Iowa Mentoring Partnership November Newsletter

NOVEMBER 2014

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NATIONAL MENTORING MONTH

The IMP offers many resources and opportunities to celebrate National Mentoring Month. Please read these items carefully and respond by the deadlines if you wish to participate.

DAY ON THE HILL

Mentoring Day on the Hill and the Excellence in Mentoring Awards will be held at the capitol on January 22, 2015 approximately 10 am- 2 pm. This will be held in conjuction with Volunteer Iowa Day.
Programs in good standing will have the opportunity to host a table in the Capitol Rotunda and meet with their legislators about the importance of funding mentoring.

If you are interested in hosting a table in the Capitol rotunda, please sign up here to reserve your space. More information to follow.

EXCELLENCE IN MENTORING AWARD NOMINATIONS

Excellence in Mentoring Awards recognize outstanding mentors in the state who have been mentoring for at least two years. The awards are presented in a ceremony at the capitol during Mentoring Day on the Hill. Nomination forms are available here and are due on November 10th.

NATIONAL MENTORING MONTH MATERIALS ORDER

Materials are available again for National Mentoring Month.
Please order here by Nov 10th. We received a limited number of materials from the National Mentoring Partnership but will do our best to accommodate all requests.

GOVERNOR'S CERTIFICATES OF RECOGNITION
In honor of National Mentoring Month, the Governor issues certificates of recognition to the mentors in our programs in good standing. Please fill out the spreadsheet here and return it by November 30 to mentor@iowa.gov. Please realize that we are requesting more than 3,000 certificates from the governor's office, so it is important to submit complete and accurate information by this deadline.

NATIONAL MENTORING MONTH IDEAS

These ideas for celebrating NMM were shared by programs in the quarterly reports. Thanks for sharing all of your great ideas. The topic for the monthly webinar in November is NMM. See the information under TRAINING.

All Foster Grandparents will be given a certificate and a small prize to honor them for National Mentoring Month in January

Social Media awareness campaign city-wide Dress Down Day.

I plan on having a training where volunteers can bring a potential new volunteer to attend and then sign up to mentor them as they train.

I would love to send the Governor's certificates out to our mentors.

We are hoping to do a social media campaign and plan to approach the media about doing a story about multiple organizations in the area and how they are celebrating mentors.

Will do a school board presentation, host a mentor lunch & learn and mentees write thank you notes to mentors

Each year we hold a 'Bigs' Night Out' event to celebrate and honor the volunteers in our community. We offer appetizers and a place to mingle with others. This is also our opportunity to present our 'Bigs of the Year' to those individuals that we feel have gone above and beyond our program expectations.

We will challenge local TeamMates chapter, do a chili feed fundraiser and have the Mentees do a recognition to their mentors

VFY participates in the proclamation signing, Mentoring Day on the Hill, and holds a mentor appreciation dinner. We also have a big write up in our local paper.

We will look to hold a celebration event this January as a combination Kinship Christmas Party and Mentor Appreciation event. We are still in the planning process, but we will be doing an interactive activity where the Mentor and Mentee will be doing an activity together.

In January we will have the group mentors write a great story about working with the mentees and post it on the Children of Promise website.

Attending the Day on the Hill, recognition at our school-based site programs, school board presentations, city and county officials presentations, and announcement in the local paper.

Mentoring lunch and learn events, mentor appreciation dinner, and recruitment campaign.

Thank you Mentor cards from mentees; recognition within the school buildings where matches meet.

We usually do a bowling party.

Posters, radio ads, table tents at local coffee/ice cream shops, church bulletin notices, gathering for prospective mentors.

We host a parent night at pack the gym where the mentor, mentee and parent eat together

Put an article in our local newspaper.

News releases and radio segments

We host our annual Grapevine event in January. It is a social where we honor our mentors and invite community members to learn more about the program.

We are planning to have our mentees submit a 'Nominate your Mentor' application to us and we will chose and have them honored at our annual Holiday party.

Hosting a "Chamber and Industry Coffee" in our community; Stories on local radio and in local newspaper; fundraising and PR community meal
Specific to our program, we hope to host a challenge to Y members to become mentors. In addition, the Dubuque Mentoring Partnership group will be working on acknowledging this as well.

We are planning "Mentoring Week" in partnership with Drake University and planning activities throughout the last month of January to increase recruitment of mentoring. We are also transitioning our volunteer appreciation events to January since the majority of CYC volunteers are mentors.

PROVIDER BOARD

The provider board has approved the following goals for FY '15 based on priorities for mentoring partnerships from the National Mentoring Partnership.

Goal 1: Advance the quality of the local mentoring field by building relationships with new and existing mentoring programs and provide capacity building trainings and technical assistance grounded in evidence-based approaches.
KEY STRATEGIES

Provide training opportunities for certified programs on the Elements of Effective Practice as well as other relevant topics
Utilize the National Mentoring Resource Center to provide training and technical assistance to local programs
Utilize knowledge base of program staff and strength of provider board regions to expand training capacity.

Goal 2: Expand public and private support and investment in mentoring through public awareness and advocacy efforts that foster communities that prioritize quality youth mentoring.
KEY STRATEGIES

Utilize Mentoring Day on the Hill and the Excellence in Mentoring Award to spotlight the importance of mentoring in Iowa
Enhance the role and visibility of the Iowa Mentoring Partnership through program certification logo and use of IMP logo on local program materials
Seek a high profile mentoring champion
Launch redesigned website and promote it
Collaborate with Million Women Mentors Iowa to recruit mentors and increase awareness

COACHES CHALLENGE

Coaches Challenge for football will run through Nov. 30th. Please report new coaches challenge recruits by Nov. 10 here. The comments below give you an idea how some programs are utilizing the Coaches' Challenge.

We have had lots of radio announcements and also a Wing Night to help recruit.

We have partnered with DeWitt football coach to do PSAs during games

We have challenged our Board to recruit two new mentors each.

We have distributed the flyer, and followed up via email and phone, to the football coaches at our local private college.

We have worked with the program to recruit & train mentors who are participating in our program because of this challenge.

Our coach is supportive of it and helps by asking his athletes to volunteer

Did a fundraiser pre-football game meal and had mentors and students recognized at half -time on the field.

We have created partnership with Lincoln and Drake communities to provide awareness of the benefits of mentoring youth.

Facebook

Website

CALENDAR

Nov 10 Excellence in Mentoring Awards Deadline

Nov 10 Coaches Challenge Reports Due

Nov 10 Mentoring Month Materials Deadline

Nov 20 Collaborative Webinar Series, Noon

Nov 30 Mentoring Month Mentor Certificates Order Deadline

FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES

Giving Tuesday

Giving Tuesday is a two year-old fundraising and non-profit awareness campaign that happens in December after the post-Thanksgiving shopping season, heavily promoted through social media channels. The campaign was created as an "antidote to consumption and consumerism", highlighting the profound impact crowdfunding and individual donors can make across America. The campaign has raised hundreds of millions of dollars to date with media impressions in the billions.

Giving Tuesday's website offers a multitude of tools & resources that I would encourage all to look through. One great video tool to start with is "Summer School--Making Giving Tuesday Work for Your Non-Profit", which outlines steps each non-profit can take to plan and execute a successful campaign. The Tools section also has downloadable graphics, messaging toolkits, fundraising case studies and more.

TRAINING

National Mentoring Month: Communicating as a Movement
Free Webinar
Thursday, November 20
Noon - 1:15 PM
How loud can we be as a mentoring movement?...very loud if we all join forces for National Mentoring Month! Join this webinar to learn how your involvement can raise awareness and resources not just for your program, but for mentoring programs throughout the country. Presenters will include the coordinator for the Burlington (VT) School District Mentoring Program who will bring the local perspective and a “how-to” overview for implementing a successful local campaign.
Register here.

Mentor Recognition

NE Regional Meeting

Thursday, December 4
11 am-1 pm,
Fayette County Helping Services, Fayette IA
Everyone is welcome to attend in person or by Skype.
More information available from kathys@helpingservices.org

NATIONAL MENTORING SUMMIT
January 28-30, 2015
This event is the only national forum that brings together practitioners, researchers, corporate partners, government and civic leaders, national youth-serving organizations and the network of affiliate Mentoring Partnerships to explore and advance mentoring’s positive impact on individuals and communities.Registration is now open for the summit. More information here.

WOMEN'S BASKETBALL COACHES CHALLENGE

In collaboration with Million Women Mentors Iowa, has been endorsed by the University of Iowa, University of Northern Iowa, Iowa State University and is being led by Drake University. The challenge will kick off at the Drake women's game on November 14th and run through March 1 with the goal of recruiting 500 new mentors with the emphasis on STEM mentoring. Look for further information on events at other games. Local coaches will receive information from the Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union and can sign up here. Keep the challenge going all winter!
Even if you do not have a STEM mentoring program, mentors from STEM careers opens a whole new world of potential recruits. MWM and the National Mentoring Partnership have created this action guide to engage stem mentors.