Mentor Team Remit

This remit was adopted by the Board at their meeting of 25th June 2015.

Role and Remit

• To offer one-to-one assistance to local groups that require help.
• To act as the lead team in identifying and offering help to struggling groups.
  • Identification or help for struggling groups in no way forms part of a first move to removing group owners or disaffiliation. The aim is to put in place best practices to avoid that.
• To offer a caretaking service for groups where local moderators are absent for a period of time.
• To allocate new owners for Caretaker groups as appropriate.

Membership

• Members of FreegleUK Central who would like to offer their experience and/or time to help other Freegle mods and groups are welcomed. Email: mentors@ilovefreegle.org
• Two members of the Group Affiliation Team will act as links between the Mentor Team and the Group Affiliation Team
• The Development Working Group Coordinator or Deputy Coordinator will act as a link between the Mentor Team and that working group.
• A Director will be appointed by the Board to be the Board Observer.

Working Space and Contact

• The Mentor Team works from personal mailboxes and copy messages to a separate Yahoo Group for reference. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Freegle-Mentors-CCs/
• The discussion group for the team is at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Freegle-Mentors/
• The Mentors have a 'training group' to help train new moderators: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/freeglefreshers
• Any Volunteer can contact: Email: Freegle-Mentors@yahoogroups.com in an emergency for assistance with urgent problems relating to the running of their Group.

A Mentor will be offered to:

• New Groups for a period of six months.
• Established Groups who request help in order to deal with specific issues
• Groups that appear to be struggling* or have permanent or temporary problems with running their Group

A Group Mentor will be appointed to:br

• Each new group set up from scratch with new Moderators to Freegle, as part of New Group Support arrangements.

'*'These might be groups that aren’t moderated - that being where modding takes place once or twice a week or even less, or those whose message counts have taken a dramatic nosedive, or who rarely or never answer messages to the owner address. These are indicators that those groups are in serious danger of going under and the Mentors are able to offer help to avert that.

Working Practice

Each member of the Mentor Team has access to a google document spreadsheet where mods/Groups needing mentoring and mentor details are placed. Monthly confirmation of ongoing mentoring will be recorded.

When the Mentor Team is notified of a Group requiring help a mentor will place their name on the spreadsheet against a Group if they are available to help, bearing in mind particularly:

• The times of day they are available and the times that the mod requesting help is available
• Any specific requests made by the mod/Group requesting help
• Knowledge of the area of the mod/Group requesting help
• Spreading the workload between the team would be ideal

The Mentor Team will work from personal mailboxes and copy messages to a separate Yahoo Group for reference. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Freegle-Mentors-CCs/

The Mentors will use their personal experience and knowledge of running Freegle groups to help with a variety of issues, including:

• Dealing with difficult awkward situations/composing suitable messages
• Tech, including Freegle Direct and the Mod Plug In/Modtools/Message Maker
• Media/publicity/social media
• Basic fundraising
• Individual Mentors may not be experienced in all of these aspects but all will help find people who can help them.

Code of Practice for Mentors

• Mentors will respect the autonomy of Groups and individual choice.
• Mentors will be observers on Groups.
• Mentors will normally be expected to have mod status on Groups in order to see pending posts but will not actively moderate the Group unless specifically asked by the Group moderators.
• Mentors are not expected to remain on Groups permanently although they may assist with making permanent moderation arrangements.
• Group Mentors (as part of New Group Support arrangements) will have owner status on groups.
• All members of Mentors Team will promote the Best Practice guidelines for Freegle Groups.

ModTools

It was agreed with Edward that ModTools would be available for groups included on the central list of caretaker groups. The mentor groups are automatically kept usable for ModTools, by giving them a rolling 10 day license. This works from the spreadsheet; if they come off the spreadsheet they will lose their license 10 days later. If they happen to be on the spreadsheet and have a longer license they don't lose that.

Caretaker Groups

These are groups handed over to Freegle to be run centrally by Mentors because the owners no longer want them and there is no-one to run them. The intent is always to find and train a new mod team, but due to time constraints these groups can remain in Mentor hands for a long time.

A Mentor is allocated as the caretaker owner, with a second member of the mentor team acting as a back-up owner as a safety measure, and the names of the groups are added to the caretaker list. This list is available here [1]

Good practice guidelines are followed by the Mentors when running a caretaker groups, see Caretaker Groups and a common set of group rules used, see Caretaker Group Rules.

Abandoned Groups

If a group is considered to be abandoned, the Mentors follow the Abandoned Groups Procedure.

Reports and Review

The Development Working Group member of Mentors will make a brief monthly report on the number of groups being mentored/caretaken and bring any issues that the Mentors think need discussion to the Working Group. See category:Mentor Team Reports for list and links to the reports.

Links

• Caretaker Groups
• Caretaker Group Rules
• New Group Support
• Category:Mentor Team Reports
• Document Approval Policy
• Glossary
• Freegle Teams
• previous Freegle UK document Mentor Team