Firstly

Firstly’s vision is to create a world where social mobility is accelerated, and individuals can achieve their full potential regardless of their background. Our mission is to achieve this by providing a software as a service platform that helps schools and non-profits launch and scale online mentorship programs, making it easier for organizations to create more life-changing mentorship experiences for their students.

 
The results and impact of mentorship on marginalized student populations are well known in the education sector, but mentorship programs fail because facilitation is too tedious.

Our research shows that it takes up to 80 hours to successfully launch a 25-person mentorship program due to the complex process of mixed timelines, monitoring to meet safety requirements, and robust outcomes tracking in order to prove your impact to funders and donors. In fact, 65% of programs lack a process to measure effectiveness, and 75% of volunteer mentors report inadequate training during their onboarding experience.

Simply put, many educational non-profits and schools lack the staff and resources needed to facilitate mentorship programs effectively.
We’ve validated these insights not only through research but also our experience in running our own mentorship programs. While we have been able to secure positive student outcomes through our programs (details in another answer), we realized that we can impact more students by empowering the ecosystem of educational non-profits and institutions to better serve their students.

Thus, Firstly aims to solve the pain of difficulty and time-consuming efforts required to coordinate mentorship programs. We understand that this can be a major obstacle for organizations that want to provide mentorship programs to their community but may lack the resources to do so. By solving this problem, Firstly can accelerate social mobility by increasing the availability and capacity of schools and non-profits to create more life-changing mentorship experiences for their students. 

As Firstly's Founder and CEO, Kevin is the Team Lead who sets our vision and steers day-to-day operations. His hands-on approach involves working closely with all departments, promoting a culture of collaboration and innovation.

Kevin leads sales and marketing efforts, engaging with clients and partners to validate their needs and uncover pain points. This valuable feedback drives our product development, ensuring our online SaaS solution stays relevant and effective for schools and non-profits.

In essence, Kevin's leadership is vital for achieving our mission of delivering evidence-based, impactful education solutions. His dedication to fostering innovation and excellence keeps Firstly at the forefront of EdTech.

Kevin Hu is the founder, and is a first-generation and low-income college graduate who founded his first mentorship program at the age of 20. Since then, he has launched and scaled mentorship programs for non-profits, ERGs, and even Washington State. His experience in launching and scaling mentorship programs has given him in-depth knowledge of the pain points in the mentorship space, particularly the administrative burden and outcomes tracking. He is a Haas MBA graduate, admitted to the program on a full-tuition merit scholarship from the Consortium. His experience and leadership in mentorship programs make him the right person to lead Firstly's mission of automating the mentorship administrative burden.

Kate Berezo is our Product Manager and an experienced non-profit executive with 12 years of experience at organizations like Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, Lower Columbia College, and Thrive Scholars. Kate was responsible for the national expansion of mentorship, and she has personally experienced our customer pain points in her day-to-day work.

Cameron Sechrist is our CTO, and he has a strong background in launching early stage ventures. He exited his first venture, a digital marketing platform, at the age of 21. He is experienced in building software solutions from the ground up. Additionally, he is a seasoned IT security expert who has helped us meet FERPA compliance requirements so that we can differentiate our product (from a security and risk perspective) when we sell to educational organizations and institutions.

Aside from these core team members, we have 6 individual contributors across marketing, customer success, and engineering.
We have also brought on advisors with deep expertise in mentorship, higher education, and talent to help us better understand our target market:
Travis Nelson is the Director of CSU East Bay’s Alumni Association.
Remona Moodley is the Head of Talent at Transom Consulting and was previously a Manager at McKinsey.

Software that helps schools and non-profits launch/measure impactful mentorship programs with customizable curricula and auto-tracking for outcomes and impact.

The results and impact of mentorship on marginalized student populations are well known in the education sector, but mentorship programs fail because facilitation is too tedious.

 
Our research shows that it takes up to 80 hours to successfully launch a 25-person mentorship program due to the complex process of mixed timelines, monitoring to meet safety requirements, and robust outcomes tracking in order to prove your impact to funders and donors. In fact, 65% of programs lack a process to measure effectiveness, and 75% of volunteer mentors report inadequate training during their onboarding experience.

 
Simply put, many educational non-profits and schools lack the staff and resources needed to facilitate mentorship programs effectively.
We’ve validated these insights not only through research but also our experience in running our own mentorship programs. While we have been able to secure positive student outcomes through our programs (details in another answer), we realized that we can impact more students by empowering the ecosystem of educational non-profits and institutions to better serve their students.

 
Thus, Firstly aims to solve the pain of difficulty and time-consuming efforts required to coordinate mentorship programs. We understand that this can be a major obstacle for organizations that want to provide mentorship programs to their community but may lack the resources to do so. By solving this problem, Firstly can accelerate social mobility by increasing the availability and capacity of schools and non-profits to create more life-changing mentorship experiences for their students. 

Firstly is a SaaS platform that helps program administrators at colleges and non-profits launch and scale their mentorship programs. Key features include a program builder, community portal for participants, and an administrative dashboard. We've validated our solution using a no-code MVP, which we retired in February 2023 when we launched with our own custom, proprietary software platform. So far, we have secured key partnerships and deals with UC Irvine, CSU East Bay, and 8 other colleges/non-profits to serve 1100 mentors and mentees in total.
Firstly is the reasonably-priced and secure/compliant mentorship platform for colleges, non-profits, and their community of students and volunteers. We’ve already been vetted by the largest public university system in the US, the University of California.
Unlike other enterprise / SaaS mentorship platforms, Firstly offers a flexible SaaS pricing model and abides by FERPA regulations. This makes us a better fit for educational institutions and non-profits.
A lot of mentoring startups believe that a stellar mentorship experience between mentors and mentees will result in a successful mentorship program. However we know from our experience that most mentorship programs fail due to the tedious mentorship lifecycle that includes participant onboarding, matching, and outcomes tracking. Thus, we are focusing on the program administrator persona in our product, because we know that the true bottleneck to successful programs is in the tedious facilitation.

We are helping Program Administrators at Non-profits by creating capacity in their program facilitation lifecycle. We are B2B2C, and so these non-profits choose their own end users. Many are first-generation and low income students and traditionally excluded students. 

Our research and studies have been instrumental in shaping our solution and informing our work moving forward. We began with foundational research that delved into the social determinants of learning, sense of belonging, and the barriers and gaps experienced by traditionally excluded student communities, such as low-income students and students of color. This initial research provided valuable insights into the factors that influence student success outcomes and helped us identify the areas where our solution could have the most significant impact.

Next, we conducted formative research during our Founder's MBA at UC Berkeley Haas. This independent research study, sponsored by UC Berkeley Faculty Cameron Anderson, involved interviewing over 300 students and program administrators. The study shed light on the socioeconomic barriers and challenges students face on campuses and proposed solutions for schools to foster a more socioeconomically inclusive environment. This research further refined our understanding of the issues at hand and informed the design of our solution.

To measure the effectiveness of our approach, we ran program cohorts focusing on mentorship programs' impact on student retention and internship/job placements. The results were promising: students who completed a mentorship program on Firstly demonstrated an 88% retention rate in their schools, 13% higher than the national average, and a 75% job placement rate one year after program completion, 15% higher than the national average. These findings reinforced the value of mentorship in supporting traditionally excluded student communities and highlighted the potential of our solution in driving positive outcomes.

First, we have tailored our mentorship program to address the specific socioeconomic barriers and challenges identified during our formative research. This includes creating personalized mentor-mentee matches based on shared experiences and backgrounds, designing targeted workshops that address financial literacy, imposter syndrome, and navigating the professional world as an underrepresented individual, and providing resources to help students access internships, scholarships, and networking opportunities.

Second, we have implemented strategies to foster a sense of belonging among students, recognizing the vital role it plays in their success. We have established safe spaces for open dialogue and peer support, encouraged student-led initiatives that celebrate diverse cultures and identities, and provided training to faculty and staff to increase their understanding of and sensitivity towards the unique challenges faced by traditionally excluded student communities.

Lastly, we continue to monitor and evaluate the impact of our solution, using data-driven insights to make iterative improvements and ensure that our program remains effective and relevant. We regularly collect feedback from students, mentors, and program administrators to identify areas for improvement, and we track key performance indicators such as student retention, academic performance, and job placement rates to measure the success of our program.

Firstly, as we aim to empower the ecosystem of educational non-profits and institutions to better serve their students, it is essential to provide them with robust data that highlights the benefits of adopting our platform and implementing mentorship programs. By conducting a LEAP Project, we will be able to gather more comprehensive and systematic evidence on the time-saving benefits, participation rates, and completion rates that our platform offers. This evidence will be invaluable in convincing more non-profits and institutions to join our mission and adopt our platform.

Secondly, as our platform continues to grow and serve more students, we need to ensure that our solution remains effective and impactful. By evaluating the changes in students' confidence levels, academic performance, and retention rates through a LEAP Project, we can identify areas for improvement and make data-driven decisions to optimize our mentorship programs. This will ensure that our solution remains relevant and adaptive to the evolving needs of students from traditionally excluded communities.

Lastly, engaging in a LEAP Project now will enable us to establish a solid foundation for tracking our progress and measuring success as we scale our platform to reach more non-profits, institutions, and students. Having a rigorous evidence base will not only help us secure additional funding and partnerships but also foster a culture of continuous learning and improvement within our organization.

In conclusion, now is the right time for Firstly to engage in a LEAP Project as it will help us demonstrate the effectiveness of our solution, optimize our mentorship programs, and establish a solid foundation for measuring success as we scale our platform. By strengthening the evidence base of our solution, we can better support the educational ecosystem and ultimately create a more equitable education system for traditionally excluded student communities.

1. How does participation in Firstly's mentorship programs impact students' academic performance, confidence levels, and retention rates compared to students who do not participate?
2. What are the key factors that contribute to the success of mentorship programs on our platform, and how can we leverage these insights to enhance program effectiveness?
3. How does the implementation of Firstly's platform affect the efficiency of program administration for non-profits and institutions, in terms of time savings and resource allocation?

Our desired outputs for the 12-week LEAP Project sprint encompass research recommendations, guidance, and strategies that will strengthen the evidence base of our solution and inform our approach to optimizing our mentorship programs.

1. Quantitative analysis of program impact: We would like the LEAP Fellows to conduct a rigorous quantitative analysis comparing the academic performance, confidence levels, and retention rates of students who participate in our mentorship programs with those who do not. This analysis should provide us with statistically significant results that demonstrate the effectiveness of our solution, which we can then use to secure additional funding, partnerships, and support from educational institutions and non-profits.

2. Identification of success factors: We would like the LEAP Fellows to identify the key factors that contribute to the success of mentorship programs on our platform. This could involve conducting interviews with students, mentors, and program administrators to gather qualitative insights, as well as analyzing program data to identify trends and correlations. By understanding these success factors, we can refine our mentorship program design, enhance the training and resources provided to mentors and mentees, and ensure our platform remains adaptive to the evolving needs of our target population.

3. Assessment of program administration efficiency: The LEAP Fellows should evaluate how the implementation of our platform affects the efficiency of program administration for non-profits and institutions. This analysis should include a comparison of time savings and resource allocation before and after adopting our platform. By providing evidence of the efficiency gains our solution offers, we can further convince potential partners to join our mission and adopt our platform.

4. Development of research-based recommendations: Based on the insights gathered from the quantitative analysis, identification of success factors, and assessment of program administration efficiency, we would like the LEAP Fellows to develop a set of research-based recommendations for optimizing our mentorship programs. These recommendations should be actionable, specific, and informed by best practices in the field of education, mentorship, and student success.

5. Roadmap for continuous improvement: Lastly, we would like the LEAP Fellows to provide us with a roadmap for continuous improvement, outlining how we can systematically monitor our program's impact, gather feedback from stakeholders, and make data-driven decisions to enhance our solution over time. This roadmap should include guidance on establishing key performance indicators, setting up feedback loops, and creating a culture of continuous learning and improvement within our organization.

Following the conclusion of the LEAP Project sprint, our organization will put the outputs into action through several key steps, ensuring that the valuable insights and recommendations generated during the project are effectively implemented and utilized to enhance our solution.

1. Dissemination of findings: We will begin by sharing the research findings, success factors, and efficiency gains with our team members, stakeholders, and partner organizations. This will help build a shared understanding of the impact of our mentorship programs and the benefits of our platform, fostering a sense of ownership and commitment to the continuous improvement of our solution.

2. Implementation of recommendations: Based on the research-based recommendations provided by the LEAP Fellows, we will develop a detailed action plan to optimize our mentorship programs. This may involve refining our program design, enhancing training and resources for mentors and mentees, and implementing new strategies to foster a sense of belonging among students. We will prioritize the recommendations based on their potential impact, feasibility, and alignment with our organizational goals, and assign clear responsibilities and timelines for each action item.

3. Monitoring and evaluation: As we implement the recommendations, we will establish a systematic process for monitoring and evaluating the impact of the changes on our target population. This will involve setting up key performance indicators (KPIs), tracking progress against these KPIs, and regularly reviewing the data to identify areas for further improvement. Additionally, we will continue to gather feedback from students, mentors, and program administrators to ensure that our solution remains responsive to their needs and expectations.

4. Continuous learning and adaptation: The roadmap for continuous improvement provided by the LEAP Fellows will serve as a guiding framework for our organization's ongoing efforts to enhance our solution. We will integrate the principles of continuous learning and adaptation into our organizational culture, encouraging team members to regularly reflect on their work, share insights and lessons learned, and make data-driven decisions to optimize our programs and platform.

5. Communication and outreach: With a strengthened evidence base and an optimized mentorship program, we will intensify our communication and outreach efforts to attract new partner organizations and expand our reach. We will leverage the research findings and success stories to showcase the impact of our solution and demonstrate the benefits of adopting our platform. This will involve creating compelling case studies, presentations, and marketing materials, as well as engaging in targeted networking and partnership-building activities.

Short-term outcomes:

1. Improved understanding of the factors contributing to the success of our mentorship programs, enabling us to make data-driven decisions and optimize our solution.
2. Identification of specific areas for improvement within our platform, leading to targeted enhancements that better address the needs of our partner organizations, mentors, and mentees.
3. Increased credibility and validation of our solution as a result of the strengthened evidence base, positioning us as a thought leader in the field of mentorship and equitable education.

Long-term outcomes:

1. Expanded reach and impact: With an optimized mentorship program and a more compelling value proposition, we will be able to attract a greater number of partner organizations and serve a larger population of traditionally excluded students. This will contribute to our mission of fostering a more inclusive and equitable education system.
2. Enhanced program quality: As we continuously improve our solution based on the insights and recommendations from the LEAP Project, we expect to see increased success rates among our program participants, including higher confidence levels, improved academic performance, and increased retention rates.
3. Ongoing learning and adaptation: The LEAP Project will help us establish a culture of continuous learning and improvement within our organization, ensuring that we remain responsive to the evolving needs of our target population and committed to enhancing our solution over time.
4. Stronger organizational capacity: By integrating the research-based recommendations from the LEAP Project into our operations and decision-making processes, we will develop a more robust and evidence-based approach to program management, ultimately leading to a more efficient and effective organization.
5. Broader ripple effect: As our mentorship programs demonstrate measurable positive outcomes for students and partner organizations, we anticipate that our success will serve as a catalyst for other educational institutions and non-profits to adopt similar evidence-based practices. This will contribute to the broader goal of creating a more inclusive and equitable education ecosystem.