Manual mentoring program management means running every part of your mentoring program, from participant signups and mentor-mentee matching, to progress check-ins and reporting, using general-purpose tools like spreadsheets, forms, and email, rather than dedicated mentoring software.
It’s a viable approach, especially for smaller programs. And if you’re going to do it, it’s worth doing it properly. This guide walks through each stage of the process, from getting people signed up to measuring program success, so you can run a well-structured program regardless of the tools you’re working with.
Quick note:
If you’re still in the research phase and looking for a guide on how to set it all up, check out our guide on How To Start A Mentoring Program.
And if you’re curious how much time all of this manual management actually adds up to, we’ve calculated it →
How to Manage Participant Signups and Profiles
It all starts with a good signup form. And when managing your mentoring program manually, it’s up to you to create a structured form that captures essential information from potential mentees and mentors. Include basic details such as professional background, areas of interest, desired outcomes, and availability, but overall, let your program goals guide you here. Make sure the information you’re collecting is relevant to your program’s goals and how you want to match. For example, if your program aims to connect employees from different departments, it follows that you include a required field about their current role and department on the signup form. If the goal is to connect industry members across the globe to share knowledge about industry best practices, identifying their current location is key.
We recommend using tools like Google Forms or SurveyMonkey to build your signup form and collect data as these tools help you organize your data after participants have filled out your form. It also helps that these lists are searchable as this will be very handy for matching later on.
It’s also vital to make sure you’ve made your signup form accessible to everyone, whether you choose to do it through an online platform, email, or physical copies. If you’re going with a digital/online signup process, make sure the link or a QR code can be found on all of your marketing comms. If you’ve chosen to go with physical signup forms, make sure they’re easily accessible in common areas or that people know who or where to get them from.
Sending out emails to remind people to sign up is relatively easy as long as you have a list. If you don’t, you’ll have to start that list from scratch, which can take a lot of time and be a bit of a cumbersome process. If your program is open to everyone, then this is a bit easier as all you have to do is hit “send to all.” If not, make sure you allow enough time to collect the relevant contact information and double-check to ensure that 1) no one is missed, and 2) no one is on the list that shouldn’t be.
With Mentorloop, you can build your cohort with ease whether you choose to open it to everyone or to select people. You can use a single link to your signup form for all your marketing and recruitment comms or upload a CSV file of your potential mentors and mentees. And because your participants create their own profiles when they sign up, there’s no need for you to input, organize, and match up your data. Easy peasy!
As a bonus, Mentorloop also organizes your participant data and gives you powerful search, tagging, and filtering – making every part of running a mentoring program easier. 😉
How to Match Mentors and Mentees Manually
After all that, it’s time to review each application carefully. Go back to your goals and matching criteria. Highlight similarities and alignments in participant profiles and begin matching mentees and mentors based on their compatibility, complementary skills, and shared interests. Be sure to review all pairings at the end to make your final checks, then create your list of final pairings.
Then, it’s time to connect each mentoring pair personally via email or another messaging service your organisation is using. This doesn’t need to be extremely formal. You can make intros via Slack or Teams if your organisation’s culture is more casual.
Wondering how long matching actually takes? At 10 minutes per thoughtful match pair (before reshuffling and review cycles) it adds up fast. See the full breakdown →
Mentorloop helps you make intelligent matches with the best chance for success, no matter how you choose to match.
Whether you choose to match manually for a highly curated program or empower your participants to match themselves, Mentorloop’s unique algorithm helps make matches with the best chance for success using Recommended Matches. And on Mentorloop Enterprise, you can make equitable matches for your entire cohort in minutes with Smart Match.
How to Track Mentoring Progress Without Software
Within the first few weeks, make sure you check whether your mentoring pairs are meeting and how the partnership is going. The important thing to check, especially in the first few weeks of the program, is whether meetings are taking place.
Once you’ve heard back, use a spreadsheet or other forms of tracking to mark who’s meeting and who’s lagging behind. Reach out to the stragglers and see how you can help facilitate them getting their partnerships off the ground.
How to Collect and Manage Participant Feedback
Depending on how your mentoring program is structured, the time to do this may vary. But when it’s time to gather feedback on your participants’ mentoring relationships and what your pairs have accomplished together, it’s good to standardize the questions so you can measure everything the same way. Use a survey (you can use trusted tools like Google Forms or SurveyMonkey again), and then feed this information into a spreadsheet (you can use the one you’ve already created or start a new one exclusively for this purpose).
Pro Tip: We advise that you don’t just collect feedback at the end of the program. It’s best to do this throughout so you leave yourself room to troubleshoot or course-correct if need be. Also, this part of running a program may sound tedious, and it tends to be, but it is vital to making sure your participants, and therefore your program, are tracking towards success.
With Mentorloop, you won’t have to manually do any of this – Mentorloop’s Sentiment Feedback Analysis System does it for you. Mentorloop does the heavy lifting in collecting quantitative andd qualitative feedback from your participants and organizes the data for you in beautiful, ready-to-share reports.
How to Measure and Report on Mentoring Program Success
At Mentorloop, we measure mentoring programs a little bit differently.
Watch this video to learn more:
You’ll need to generate reports on how the entire cohort is progressing. After all, you can’t improve what you can’t measure! Make your survey data visual by generating tables and graphs that can better highlight trends and performance metrics. These can be created with whatever spreadsheet software you’re using, whether it be Excel on PCs, Numbers on Macs, or via Google Sheets in the Google Suite.
Try to get both qualitative and quantitative data on how your program is progressing. Numbers are great, but it’s always more meaningful when the humans behind the numbers can provide them with context. After all, mentoring is all about human connection, so it stands to reason that we include the human aspect in reporting on it.
This video explains why we advise program coordinators to collect both kinds of data:
Want to know how many hours reporting takes manually vs on Mentorloop?
See the data →
On Mentorloop, your Live Program Dashboard is designed to assist you in focusing on the five key indicators of program success with snapshots of key program data. It then makes these bits of information actionable for you with Insights that guide you on how to improve or maintain mentoring momentum.
You also have a live feed of Highlights that show you how your cohort has been tracking, allowing you to see what’s happening in your program as it happens, or catch up on key events if you’ve been away for a few days.
And if you want rich data that you can slice and dice, no worries, Mentorloop has that too! 😉
![[Webinar Kit] Prove It: How to Measure and Report Mentoring Success Explore the common measuring and reporting challenges, what ROI really is for your mentoring program, and how to measure and report what matters with confidence.](https://no-cache.hubspot.com/cta/default/4058869/interactive-195745935504.png)
Frequently Asked Questions About Manual Mentoring Program Management
Can you manage a mentoring program manually?
Yes. Manual mentoring program management is possible using tools like Google Forms, spreadsheets, and email. It works best for smaller programs with fewer than 50 participants. As your program grows, the administrative load (particularly around matching, tracking, and reporting) increases significantly.
What tools do you need to manage a mentoring program manually?
At a minimum, you’ll need a form tool for signups (such as Google Forms or SurveyMonkey), a spreadsheet for tracking participants and matches, and an email or messaging tool for communications and check-ins. Many coordinators also use a separate survey tool to collect mid-program and end-of-program feedback.
How long does it take to manage a mentoring program manually?
It depends on program size, but manual management is time-intensive. Matching alone can take several hours for a cohort of 50 or more participants, and ongoing check-ins, feedback collection, and reporting add to that. Coordinators running large programs manually often find it becomes a part-time job in itself.
What are the biggest challenges of managing a mentoring program manually?
The most common challenges are: keeping track of which pairs are meeting regularly, collecting and analysing feedback consistently, and generating reports that demonstrate program impact. These tasks are manageable at small scale but become difficult to maintain as programs grow.
When should you consider mentoring software instead?
If your program has more than 50 participants, runs multiple cohorts, or needs to demonstrate ROI to leadership, dedicated mentoring software is worth considering. The time saved on matching, tracking, and reporting typically outweighs the cost and it reduces the risk of a poorly run program due to coordinator overload.
Is Manual Mentoring Program Management Right for You?
If you have a small program, you can definitely follow these steps and manage a mentoring program manually. However, if you have a larger pool of participants or plan to grow your program, the admin hours add up fast — between 80 and 537 hours per year depending on cohort size.
See how many hours your program takes →
After all, if your program is too hard to manage, it will probably be poorly run despite your best efforts. And poorly run programs can do more harm than good. According to The Atlantic:
“Researchers have established that negative mentoring experiences caused more intense emotional and behavioural responses among employees compared to positive incidents.”
That’s why, when it comes to mentoring, it’s not just about the program’s intention, but also its execution. In fact, a 2024 Harvard Business Review analysis found that despite 98% of Fortune 500 companies having mentoring programs, only 37% of professionals actually benefit from them, and that’s a gap that often comes down to how programs are run, not whether they exist.
Thankfully, if you don’t want to do everything manually, we’re here to help! Find out how Mentorloop can help you run your best mentoring program yet by checking out which Mentorloop plan is right for your organisation.
