Thank you for volunteering to support the divestment movement by joining Talk Divest: the Fossil Free Financial Mentorship Project. Talk Divest connects financial professionals with student or other divestment groups seeking to make a strong business case for divestment and reinvestment. Divestment groups may be seeking assistance across a wide spectrum of issues – from simply understanding financial terms and concepts to interpreting data, to understanding reinvestment options, to developing and presenting financial arguments for divestment and reinvestment.
Please read through the guidelines below before applying to be a mentor. Click here to download the Talk Divest Mentor Guide as a pdf. Ready to get started?
Campaign members may be college students from any year, PhDs, masters’ students, teaching assistants, staff, alumni, professors or allied community members. They may have substantial professional experience themselves, or may be just arrived from high school. For this reason a friendly, open and nonjudgmental approach to interacting and communicating is required.
We anticipate that a financial professional will be paired with one campaign such that both parties can get to know each other well, and the Mentor is able to become familiar with the particular institutional target’s endowment.
For the most part, mentors can assume that the students or other campaign members will have less professional experience than the mentors do. We ask, however, that mentors do not assume that they will be teaching basic concepts to campaign members. Rather, mentors should specifically discuss the level of financial expertise or knowledge that exists within the group and ask what areas of expertise and knowledge the group is seeking from the mentor. You may be working with groups that have no knowledge of finance (including economic trends, stocks, bonds, assets and asset classes, industry jargon, data interpretation, knowledge of where to find and use financial research tools, and more). More likely, the students or other groups will come to you with some understanding of relevant financial issues, which may vary among members.
Please be cognizant that the campaign you are paired with may have processes for group decision-making, discussion, and facilitation. Try to comport with these procedures; it may be helpful to request any governing documents ahead of meeting with the campaign to gain familiarity with the group’s norms. Mentors should specifically discuss this issue with the group so that expectations are clear.
Below are tips to facilitate smooth interactions with campaigns.
Do:
Urge campaigns to get at least three people to attend phone calls or in-person meetings to build leadership and knowledge amongst as many campaign participants as possible, maximizing the value of a session.
Don’t: