We are one: Celebrating one year of the Charity Mentoring Network
On the 22 January 2025, the Charity Mentoring Network celebrated its first birthday. It has been an incredible journey and we want to celebrate this milestone by sharing our progress so far, what we have learned and what we have planned for the year ahead.
The story so far…
The vision
The Charity Mentoring Network was born out of conversations with charities that had no way of easily offering mentoring to their organisations due to time and budget constraints. The development of mentoring platforms solved this problem and Martin Baker, the network’s founder was quick to seize the opportunity.
Baker says, “Technology provided a scalable, low-cost way of providing mentoring and meant we could connect all UK charities so that they can share mentors, making the sector more efficient and effective through the sharing of knowledge and experience.”
With technology partner Push Far, the Charity Mentoring Network became a reality.
Making it happen
The PushFar mentoring platform is the engine that powers the Charity Mentoring Network. It has been built to support mentoring and Ed Johnson, Push Far’s CEO and co-founder, wanted to support Baker’s vision.
Johnson says, “Working for a charity can be incredibly demanding and sometimes an isolating experience. When we set out to support the CMN, my hope was that our platform would not only help upskill people, but connect them at the same time. It’s great to see this take off in the way it has.”
Early adopters
The network started with 30 early adopter charities, including Shelter, Action Aid, Plan UK International, Sue Ryder, St Mungo’s and Alzheimer’s Society, who wanted to use mentoring to accelerate people development.
Mentoring is important to the charity sector as it connects experienced professionals with those who are new or less experienced, transferring knowledge, skills and experience, which is especially important to smaller charities with limited training budgets, and where lack of expertise within the organisation limits potential. Mentoring ultimately leads to better and more impactful programmes and services.
Tania Hummel, Director of People and Engagement, Whizz Kidz
Charities have joined the network
Corporates have joined the network
People are registered on the platform
What we’ve learned so far…
The challenges
Launching a mentoring programme is a significant undertaking. Members report that the challenges are not simply about communications and engagement. Organisational readiness is a key factor, as are staff capacity, the perception of learning and understanding what is meant by mentoring as opposed to coaching.
When a mentoring programme is new to the organisation there are many factors to consider to make it work. Over the last year, members of the network have been on a journey, coming together at our monthly members meetings to share their challenges and, more importantly, how to overcome them.
The successes
And overcome them they have. When it comes to people development charities have had to be creative in their thinking. That creativity is clear to see when it comes to mentoring. Members share ideas for how to engage senior leaders, who to target with mentoring, how and why. And they also share practical tips such as how to promote mentoring in your organisation.
The rapid growth of the network in our first year reflects the successes our members have had. And behind the numbers are some powerful stories…
A non-Samaritans mentee who is being mentored by a Samaritans staff member
The network effect
The power of the network
Each month members are invited to join a virtual members’ meeting where they can share their progress on launching and embedding mentoring into their organisation. Members share what’s going well and ask each other to share tips and tactics. Members who are further on in their journey share insights and experiences with those who are starting out.
The benefits of learning together
Learning from and each other is a core part of the network and builds on the approach taken by the CMN’s sister network, the Charity Learning Consortium.
And this sharing also acts as an important feedback loop for the platform, generating ideas to enhance the platform and user experience. There have been a number of updates throughout the year based on members’ feedback.
The introduction of coporate members
A part of Martin Baker’s vision for the network was to open the platform to corporates so that their employees could use their annual charity days to become mentors to charity mentees. Corporate members are now starting to join the network and we are looking forward to seeing how these corporate-charity mentoring relationships evolve.
Mentoring is an amazing development opportunity to offer to any employee in any sector. Social learning has been found to be one of the most effective ways of developing knowledge, skills and mindsets, and mentoring is very much an excellent social learning opportunity. The charity sector attracts a community of employees are very dedicated to serving the cause of their organisation as well as the wider community, including through collaboration with other charities, companies and institutions. These are the individuals who will gladly support fellow counterparts in other charities, firstly coming from that place of serving and helping others, and secondly, out of empathy to the fact that the charity sector is also often limited in resources that can be dedicated to staff development. Thus, being a lower-cost and effective option, mentoring is an absolute saviour for the charity sector.
Margarita (Palmer-) Stanelik – Head of People, University of Southampton Students’ Union
I am really enjoying being a mentor.
I found the process of being matched with a mentee really straight forward.
Although I’m the mentor I have learnt a lot from the conversations and discussions with my mentee! It has also increased my self-awareness regarding my skills and experience through investing into my mentee. It has been wonderful to see my mentee grow in confidence and step into some new ways of working as a direct result of the mentoring sessions.
A Samaritans staff who has become a Mentor
There is only so much you can teach people through training and content. People who develop and progress effectively develop constructive relationships across the organisation. Mentoring allows people to tap in those nuggets of wisdom from people who have demonstrated why these learning points are key to success.
Paul Wells, Head of Learning and Development, St Mungo’s
Organisations across the charity sector share similar values and exist to make a difference in the lives of many people but we also face similar challenges. Mentoring is the perfect vehicle for sharing knowledge, skills and experience across the sector to help maximise our impact, build our workforce and overcome some of those challenges.
Rich Broadway, Organisational Development and Learning Specialist, Alzheimer’s Society.