Client Profile:
The TeamMates Mentoring Program is a school-based one-to-one mentoring program. TeamMates began in 1991 with the vision of University of Nebraska head football coach Tom Osborne and his wife Nancy. Twenty-two football players met with middle school students in the Lincoln Public Schools.

The program has continued to expand and currently, there are more than 4,000 mentor-mentee matches in 117 communities across Nebraska, western Iowa, and California. TeamMates strives to positively impact the world by inspiring youth to reach their full potential through mentoring and hopes to serve 10,000 youth by 2015.

Project Opportunity:
TeamMates currently uses a manual process of hardcopy applications to match mentees with mentors. Automating this process will help make the program more efficient by reducing the amount of time volunteers spend on creating quality matches.

Ideally, the system will impact not only the quality of the matches, but also the longevity. To facilitate TeamMates' vision of serving 10,000 youth by 2015, the system will encourage potential mentors to apply and make an impact.

Project Solution:
The Raikes School Design Studio team will create an algorithm that matches mentors with mentees based off specified preferences and traits.

Through research, the Raikes School Design Studio team will determine which qualities are the most important in forming a mentor-mentee relationship. The system will display potential mentees to individuals who are exploring the possibility of becoming a mentor.

After the application has been submitted, the system will save the preference information and suggest the best matches to TeamMates building coordinators.

Technologies:

• CiviCore Database Platform
• .NET 4.0
• SWL Server 2008
• Windows Azure