The Mentoring Bench gives you one place to manage everyone in your mentoring programme, keeping participants available for future intakes when they step back, so you can bring them back quickly without starting from scratch. If you run more than one programme, it also works across all of them from a single view.

What is the Mentoring Bench?

Instead of removing someone, you can bench them, pausing their participation while keeping their record intact, so they can pick up right where they left off when the time is right. Reactivation is faster and simpler than removing and re-adding someone manually.

The Mentoring Bench is a list of everyone in your mentoring organisation, mentors and mentees, active and benched. From one place you can see who's active, who's on the bench, and invite people back into an open programme in bulk. If you run multiple programmes, the bench spans all of them.

When would I use the bench?

The bench is designed for situations where you want to keep a participant available for the future without keeping them active. Common uses include:

• Parking someone who's taking a break — bench a participant who needs to step back for a while so they're kept out of matching and don't skew your matching data, ready to bring back when they're available again. To identify who might need this, filter the bench for active participants and look for anyone with Loop capacity = 0/∞ and a Last activity date before a threshold you choose (for example, more than three months ago). Those people are still taking up capacity but aren't engaging — benching them keeps your active list accurate.
• Keeping participants ready at the end of a programme — when a programme closes, bench participants rather than removing them so they're easy to reactivate for a future intake without needing to be manually re-added. From the Participants tab within the programme, use Change status to move people to Benched before closing.
• Reactivating participants from a closed programme — bring past mentors or mentees back for a new intake without asking them to start from scratch. Filter the bench by the closed programme name to see everyone who was part of it.
• Moving people between programmes — shift a participant from one programme to another yourself, without needing Customer Success to do it for you. Filter by the source programme, select the people you want to move, then use the bulk invite flow to send them to the destination programme.
• Drawing on a central pool — when you're short on mentors for a new programme, invite suitable people who are already benched. Filter the bench by Role: Mentor and Programs (not in): your new programme to find relevant candidates quickly.

What common challenges does the bench help solve?

The bench addresses several participant management situations that previously required workarounds or a call to Customer Success:

• Disengaged participants — instead of leaving inactive participants in your programme where they affect matching ratios and capacity counts, you can identify them (Loop capacity = 0/∞, no recent activity) and bench them cleanly. Their record is preserved and they're easy to reactivate; your active programme data stays meaningful. This applies whether you run one programme or many.
• Faster reactivation — benched participants can be reinvited in bulk directly from the Bench, with their profile data pre-filled. Removed participants need to be manually un-removed from within the programme first. If there's a chance you'll want someone back, benching them saves time later.
• Copying profiles between programmes — when you invite someone from the bench into a new programme, Mentorloop pre-fills their signup form using their existing profile data (favouring the most recently updated value for each field). Participants only need to review and confirm, rather than filling everything in again.
• Participant management across programmes — if you run multiple programmes, the bench is your single cross-programme roster. Rather than switching between individual programme views to find someone, you can search and filter from one place and click through to any programme-level detail from there.
• Programme recruitment — when launching a new programme or a new intake, the bench lets you identify and invite people who have already engaged with your mentoring before, without any manual list-building or re-importing. Use the Programs (not in) filter to find people in your organisation who aren't yet in the new programme.

What do the participant statuses mean?

Every participant in the bench has a status that tells you how they relate to your programme:

• Active — in an active mentoring loop, or available to be matched in an active programme. Active participants count towards your programme capacity.
• Benched — participation paused. Their profile and history are kept intact, their open loops are paused, and they won't appear in matching. You can reactivate them at any time, or they can rejoin themselves when they're ready.
• Removed — fully removed from a programme. This is the last resort, reserved for cases such as misconduct or someone who has permanently left your organisation. Their profile and activity history are archived and remain visible to you as a coordinator, but their loops are archived rather than paused. Removed participants need to be manually un-removed before they can be reinvited. If there is any chance you may want someone back, bench them instead.

How do I bench or change someone's status?

From the participant management view, use the Change status action to move a participant between statuses, for example, from Active to Benched, or to bring a benched participant back. This replaces the previous "Remove / Unremove" option.

Benching is managed by you as the Program Coordinator. Participants can't bench themselves, and while someone is on the bench they can't take any action other than rejoining a programme when you invite them or when they choose to rejoin themselves.

Who can I see from the Bench screen?

The bench opens filtered to show your benched participants, but it holds more than just benched people. It contains everyone in your organisation, active and benched, so by changing the filters you can see your active participants too, not only those on the bench. If you run multiple programmes, participants from all of them appear here.

Three things are worth keeping in mind:

• Benched is the default view, not the whole list. When the bench first loads it shows your benched participants, because that's the most common reason to open it. Clear or change the filters to see everyone, including active participants.
• You see your programmes only. The bench shows participants from the programmes you have access to. If your organisation runs programmes you're not on, their participants won't appear for you.
• Removed participants are accessible via a status filter. Removed participants don't appear in the default bench view, but you can filter by Status: Removed to find them. From there you can review their record and, if appropriate, change their status to Benched so they become available to invite into a future programme.

What does the participant detail view show?

Selecting a participant in the bench shows their activity across your programme or programmes, rather than a full profile. At a glance you can see:

• Their role (mentor, mentee, or both).
• Which programmes they're active in.
• Their loop capacity, aggregated across all your programmes rather than for a single programme.
• Their most recent activity.

From here you can click through to that participant within a specific programme if you need their full programme-level detail.

Can I filter and export the bench?

Yes. In this first version you can filter the bench by Roles, Programs, Programs (not in), Status, and Loop capacity. The bench defaults to sorting by Last activity. You can also export the bench, with the export containing what's currently shown in the table.

How do I invite participants from the bench into a programme?

The bench lets you invite people into an open programme in bulk, which is ideal for reactivating past participants or running a new intake. The flow works like this:

• Select the participants you want from the bench.
• Choose the open programme you're inviting them into.
• Map their existing profile fields to the destination programme's signup form.
• Send the invitation.

Where possible, profile data is pre-filled from participants' existing signup forms, favouring the most recently updated value for each field. Participants still complete the destination programme's signup form, with the pre-filled fields clearly indicated so they only need to review and confirm.

You can only invite participants into a programme you have access to, and can only move people from programmes you have access to.

What do the invitation results tell me?

After you send invitations, a results screen shows the outcome for each participant:

• Removed from the target programme — they need to be un-removed from within that programme before they can be reinvited.
• Already invited or already active — no duplicate invite is sent; resend from within the programme itself if needed.
• Previously benched from that programme, or new to it — they're reinvited.

Frequently asked questions

Is the bench available on Mentorloop Pro?

Yes. The Mentoring Bench is available whether you run one programme or many. The dedicated bench view in the left navigation is an organisation-level view, and the benched status applies to all programmes regardless of plan. If you run a single programme, you can still bench participants rather than removing them, keeping them available for a future intake.

What can a benched participant do?

While someone is benched they can't take any action other than rejoining a programme, either when you invite them back in, or by choosing to rejoin themselves when they're ready. Benching itself is managed by coordinators; participants cannot bench themselves.

What do participants see or receive when they are benched?

Here is what changes for a participant when they are benched:

• Their open loops are paused, no new messages or meetings can be sent or scheduled while benched.
• Any pending Self Match requests are closed.
• They won't appear in matching and won't receive new matches.
• Their profile and history are fully preserved.
• When reactivated, they pick up right where they left off.
• They can also choose to rejoin the programme themselves at any time.
• They do not receive a notification by default, see below.

A participant was removed from a programme. Can I bench them instead?

Yes, but this needs to be done from the Participants tab within the programme, not from the Bench screen itself. Open the relevant programme, go to the Participants tab, change the Status filter to Removed, find the participant, and use Change status to move them to Benched. Once benched, they'll appear in your Bench and can be invited into a future programme or intake from there.

Alternatively, you can filter the Bench by Status: Removed to find removed participants directly and change their status from there.

If you have a long list of removed participants to convert, contact your Customer Success Manager or Mentorloop support and we can help with a bulk update.

Why do some participants I removed now show as Benched?

With the launch of the Mentoring Bench, we ran a one-time status migration across all organisations:

• Removed participants who had rejoining allowed were moved to Benched.
• Participants who were still marked as Active in a now-closed programme were also moved to Benched.

Their profiles and history are fully intact. They're now ready to be invited into a future programme or intake straight from your Bench.