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I would like to organize a mentoring-platform where mentees/mentors can register via a website. Mentees can get assigned to mentors in geographical proximity by an organizer of that region. Mentors see a simple overview of their mentees with restricted view of details. Organizers in turn can manage, supervise and assign people in their (zip-code)region.

I'm looking for some tool that can support that use-case. I was thinking about a FLOSS "customer relationship management" tool and was directed to CiviCRM. Can CiviCRM provide what I'm looking for natively? Is there some extension that would serve? How should I go about this problem? Is CiviCRM the right tool for that purpose?

Any pointers are appreciated.

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There is a CiviCRM Showcase "Student Support" that shows how to solve a similar problem: https://docs.crm-showcases.org/docs/civicrm-student-support/

It uses native Relationships to model the "mentor-mentee" relationship, uses the extension "form processor" to build forms for registration and makes reports using the extension "data processor"

Furthermore:

The CiviRules functionality can be used to automatically assign the organizer upon registration, with scheduling Actions for assigning a mentor to a mentee.

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Welcome to SE!

Yes, CiviCRM would be a good fit for your mentoring system although it will take some configuring to do what you want.

There are lots of options for tackling this. Initial thoughts would be to create 3 contact subtypes for Mentee, Mentor, Organizer and build lists/displays/forms using SearchKit and FormBuilder. These are relatively new (and still rapidly evolving) features in Civi.

Unless you like a challenge(!), you might want to find someone to help you get started - see https://civicrm.org/partners-contributors

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    and adding to this, use Relationships to make the connections between Mentees and Mentors - and use Activities to record interactions etc. For more complex scenarios, consider CiviCase
    – petednz - fuzion ♦
    Commented Dec 9, 2022 at 18:44
  • Agreed that Relationships would serve this purpose well. If there is an ongoing need to manage the mentor / mentee relationship, then maybe worth looking at CiviCase as a tool.
    – Simon Thornton-Wood
    Commented Dec 19, 2022 at 13:45
  • Not sure about using Contact Subtypes though. These are permanent categories, and you'd have a problem if a Mentee became a Mentor - I don't think it's easy to change Contact Subtype or to have an Individual in multiple categories of Contact Type.
    – Simon Thornton-Wood
    Commented Dec 19, 2022 at 13:46
  • Having multiple sub-types isn't such an issue. switching from one to another can be since Custom Fields may have been set up for a/ but not b/ hence you lose 'sight' of the fields for a/ if you switch them to b/. But yes in general we steer clear of using sub-types unless there is a strong case for using them
    – petednz - fuzion ♦
    Commented Dec 19, 2022 at 18:01
  • Subtypes do have limitations but I often use them.
    – Aidan ♦
    Commented Dec 19, 2022 at 23:08

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