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Understanding Expectations from Mentees and Organizers

At the Cameroon celebration, a young man and a young woman both look at a phone attentively.

Formal open mentorships

Formal open mentorships are commonly offered through open mentorship programs. While Google Summer of Code presented the format of 12-week mentorships and several programs such as Outreachy follow similar formats, other programs may offer mentoring opportunities ranging from 6 months to a year. For example, as of 2026, Google Summer of Code allows different mentorship durations according to the size of their scope. Larger projects may take up to 22 weeks to be completed.

Formal open mentorships are often rigid: they follow a pre-determined timeline and present a series of preconceived tasks or activities that both mentors and mentees are expected to complete. They're also frequently project-oriented rather than milestone-oriented.

Formal open mentorships are frequently offered seasonally. For example, Google Summer of Code activities take place during the summer months of the nothern hemisphere. Outreachy, on the other hand, offers internships during the summer of both hemispheres. That tradition comes from the expectation that students may look for temporary jobs during their summer break. Other programs may follow different schedules or formats.

While several of the programs we've mentioned so far are offered online, you may find opportunities to become a mentor at in-person conferences in a Hackathon or Birds of a Feather (BoF) track. Being paired with a geographically closer mentee may increase your chances at having a hybrid experience.

Project creation and submission

Project-oriented programs may ask mentors to submit pre-planned projects or allow potential mentees to either submit their own or plan one alongside a mentor. While some programs may allow independent mentors, programs like Outreachy and Google Summer of Code expect mentors to work under a collective.

Different programs have different expectations for project submissions; we'll use Outreachy's own internship project submission process as an example of what you can expect. Outreachy projects are required to be submitted under a mentoring community. We ask questions related to:

  • Collective context: History of the collective and/or the team, mechanisms of contribution (e.g. issue tracker, AI policy, repository, newcomer-friendly tags) and communication (e.g. channels, instructions to join, norms of interaction)
  • Project context: Project description, name, scope, tasks, benefits, skills required
  • Mentorship context: Mentorship style of each mentor, preferred communication methods, languages spoken

They will help mentors and mentees set expectations about interactions, workload and resulting artifacts.

Contribution period

Our project requirements help us host a one-month applicant-mentee interaction period called contribution period. Outreachy receives thousands of applications each cohort, so each project item was added in order to (1) reduce friction to start project interactions and contributions and (2) help mentors and collectives manage the workload of welcoming several new contributors throughout the month.

If you wish to participate in an open mentorship program like Outreachy, Google Summer of Code or LFX Mentorship, you may have a hard time managing applicant interactions if you don't enlist the help of other contributors to answer applicant questions and review their contributions. In our experience, the contribution period is a significant stress test for collectives – so much so we've seen collectives withdraw their participation after a week or two for overestimating their capacity.

To help you balance the load of contribution period, we recommend that you:

  • Have more than two contributors monitoring and responding to applicant interactions; each of them should allocate a minimum of 10 hours/week to this activity
  • Establish and stick to a single contribution flow (e.g. merge requests should follow specific standards to be reviewed)
  • Invest in detailed documentation about contribution policies, norms and mechanisms
  • Encourage applicants quickly progressing through tasks to help other applicants

Aim for reducing the time spent answering frequent questions individually or context-switching to different contribution mechanisms. This can be a challenging period of an open mentorship program, but you can do it!

Match-making mechanisms

We've observed the following match-making mechanisms in open mentorship programs:

  • Organizers match mentors and mentees according to their backgrounds, skills and expertise
  • Mentees apply to projects of interest or submit their own; mentors evaluate mentee applications and select their own mentee(s)

If asked to evaluate mentee applications, you should get familiar with the application format and policies, and check if you can add project-specific questions to the application form and/or introduce other evaluation mechanisms such as video or voice interviews. We've noticed Outreachy mentors struggling to evaluate applicants with the increased popularity of LLM tools; adding a layer of personalization to applications or investing time in individual interactions with promising mentees may help you with this task.

Mentoring period

Programs may expect you to dedicate a certain number of hours per week guiding and reviewing your mentee's work, or may leave it to you to decide. We encourage mentors to split the load with co-mentors — mentors under the same project. Co-mentors may have complimentary or similar skills and expertise as you; they may even work in a different timezone to help you increase mentorship capacity throughout a mentee's work day. Co-mentoring is also a great mechanism to train novice mentors on how to mentor others if they're paired with more experienced mentors.

Programs may also require you to evaluate your mentee from time to time, and they may have specific expectations about frequency and method of interactions and guidance. If a formal open mentorship opportunity provides financial support to mentees, this evaluation process may determine whether a mentee should be paid or not. Some programs may allow you to ask for help or intervention from an organizer or request an extension of the mentorship period.

You should consider a formal open mentorship if

  • You can commit to going through a mentorship process that may take one or several months of preparations. Some open mentorship programs may require you to submit projects on behalf of your team, community, or group. Some may have a contribution period, or a period where program organizers train and guide their mentors.
  • You want to be supported by a more rigid structure. Some program organizers define a baseline of mentorship formats, deadlines, and expectations. Flexible open mentorships require you to take open mentorship design duties alongside your mentor duties. If you don't have extensive experience with open mentorships or you thrive in more structured environments, a formal open mentorship is a good fit for you.

Informal open mentorships

As informal open mentorships are not linked to any official or formal structure, we observe that such opportunities more dependent on a potential mentee's social and networking abilities. While you may find them being explicitly offered under specific issues on a project's repository or on social media platforms, informal open mentoring relationships are often forged naturally after meeting someone at a conference, having your work noticed by a more senior contributor or through several positive experiences in a specific professor's courses.

Informal open mentorships are flexible (i.e. don't follow a pre-determined format) and sustained (i.e. don't have an expected end date). While they can be both project-oriented or milestone-oriented, we've observed that informal open mentorships are often centered around a mentee's milestones. The modality of such open mentoring relationships depends on geographic proximity.

You may be asked by someone to become their informal mentor or you may want to establish an informal mentoring relationship with an outstanding contributor or community member.

Mentorship structure

Mentors and mentees are expected to discuss the terms of their open mentorship relationship. Common topics include meeting and communication periodicity, and current goals, strengths and weaknesses.

You may want to develop this mentorship relationship over a specific project or around mentee's milestones. A mentorship structured around a specific project may involve implementing a new complex feature in a codebase. A mentorship that is milestone-oriented may be about hitting milestones such as submitting 10 merge requests, attending or speaking at one relevant conference, serving a term in a committee or joining and participating in new work groups.

You should consider an informal open mentorship if

  • You can't commit several months to prepare for a formal open mentorship program, but you can commit a couple of hours per week to mentoring your mentee.
  • You would like to be in control of the mentorship design process alongside your mentee. This open mentorship format will give both you more autonomy over discussions around time commitments, expectations, deadlines, and other aspects of an open mentorship relationship.

In the next chapter

  • Learn more about the journey you'll share with your mentee, and prepare for each phase