We strongly discourage altering the once a month meeting schedule. Given the time commitment we’re asking of both mentor and mentees, a month gap between each meeting is enough time to complete the reading and homework.
We’ve also found that the once a month meeting is appealing to both mentors and mentees because the burden it creates on their calendars is manageable.
Additionally, we’ve found that if you ask mentors and mentees to commit more time, you begin to see a drop in the quality of the candidates who are interested.
Lastly, meetings once a month for three hours (as opposed to weekly hour-long meetings) allows groups to go deeper and build momentum in their meetings.
That said, if you want to build in optional group hangouts or get-togethers every month or every couple of months, we’ve seen that work for some groups, but we recommend keeping it optional and low-key.
