Case Study: Summer Search achieves improved mentoring quality and engagement with Graduway's Connect platform

How an Online Community Can Enhance Mentoring Quality

Summer Search is a national youth-development organization that delivers “depth mentoring” to students from sophomore year of high school through six years post-graduation. To scale its post‑secondary support, it launched the Summer Search Connect platform — a move that raised familiar digital challenges around onboarding large numbers of students, alumni and staff, ensuring safety and appropriate conduct, integrating the platform into everyday programming, and expanding features to improve user experience.

To address these issues, Summer Search focused on early, compulsory onboarding (including LinkedIn prep and required staff accounts), clear safety controls and training for mentors, students and parents, and making Connect the central hub for resources, calendars and communications with login incentives. They also implemented KPI tracking and an engagement index to monitor use. By 2021 the network reached 8,360 people with 2,454 registered users and roughly 64% engagement on the dashboard, and the organization is working toward 100% registration and deeper platform adoption.

Summer Search

Kelly Bonacci

Senior Project Manager