Lead Social Enterprise Mentor (Volunteer)

Lead Social Enterprise Mentor

Organization: Ubunifu Institute

Location: Kenya

Workplace: Hybrid — online mentoring and local community engagement

Engagement: Volunteer, unpaid

Apply: https://www.ubunifuinstitute.com/join/mentor

About Ubunifu Institute

Ubunifu Institute supports aspiring entrepreneurs to turn ideas into sustainable social enterprises that address community challenges, create dignified employment, and generate measurable social and environmental impact.

Our incubation model combines practical learning, enterprise formation, mentorship, business development support, and access to networks and opportunities.

We are inviting experienced professionals, entrepreneurs, founders, business leaders, and practitioners to join us as Lead Social Enterprise Mentors.

About the Role

As a Lead Mentor, you will build a consistent mentoring relationship with an entrepreneur and help them translate learning into practical decisions, actions, and measurable progress.

Your role is to listen, ask constructive questions, challenge assumptions respectfully, share relevant experience, and help the entrepreneur develop the confidence and judgement required to lead their own enterprise.

Mentors do not take over the entrepreneur’s business or make decisions on their behalf. The purpose of mentorship is to strengthen the entrepreneur’s own capacity to think, decide, act, and lead.

Lead Mentors will normally be matched with entrepreneurs within their Sub-County or another suitable local area, while mentoring may combine online and agreed-in-person engagement.

Key Responsibilities

You will:

• Build a professional and supportive mentoring relationship with an assigned entrepreneur.
• Help entrepreneurs validate problems, customers, markets, and proposed solutions.
• Support the development of business models, implementation plans, and enterprise priorities.
• Guide discussions around financial sustainability, operations, governance, leadership, and impact.
• Help entrepreneurs identify risks, milestones, and practical next steps.
• Review progress and provide constructive feedback.
• Encourage accountability while respecting the entrepreneur’s independence.
• Identify areas where specialist support may be required.
• Maintain appropriate mentoring records and agreed follow-up actions.
• Participate in mentor learning, induction, review, and programme activities where required.
• Uphold Ubunifu Institute’s confidentiality, intellectual property, safeguarding, and professional standards.
  

Confidentiality and Intellectual Property

Mentorship is built on trust.

Entrepreneurs may share early-stage ideas, business models, research, product concepts, technologies, strategies, financial information, customer information, designs, software, and other non-public material.

Mentors must:

• Keep all non-public information confidential.
• Respect the entrepreneur’s ownership of their ideas, innovations, designs, content, technology, research, business models, and intellectual property.
• Never copy, appropriate, disclose, reproduce, commercialise, or use an entrepreneur’s idea or information for personal benefit or for another organisation without prior written permission.
• Never assume that mentorship creates ownership, equity, licensing, or commercial rights.
• Declare actual or potential conflicts of interest.
• Protect documents and information entrusted to them.
• Avoid uploading confidential entrepreneur information to public platforms, unauthorised systems, or external AI tools.
• Report suspected misuse, disclosure, or infringement promptly.

Where a mentor and entrepreneur later pursue a separate investment, commercial, technical, research, or partnership relationship, the terms must be agreed independently and in writing.

Selected mentors will sign the applicable confidentiality, intellectual property, conflict-of-interest, and participation undertakings before accessing confidential enterprise information.

Our mentors help entrepreneurs develop their ideas. They do not take ownership of them.

Who Should Apply?

We welcome experienced professionals, entrepreneurs, founders, executives, managers, consultants, technical specialists, academics, and other practitioners.

Lead Mentor applicants should generally have:

• A relevant bachelor’s degree or equivalent professional standing.
• Demonstrated professional, entrepreneurial, technical, or leadership experience.
• A good understanding of business and enterprise development.
• Strong communication and listening skills.
• The ability to give constructive feedback without imposing decisions.
• Professional integrity and respect for confidentiality and intellectual property.
• Willingness to commit consistently to a mentoring relationship.
• Ability to use online communication and learning tools.
• Willingness to undergo the applicable verification and onboarding process.

Relevant expertise is welcome across sectors including agriculture, technology, climate, manufacturing, finance, education, healthcare, hospitality, infrastructure, professional services, and other fields relevant to social enterprise development.

Foundation Course

Lead Mentor applicants are required to undertake the Ubunifu Institute Foundation Course as part of onboarding.

The purpose is not to retrain experienced professionals. It is to ensure mentors understand the same social entrepreneurship framework, terminology, learning journey, and enterprise-development principles used by the entrepreneurs they will support.

The Foundation Course runs for approximately eight weeks and combines primarily self-directed online learning with scheduled learning activities.

Topics include:

• Social entrepreneurship
• Community problem identification
• Problem and solution validation
• Customers and markets
• Business models
• Enterprise sustainability
• Financial fundamentals
• Social and environmental impact
• Governance and responsible enterprise development

Approved mentor participants will receive the appropriate course access instructions during onboarding.

Where mentor access has been approved by Ubunifu Institute, the course is provided for mentor familiarisation without the normal learner tuition charge.

Applicants who have already completed the Foundation Course should indicate this in their application for verification.

Completion of the course does not automatically constitute appointment as a mentor. Appointment remains subject to verification, induction, and approval.

Onboarding Process

The Lead Mentor pathway generally includes:

1. Application — Submit your qualifications, professional background, expertise, location, interests, and availability.
2. Preliminary Review — Ubunifu Institute assesses your suitability and potential mentoring areas.
3. Verification — Relevant identity, qualification, reference, Police Clearance, and other applicable checks may be required.
4. Foundation Course — Complete the course or have prior completion verified.
5. Mentor Induction — Orientation covers mentoring methodology, professional boundaries, safeguarding, confidentiality, IP, conflicts of interest, and reporting.
6. Agreements — Complete applicable participation, confidentiality, IP, conflict-of-interest, and conduct requirements.
7. Matching — Mentors are matched based on location, expertise, entrepreneur needs, availability, and conflicts of interest.
8. Mentoring — Begin the agreed mentoring relationship and participate in appropriate progress reviews.
   

Commitment

We are looking for mentors who can provide consistent and dependable engagement, rather than occasional advice without follow-through.

The exact mentoring schedule will be agreed based on program requirements, mentor availability, and the entrepreneur’s needs.

Mentoring may include one-to-one sessions, online engagement, agreed in-person meetings, progress reviews, mentor forums, specialist referrals, and enterprise-development activities.

Why Become a Mentor?

As a Ubunifu Institute mentor, you can:

• Contribute directly to the development of emerging social entrepreneurs.
• Help strengthen enterprises addressing real community challenges.
• Share practical experience accumulated through your career or entrepreneurial journey.
• Support employment creation and locally driven enterprise development.
• Engage with other mentors, specialists, founders, and ecosystem partners.
• Strengthen your own mentoring and leadership practice.
• Contribute to a community committed to responsible entrepreneurship and sustainable impact.
  

Important

This is an unpaid volunteer mentorship role and is not an offer of salaried employment.

Appointment as a mentor does not create ownership rights over an entrepreneur’s enterprise, ideas, intellectual property, or commercial opportunities.

Any separate investment, consulting, commercial, research, employment, technical, or partnership relationship involving a mentor and entrepreneur must be transparently disclosed and governed by appropriate written terms.

How to Apply

Applications must be submitted through the official Ubunifu Institute mentor application:

https://www.ubunifuinstitute.com/join/mentor

Create or sign in to your Ubunifu account, verify your email, and complete the mentor application.

Please provide accurate information about your professional and academic background, areas of expertise, industry experience, County and Sub-County, mentoring interests, and availability.

Bring your experience. Respect the entrepreneur’s journey. Protect their ideas. Help them build something that lasts.