Become an Ally Program: Spring 2025 Cohort

Becoming an inclusive and affirming mentoring program is more than hanging safe zone posters and using personal pronouns. This requires a practice of allyship and leveraging our personal empathy and vulnerability  to ensure that young people in our care—especially those on the margins—are safe and affirmed.   

The LGBTQ+ Ally Program is a rigorous six-month long training, coaching, and organizational change experience that leverages research-informed best practices to help you and your team  build and sustain a culture of inclusion and belonging for LGBTQ+ youth, volunteers, staff, and stakeholders. 

Ally Programs receive:

• Access to the Mentorist Online Inclusion and Belonging  Learning Academy, which contains self-paced courses to help everyone in your organization learn more about the lived experiences of LGBTQ+ youth and why affirming and inclusive spaces matter. 
• 6 hours of synchronous training with a cohort of learners across the country who want to make a difference for LGBTQ+ youth (Up to 3 leads from each Ally program can attend these sessions). 
• Access to the Mentorist Inclusivity Assessment—a proprietary tool that can help your agency understand your baseline climate. This assessment will help your program to learn more about potential areas for improvement and existing strengths.
• Action planning tool to guide your agency through steps to update policies, programming, and develop relationships with local LGBTQ+ organizations.
• Individual coaching sessions with Dr. Christian Rummell  to check-in, review progress, discuss challenges, and partner on progress. 
• Opportunities to connect with peers from across the country as part of a learning community. 

Agencies completing the program will receive a badge of commitment that can be visibly displayed to highlight ongoing intentions to ensure LGBTQ youth are able to thrive within their programming. You will also have policies and practices that can be sustained over time that can and will make a difference. 

This program is designed to encourage personal and organizational learning and requires initial buy-in from organizational leadership and ongoing commitment from participating staff to engage in vulnerable spaces for learning and growth. 

Update: Mentorist has located a small funding pool to partially support our Spring 2025 cohort. We are also actively looking to secure future sponsorships from national and state partners. The full cost per program is now $500 for the entire program. Mentorist also accepts payment based on a sliding scale and will ensure that any accepted program is able to participate.