When designing your mentoring program, deciding what questions to ask in your signup form or matching rules to select can be incredibly difficult if you have to start from scratch.

With Mentorloop Pro, it’s easy to tailor your program to your goals with Program Themes: Classic, Diversity Equity & Inclusion, and Community.

These themes can be found on the Mentorloop Pro Package

To select the best option for your organization, here’s what you need to know.

Each Program Theme generates a signup form and a set of matching rules designed to orient your program towards your desired goals. Each theme is built on the success of hundreds of programs that have gone before you.  

All themes ask the basics:

• Gender
• Pronouns
• Job Title
• Work Experience
• Location
• Bio
• Ice Breakers
• LinkedIn Profile

The program themes will also recommend matches based on similarities in goals and skills, and will generally suggest for mentees to be matched with a more experienced mentor. 

Now that we have the similarities out of the way, let’s get into what kind of program each theme would be ideal for.

Classic

The Classic theme is great if you’re running a program for the first time, especially if your program has multiple goals. This is a go-to for internal company mentoring programs, especially ones that aim to connect employees, empower skills development and knowledge sharing or strengthen interdepartmental relationships. 

Examples of program goals that would benefit from using the Mentorloop Classic program theme:

• Strengthen cross-department working relationships
• Connect employees from different branches, regions, etc.
• Knowledge sharing between senior and junior employees
• General career development and guidance

DEI: Diversity Equity & Inclusion

As the name suggests, this theme is perfect for programs that are dedicated to promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion outcomes. 

Examples of program goals that would benefit from using the Mentorloop DEI program theme:

• Increase women and POC engagement or leadership
• Promote the welfare of employees with disabilities within the organization
• Provide support for cultural minorities within an organization

Community

This theme is great for industry associations and community organizations that run mentoring programs to foster better participation outcomes or connect people with shared advocacy, purpose, or field of interest. 

Examples of program goals that would benefit from using the Mentorloop Community program theme:

• Empowering members of a field of interest or study to share ideas to promote innovation
• Making personal and professional guidance available for members of a specific interest group (e.g. formerly incarcerated persons, parents coming back from parental leave, new immigrants entering the workforce)

How themes change your program

For many of these questions, you have the option to exclude them entirely in the form.

For some fields, like Department, Organization, Ice Breakers, and others, you can add more options if you find them necessary for your program.

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Advice from our Mentorloop Customer Success team:

Choosing a theme doesn't have to be daunting. We always ask our customers "what is the single most important thing you want your mentoring program to help you achieve?". Your answer should point you to the correct theme. If you have something really specific, you might benefit from working with one of our Customer Success Managers on an Enterprise plan."