Examining Youth Mentoring Services across America: Findings from the 2016 National Mentoring Program Survey

In 2016, MENTOR and its affiliates led the largest data collection effort in almost 20 years to examine the prevalence and practices of youth mentoring programs across America. The effort had had three major goals: (1) Better understand the structure, services, and challenges of mentoring programs so that MENTOR and its affiliates could provide them with appropriate professional development, training, and technical assistance; (2) Identify what programs are serving and the groups of adults that are stepping up to mentor youth in programs so that they might boost mentor recruitment and ensure that youth with the most needs are being served adequately; and (3) Provide MENTOR with a baseline understanding of the field that can be monitored for trends and used to inform a growth strategy. In the end, the national survey captured information on: (1) 1,271 mentoring agencies and 1,451 distinct mentoring programs; (2) 413,237 youth served by 193,823 mentors and supported by 10,804 staff members; and (3) The services, practices, settings, goals, challenges, and financial resources of these programs. MENTOR believes this to be the largest and most comprehensive data set about youth mentoring programs ever developed and the remainder of this report details the main findings and conclusions from the survey results. The authors think this information sheds considerable light on the current state of mentoring programs in the United States and highlights paths forward that can strengthen this field over time. [Funding for this report was provided by Altria Group, Inc.]