Tips for Getting the Most From a Mentor

IN THE TRENCHES

By Alison Stein Wellner

If it’s Friday, and it is between 10 and 11 a.m, it’s easy to find Wanda Y. Jenkins, of the Chattahoochee Valley Community Foundation, in Columbus, Ga.: She’s on the phone with Ruben Orduña, of the Boston Foundation.

What does Mr. Orduña, director of development at one of the oldest and most established community foundations in the nation, have to discuss with the operations manager of a small community foundation more than a thousand miles away? Plenty. Each week, in their phone conference, the pair discuss Ms. Jenkins’s career. She shares the concerns and challenges that come up during the course of her week, and Mr. Orduña offers advice, shares stories from his own career, and provides a heaping dose of encouragement.

In other words, he is being a mentor. Having a trusted adviser can be a powerful asset in the world of philanthropy, especially for early or midcareer charity employees. A mentor who has reached the senior level of a nonprofit organization can keep a benevolent eye on a protégé’s career progress. In the best circumstances, he or she is available on a regular basis for advice and conversation — and is often willing to open up the address book to plug a promising protégé into a hard-earned network of contacts. In return, the hope is that the protégé will serve as mentor to another person years down the line.

A mentor can offer advice that covers both the big picture and the little details of a nonprofit manager’s work. On a recent Friday, for instance, Ms. Jenkins was worried about a particularly onerous administrative task: She was installing new accounting software into the foundation’s computer system. As she discussed it with Mr. Orduña, he realized that she needed to get a larger perspective on her job.

“She was so focused on getting that piece off the ground that she wasn’t getting outside, meeting with the nonprofit organizations and donors in her community,” he says. “I talked to her about the need to get out of the office. I told her, ‘You need to get out and meet the grant recipients and the donors as a way to recharge your batteries, ‘” he says. On a more tactical level, in another conversation, Mr. Orduña helped Ms. Jenkins brainstorm strategies for involving young people in the foundation’s work.

Ms. Jenkins says Mr. Orduña’s advice has helped her.

“Working in a community foundation, it’s just not something that you walk in the door and know what to do,” she says. “It’s great to be partnered with a mentor.”

Ms. Jenkins and Mr. Orduña found each other through a program administered by the Council on Foundations, in Washington. While many people in the nonprofit world acquire their mentors through a professional-organization program, or by simply walking up and asking at social events, others also find mentors in their own workplaces.

That is what happened to Julia Fabris, deputy director of programming at the Illinois Arts Alliance/Foundation, which helps increase public support of the state’s arts organizations in Chicago. Her mentor, Alene Valkanas, is her group’s executive director. Ms. Fabris says the two women have frequent conversations about the path of her career, talks that grew out of routine office chats that gradually became more regular and wide-ranging.

“Alene talks freely to me about her experience and how she got to where she is, and she also is very good about listening to my experiences, and talking to me about what would be good for my career, and what the next thing is for me,” she says.

In addition to regular talks about Ms. Fabris’s career, Ms. Valkanas watches for opportunities to give her protégée access to her network of professional contacts, and often sends Ms. Fabris to national events in her stead. For example, thanks to her mentor, Ms. Fabris says, she will soon be the only person on the National Community Arts Network’s executive committee who is not an executive director — an important achievement in her field.

“That’s just a really great thing for me to be able to learn from those other people who are on that board, and also to have the experience of representing our organization and articulating our mission,” she says.

Nonprofit mentors and protégés offer the following suggestions for charity employees who want to get the most from this unique relationship:

Keep specific goals in mind. To get the best advice from a mentor, it is important for a protégé to know which questions to ask, says Suzanne Seiter, vice president for development at the National Constitution Center, in Philadelphia, a nonprofit group that teaches the public about the U.S. Constitution.

Three years ago, Ms. Seiter was paired with her protégée, Sabree Barnes, by her local chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals. Ms. Barnes was working in a small social-services organization at the time.

“She was a jack-of-all-trades, and was trying to get some focus into her workday and prioritize what needed to be done, in terms of cost and time and energy,” Ms. Seiter says. The two women would get together on a regular basis at Ms. Seiter’s office, and Ms. Barnes would come prepared with specific queries, from how to produce brochures to how she should focus her career. Ms. Seiter gave her advice, and also introduced Ms. Barnes to other experts in her Rolodex as appropriate — to a graphic designer, for instance, to help answer questions about brochures.

Set a schedule. It is important for the mentor to manage the protégé’s expectations, says Mr. Orduña. As successful professionals, many advisers have jam-packed days, and setting aside regular time for protégés is essential — both to make sure that the protégé gets enough of the mentor’s time and to ensure that the mentor isn’t overwhelmed with a constant barrage of questions. “Scheduling is a necessity,” he says. “I know that on Fridays, I’m going to touch base with Wanda. I allow about an hour and a half in my schedule. Sometimes it takes 45 minutes or so, but you never know.” It Is also possible to do a great deal of advising by e-mail, says Ms. Seiter. Due to her busy schedule, and that of her protégée, e-mail and telephone are used most frequently in their relationship.

Pay it forward. The best way to thank a mentor for his or her time and attention is to bestow a kind of immortality by passing the adviser’s knowledge on. “If you’re able to be partnered with a good mentor, and they’re able to regurgitate all their information and experience, you stand to obtain a wealth of knowledge,” says Ms. Jenkins. She says she intends to pass that wealth along. “It’s paying it forward, there are no other words for it. I call it an investment that God has put in me, and I’m going to pass that investment on to someone else.”

Got ideas about finding mentors and maintaining a productive relationship with them? Tell us in the Share Your Brainstorms online forum.