For the past year, we’ve been working to develop a mentorship toolkit for individuals and organizations working in conservation. This work comes from feedback we’ve heard across the Western Collaborative Conservation Network (WCCN). While not a panacea for all of the challenges we face in collaborative conservation, effective mentoring for individuals and organizations can address several, including:
- Effective transfer of knowledge, experience and expertise. Mentorship can help prevent the loss of professional knowledge that comes from experience. As people leave conservation work, whether to retire or to explore other opportunities, they take with them the skills and expertise acquired throughout their career. Mentorship opens doors both to learning from past experiences as well as creating space for new ideas and methods.
- Impactful new employee orientation and onboarding. A key to employee retention is great onboarding and continued support of employee growth and development. Having mentorship opportunities in the workplace creates broad understanding and support of organizational vision and culture.
- Building relationships and social capital. Expanding our networks helps leverage resources, opportunities and knowledge. Maintaining connections with mentors/mentees naturally expands the circle of support, expertise and connection. Healthy mentorship relationships are innately positive and supportive (in both directions), which can inspire and empower participants, and prevent feelings of burnout or isolation.
Our working group has conducted interviews with mentors, mentees and organizations across the US to glean insights into mentorship practices: what works, what doesn’t, and how mentorship is helping address a myriad of challenges. Here’s a brief sample of the themes emerging from the interviews.
Time and Talk: the Recipe for Mentorship Success
Over and over again, nearly all of our interviewees have said similar things about the importance of investing time into mentorship. When recalling some of their most successful mentorship endeavors, most believe that being disciplined in establishing a cadence for regular engagement (meetings, calls, emails) is a key predictor of the health and success of a mentoring relationship.
With a plan to engage, next is communication. First, it’s communicating what participants would like from mentorship – upskilling, networking, career advice – these are common goals for mentees. Alternatively, it is important for mentors to be clear about what they can and are willing to offer, and to delineate any important boundaries that they have. Beyond this, it’s also critical for both mentees and mentors to communicate about expectations and time commitment to the mentorship relationship.
When asked why mentorship relationships or programs fail, lack of time investment and poor communication nearly always emerge as the top reasons.
Insights for Mentees: Remember that YOU get to “mentor your mentor”
Many of our interviewees talked about the 2-way nature of great mentorship. That is, BOTH participants can learn and grow from their time together. You have as much to share with your mentor as they have to share with you.
Another piece of advice: spend time identifying the specific outcomes you’re hoping to achieve with your mentor, and clearly articulate your needs. In turn, make sure you ask your mentor what they need from you, too.
Insights for Mentors: Perfection is the Enemy of Good
Mentoring someone should not be intimidating or extremely time consuming! You don’t have to be perfect. Just be honest about how much time you have available to mentor and what you’re willing to do (or not do) to help. Listen and look for opportunities to empower your mentee – for example, rather than tell them what to do, ask them guiding questions and share stories of your own experiences.
As a mentor, you can learn and grow too! Through a long-term relationship with your mentee you can gain new connections through their expanding network, find new ideas and fresh perspectives, see new insights as you reflect on your career and experience, hone your leadership and communication skills, and develop a sense of fulfilment in supporting the next generation of conservationists.
Insights for Organizations: Mentorship can Boost the Health of Your Organization
Creating a mentorship program within your organization is not a “nice to do.” It may be the thing you really need to promote a culture of continuous improvement, learning and empowerment that leads to durable conservation impacts on the ground. A great mentorship program can improve onboarding, employee well-being, retention, succession planning and organizational impact. Most of the time needed for building a mentorship program is in the establishment and matchmaking process to provide a strong foundation for a mentorship relationship. Whether formal or organic, organizations that provide the support and time their teams need to develop mentorship relationships can reap the benefits.
These are just a few of the many themes that have emerged as we’ve conducted interviews. Next up: a deeper dive into these data to get to more of the nuanced take-aways and resources to include in the mentorship toolkit. This work will inform the content of the toolkit and the resources we’ll be able to provide for toolkit users.
Our work to date has been insightful, inspiring and affirming that our decision to proceed in developing mentorship resources for the conservation community is a smart move. We’re excited to share more about the toolkit soon!
We need your help to cross the finish line!
With generous support from the Kendeda Fund, we, as a volunteer working group of eight researchers, have conducted nearly 30 interviews of mentors, mentees, and mentorship program coordinators. Compiling lived experiences and research literature in this and other fields such as higher education and business, we are developing a freely accessible Mentorship Toolkit with worksheets and reflection exercises, as well as a peer-reviewed research paper in collaboration with 6 WCCN partner organizations. We have almost completed Phase 1 of our project, which you can learn more about here.
However, we are in need of more funding to help us get across the finish line to:
- Finalize the toolkit content and polish the graphic design for publication,
- Develop a training workshop for future mentors and mentorship program coordinators,
- Submit the research paper to a scientific journal,
- Update the toolkit after a year of use and incorporate all of the feedback that we receive, and
- Hire a student emerging leader who will contribute to the completion of the tasks above.
We hope to have the toolkit and training completed before the WCCN’s in-person convening in May 2026 so that we can host a mentorship training workshop for the projected 120+ participants at the event.
We are requesting $15,000 to cover the work that needs to be completed over the next year. You can read our pitch here.
If you know of anyone who may be interested in learning more about this project or supporting the development of our mentorship toolkit, please contact Nicole Reese (nicole@crowd-conservation.org). Please help us share our update and request broadly!
This is an opportunity to equip our conservationists with the skills they need to work across divides.
Thank you for supporting this collaborative effort, and keep an eye out for our published Mentorship Toolkit coming soon.
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