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1. Complete your application
Be as thorough as possible to help us understand your experience and why you want to volunteer with us.
2. Get matched
Using human scoring and algorithmic matching, we'll evaluate your compatibility with our project teams or individual mentees.
3. Join a project team
Accept the offer letter we send you to start mentoring!
Having at least some prior exposure to skills in your desired field of work below will set you up for success at Develop for Good.
Design. User research and discovery skills include user personas, competitive analysis, and user journey maps and flows. User interface design skills include information architecture, design systems, and visual design. Product validation and testing skills include usability testing and basic analytics.
Engineering. Website implementation may include Content Management System development with platforms like Webflow, custom frontend engineering using HTML, CSS, or JavaScript, third-party service and tool integrations, and SEO data analytics.
Management. Technical product specification writing, KPI and OKR setting, product roadmap development, project organization tools, product documentation, and leadership experience.
Additional skills needed for all areas of work. Demonstration of resilience and passion.
All mentor candidates must have had more than 2 years of full-time work experience in their area of expertise.
If you are a new grad with less than 2 years of full-time work experience, please consider applying as a student volunteer instead; check out our Students page for more information!
Whether you're a Team Mentor or 1:1 Mentor, you'll advise your mentee(s) in the following ways:
Feedback. Deliver constructive critiques on progress made so far through design or code reviews.
Advice. Provide suggestions on directions to take in high-level implementation or design decisions.
Resources. After each weekly meeting, take some time to aggregate helpful, relevant resources to send over.
Career. Provide helpful recruiting and career insights to students looking to break into the tech industry.
Mentors aren't expected to directly contribute code or designs, and should instead play an advisory role as projects progress.
Every mentor volunteer applicant is carefully evaluated by our management team. We manually review each candidate's application materials to ensure they meet our eligibility criteria before scoring them across Technical, Passion, and Resilience categories.
Candidates who pass this evaluation are fed into our in-house matching algorithm. Our proprietary algorithm ensures that both Team and 1:1 Mentors are matched to projects and students well-suited for their technical skill sets and their social impact interests.
Each Team Mentor coaches a student project team composed of 1 Design or Technical Manager, 1 Product Manager, and 4-6 Engineers or Designers. Each 1:1 Mentor coaches an individual student mentee who opts into receiving additional personalized guidance.
Mentors who don't initially get matched can opt into being added to our waitlist. If a Mentor spot on a project team opens up during the current batch, we'll reach out to the best suited candidate with an offer letter to fill the role. All Mentors who join from the waitlist will be given full credit for as a contributing mentor for that batch.
Develop for Good is designed to be a challenging but rewarding hands-on experience for all our volunteers. We push mentors and students to search for creative solutions in ambiguous environments where solutions may not be obvious. Sometimes, as often happens in the real world, projects are blocked due to unexpected factors or circumstances that arise.
To maximize project success, we direct much of our internal resources to carefully recruiting the most talented, passionate, and resilient volunteers to work on our nonprofit projects. Even so, it's important to keep in mind that the students you are mentoring are not yet professionals. They are part-time undergraduate students or recent graduates who are volunteering their skills and free time to a nonprofit, and are eager to learn from you!
Furthermore, certain students on the team may have had less exposure to professional experience than others. Some of our students have or currently face obstacles in launching their careers in tech, whether this is a result of systemic, situational, or personal disadvantages or inequities. Still others struggle with imposter syndrome and may be hesitant to ask for help. We ask our mentors to approach their roles with a spirit of radical understanding and empathy.
And trust us; the challenge is well worth it. Develop for Good's mentor alumni have told us about how fulfilling it has been to gain technical mentorship experience all while contributing to projects that impact real communities. Prior student mentees have told us about how the knowledge they gained from their mentors were instrumental to landing their dream internships or jobs in tech after graduation. If you're someone who enjoys a multi-faceted challenge, this experience will be meaningful for you.
Advise aspiring technologists. Pass on your knowledge to college students eager to learn from you.
Share your skills with a nonprofit. Donate your talents to charities in need of your expertise by mentoring the students working on projects for them.
Impact real lives. Our nonprofit projects have reached millions of real lives across countries all over the world.
Leadership development. Hone your managerial and leadership skills by coaching young technologists.
Connect with fellow professionals. Meet professionals from other companies as passionate about mentorship and social good as you are.
A valuable, diverse network. Be a part of our lively community of mentors, students, and nonprofits in tech.
Develop for Good swag. Step aside, Balenciaga. Making sure our volunteers feel appreciated is very important to us!
After prospective nonprofit clients submit proposals, our Product Leads manually screen them to ensure that projects utilize technologies students are familiar with and that there are no budgetary, legal, or ethical concerns. Clients are charged a $1,000 flat fee to participate in our program (all of which is invested back into volunteer swag as well as sustaining Develop for Good as a nonprofit itself!).
The project scoping phase begins in the first month. During this time, your mentee(s) will work with their nonprofit client to mutually decide on a tangible technical deliverable to be completed by the end of the program. There is a possibility the deliverable may not be exactly what the client initially described in their proposal, whether it's because the student team identifies a more optimal solution, or because the team determines only a phase of the larger product can be feasibly completed in the given time frame. Once a mutual agreement is met, a new Product Requirements Document is approved by all participants before the project development phase begins.
There is a possibility that the client your mentee(s) are serving might not align with the progress of the team project. If so, clients are given the option to withdraw from the program at any time for a pro-rated refund. If this happens, we'll offer to put you on the mentor waitlist for the chance to be re-matched to other mentees in the current batch.
The total expected time commitment for the 16-week program is ~2 hours/week for Team Mentors and ~1 hour/week for 1:1 Mentors.
All mentors join one virtual call per week. Team Mentors join the project's weekly 1.5 hour team meeting to observe sync-ups with their nonprofit client and to provide on-the-spot feedback to students. Weekly team meetings occur between Sunday - Tuesday. Team Mentor applicants are able to indicate which days/times they're available on the mentor application.
1:1 Mentors meet with their mentee individually for 30 minutes a week to provide personalized guidance. Weekly 1:1 meetings occur between Thursday - Saturday. 1:1 Mentor applicants are able to indicate which days/times they're available on the mentor application.
Outside of virtual meetings, all mentors follow up by aggregating and sending over relevant resources to help their mentees progress at the current stage of their projects.
We also expect mentors to acknowledge or confirm receipt of messages on a timely basis (within 48 business hours). The success of the project depends heavily on everyone's ability to respond quickly and communicate clearly.
Although we understand that mentors are likely managing their full-time jobs throughout this period, the mentor role should be considered a top priority. If you are interested but are unsure of whether you have the bandwidth for this commitment in the upcoming batch, please consider applying in the future!
Mentor our students through your corporation’s Volunteer Grant program. Through Corporate Volunteer Grant programs, companies provide monetary grants to nonprofits every hour an employee volunteers. Check whether your corporation has one today!
Donate through your corporation’s Matching Gifts program. Hundreds of enterprise companies have Matching Gifts/Matching Donations programs that can amplify an employee’s personal donations. We also welcome financial sponsorship from corporate Nonprofit Programs divisions. Donations will be used to fund our program and the Develop for Good Fellows program for underserved and underrepresented students with demonstrated financial need.
Connect us with your corporation’s Social Impact managers. There are many additional ways we can work with corporate sponsors and partners to further our mission. We'd appreciate a warm intro!
