We are inspiring businesses, governments, and individuals to make social change investments that matter. This allows us to offer world-class mentorships regardless of chance differences in background, geography or circumstance.
chris anderson
In COVID, the support went online through weekly video calls, enabling us to match South African mentees with mentors from all over the world as well as to reach many other groups of young people seeking mentorship.
In 2023 we secured support through the Mayor of London’s Propel programme to extend support to many groups of under-served young Londoners. We also worked with business partners and key funders to extend our mentorship offer to young people throughout the UK.
Relationships are at the heart of human flourishing, from the family, to sports, to business and government. Most social change interventions fail, ironically, because they fail to consider how powerfully-social human beings are. The best way to create lasting and meaningful change is through relationships.
SAYes understands this. We are are part of a new vision for philanthropy and social change, a growing global community, focused on humanity’s most pressing social problems, committed to generosity at scale. Since 2008, we have used formal mentorships to powerfully improve life outcomes for thousands.
A VISION OF THE WORLD POSSIBLE THROUGH MENTORSHIP
As we move rapidly through immense civilizational change, there is a deep responsibility to pause, and consider one another. If we choose to place mentorship at the heart of connection, then this moment could create a lasting intergenerational future. To arrive at this future, defined by the flourishing of compassion and the highest reaches of creativity, experience and common cause, is to enter the era of mentorship.
“One of the young men staying at a children’s home told me he had to leave because he was 18 and he had nowhere to go.”
MICHELLE POTTER, FOUNDER & EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
“Many attempts to do good are not driven by evidence or reasoning. Such efforts may express well-meaning intentions, but they are not effective in ways that can be objectively and reliably measured. SAYes is built to bring scientific expertise from the behavioural, brain and social sciences to mentoring.“
DR Andrew Dellis, Operations Director
We provide world-class mentorships regardless of chance differences in background, geography or circumstance.
• High quality personal and professional support for mentors and mentees throughout their 9-month mentorships
• World class mentorship training (mentorship academy)
• Digital infrastructure to support e-mentorship (including devices and data)
• Grants to support mentorship projects
• Staff (Management, Transition Specialists, Mentee Liaisons, SAYes Ambassadors, Technical team, Marketing, Business Development, Fundraising, Administration)
• Monitoring and Evaluation
• Youth Engagement and outreach teams
• Marketing and communications
• Alumni Meetups
• Future: Building the World’s No. 1 mentorship app
Chris Anderson, HEAD of
”Let’s say you’re a non-religious person, but you believe you should have the moral standards that are at least as good as what religions have taught, then you should be ready to pledge more than 10% of your monthly income or 2.5% of your net worth annually.
If only a third of people did that, you’d have 3.5 trillion dollars in additional philanthropy, and with that you can tackle all of the major problems in the world.”
“The reason why philanthropy is so broken is that so much of it is driven by painful fundraising meetings done individually. One organization will approach one donor at a time, and it is so soul crushing. It often takes ten meetings to get anything funded. It’s completely different from how money is raised in the for-profit space.”
“We have a world right now, where the people who are in many ways the most admirable people in the world, who are willing to devote their life to making change in the world, have to spend 50-70 percent of their time raising money. It’s crazy!” -Chris Anderson, Head of TED.
Become a reliable partner in reducing human suffering.
