This article explains how to manage participant status in Mentorloop. The normal flow is Active → Benched → Active. Removing a participant is a last resort, reserved for people who have permanently left your organisation or breached conduct.
How do I change a participant's status?
You can change a participant's status from anywhere you see their name in the programme, either from the Participants tab within a programme, or from the Mentoring Bench at the organisation level.
- Go to Manage program from the left sidebar and click Participants, or open the Mentoring Bench.
- Find the participant and click their name to open their profile.
- Scroll down to Danger zone and click Change status.
- Select the status you want to move them to, Active or Benched.
- Enter the programme name to confirm, then click the action button to apply the change.
You can also change status in bulk. From the Participants tab, select multiple participants and use the Change status action at the top of the list.
Active or Benched, which should I choose?
Active — the participant is in an active loop or available to be matched. Active participants count towards your programme capacity.
Benched — participation is paused. Their profile and loop history are preserved, their open loops are paused, and they won't appear in matching. They can be reactivated at any time, or choose to rejoin themselves. Use this whenever you want to step someone back temporarily, it keeps your active data accurate and makes reactivation straightforward.
When should I bench someone?
Benching is the right move in most situations where a participant is stepping back. Common reasons include:
- Taking a break — they need to pause without losing their place.
- Disengaged but not gone — they're not engaging but you'd like to keep them available for a future intake.
- End of a cohort — bench participants when a programme closes so you can reactivate them easily next time.
- Moving between programmes — bench in the source programme and reinvite from the Bench into the destination.
When you bench someone, their open loops are paused rather than closed, they pick up right where they left off when reactivated. You also have the option to notify them by email; this is off by default.
When should I remove someone?
Removing a participant is a last resort. Use it only when someone has permanently left your organisation or has breached conduct. In every other situation, bench them instead.
The Remove option appears in the Change status modal, separate from the Active/Benched options, as a deliberate reminder that it's not the normal path.
What's the difference between Benched and Removed?
Both statuses preserve a participant's profile and activity history. The key differences are:
- Loops — benching pauses open loops. Removing archives them; archived loops cannot be resumed.
- Reactivation — benched participants can be reinvited in bulk from the Bench with their profile pre-filled, or they can rejoin themselves. Removed participants must be manually un-removed from within the programme first before they can be reinvited.
- Matching — neither benched nor removed participants appear in matching or receive new matches.
If there is any chance you may want someone back, bench them rather than removing them.
Before you remove someone, close their loops first. Removing archives loops without closing them, which can cause old loops to re-open if the participant is re-added later.
How do I re-add a removed participant?
Removed participants don't appear in the default Participants view. To find and re-add them:
- Go to Participants from the left sidebar.
- 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 Mentoring Bench and can be reinvited into a programme from there.
Re-adding via the Bench
You can also filter the Mentoring Bench by Status: Removed to find removed participants across all your programmes in one place, change their status to Benched, and then reinvite them from there. This is especially useful if you have removed participants across multiple programmes.