My organization has a 9 month mentorship program for the leadership population. We've struggled with the best way to match mentor to protege (mentee). Any suggestions or best practices is appreciated.

You can/should only facilitate people finding mentors or people to mentor. The mentors and the people wanting mentors should be finding each other and figuring out which partnerships work best for them. Time and time again I've seen mentorships fail where some third party has done the pairing. Someone who wants a mentor should be seeking out what he/she wants in a mentor and asking possible mentors if they're interested in mentoring. You can facilitate by reaching out to find people who are interested in being mentors.

Important note -- not everyone wants/needs a mentor. Forced mentorship doesn't do anybody any good. (or, rather - it rarely does, particularly with adults. Generally that type of partnership should be voluntary all around.)

This message has been edited. Last edited by: StopSpoonFeedingNow,

We use several categories:

Business Knowledge
Industry Knowledge
Work/Life Balance
Career Development

We then interview all of the mentors and ask them to rank their ability to provide insight to the categories. We also ask for some preferences for mentees.
We ask our mentees to rank what they are looking to get most out of the relationship and preferences for mentors.
With that info in hand we make our matches.
This works well for smaller groups - under 50 pairs.