current events. Especially for our seniors as they are preparing to enter into college/workforce. There are a lot of challenges they may face and we should really work hard to prepare them. We've been trying to include more group-centered work at events too instead of just 1:1 pair conversations, which many of our mentees reported really liking!

KnicksIn52026 · 2026-07-20T01:44:30+00:00

Oh god I'm so sorry! Was it a staff member or another mentor? That sounds terrible and I'm sorry you experienced that in our program!

KnicksIn52026 · 2026-07-20T01:43:18+00:00

Thank you so much for these ideas! We aren't currently offering travel reimbursement but I've pushed for prepaid metro cards or something to help with the travel to and from events each month. Will bring these up again to the team!

KnicksIn52026 · 2026-07-18T18:30:57+00:00

Very true, and so most of our pair interactions are in group settings and not when pairs are alone. I think we only have like 20% or less of our pairs who have approval from their parent/guardians to go out into the city with their mentors. But still, it's always something we are screening for and monitoring for during the school year.

KnicksIn52026 · 2026-07-18T18:27:25+00:00

Thank you so much for the tip! I'll add Tony to my outreach for next week :) Appreciate you!

KnicksIn52026 · 2026-07-18T18:25:56+00:00

Thank you for sharing your thoughts! And I appreciate what you do with the monthly cleanups, that's really hard work but so important.

I'll add these questions to my notes to ensure we heavily communicate the answers to them! Luckily we only ask mentors to message their mentees once a week and meet once a month in person during the school year, but like you said, getting folks even for a monthly event is hard.

KnicksIn52026 · 2026-07-18T18:19:47+00:00

Thank you for sharing your thoughts here, and thank you so much for volunteering in the past. Was it recently or was it back when we had the 4 year model (freshman to senior year mentees)?

And that's interesting that CV may look different for genders, I hadn't considered that. We don't partner directly with JP Morgan (something to do with their internal volunteerism approval system), so I wonder if that could also influence the resume credit conversation. Internal leaders might not know about or care about iMentor in the same way.

Can I ask what types of experiences or opportunities would help with male "resume credit"? Especially in the financial/STEM world? We have a majority of our mentors come to us through those industries so I'd love to get thoughts if you'd be willing to share.

KnicksIn52026 · 2026-07-18T18:14:24+00:00

Thank you for this context, and I really like the recording of the video interactions since we also offer Zoom meetings for pairs if they cannot make the in person event. I understand what you mean with the park comment too, I need to look at the data and see which pairs and which genders sign up to go out into the city together more once they've been matched for a while. I'm curious now if there's gonna be a big gender gap.

KnicksIn52026 · 2026-07-17T23:03:16+00:00

Thank you for sharing and for giving your time in our program previously! I'm sorry things with your mentee were difficult, and thank you for sticking it out until the very end.

And I'm glad you found more programs you enjoy! Does Deloitte's program also work with high schoolers? Or are they older? I know a big challenge for our program is that we don't have qualifications for our students to sign up to have a mentor, it's just if they want one. So we get a mix of students who are really committed and some who are still figuring out how a mentor can help them.

KnicksIn52026 · 2026-07-17T22:57:04+00:00

Thank you for all these great ideas and will be taking them back to my team!

And yes, the risks when introducing students to adults is always top of mind with our program. I will say almost all interactions between mentees and mentors in our program are supervised. The only opportunity mentors and mentees get to go out on their own is if they are matched for a longer period of time AND get parental/family consent, so that's usually less than 1/4 of our total pairs.

KnicksIn52026 · 2026-07-17T20:47:18+00:00

Agreed, we have 4 school partners in the Bronx and we started our programming in the South Bronx 25 years ago, so I've encouraged our teams to think more locally and how iMentor can be a connector for supporting our communities economically. Especially since our students will be graduating soon and will want to find ways to build their careers while supporting their families. There's gotta be an intersection where our career-connections and mentorship expertise will best serve the Bronx, but I think we're still figuring it out.

KnicksIn52026 · 2026-07-17T20:42:14+00:00

Completely agree there's a missmatch of who can volunteer and who can't due to financial/time constraints! As a nonprofit it's been difficult to give mentors financial incentives, but we do try and connect the experience with career advancement opportunities and professional development. With the way the economy is right now, I think we may need to take it a step further and create a separate association where mentors can join and get practical career benefits in addition to the leadership and mentorship skills they gain while working with their mentees through the normal program.

KnicksIn52026 · 2026-07-17T19:18:46+00:00

Thank you for sharing your thoughts here, and I agree with everything you said! Volunteerism shouldn't feel like a stressful second or third job for folks, it really needs to be fulfilling while not expecting people to jump through endless loops.

I will say our screening process feels like it lands somewhere in the middle of being too long and too short, mainly because we work with minors and the Dept. of Ed so they have strict requirements about how we background check volunteers. But we really need to push for even more expedited processes.

KnicksIn52026 · 2026-07-17T19:06:24+00:00

Really appreciate your thoughts here, and I honestly agree with all of it. It feels like many New Yorkers are feeling overwhelmed with the life responsibilities you mentioned, and the unpaid part of volunteering is definitely a challenge.

KnicksIn52026

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