Linkedin

Use LinkedIn to find CoderDojo mentors
Finding mentors in a suburban area like Henry County is challenging since there are no established tech groups in our local area. A good way to find mentors especially in a suburban area is to use LinkedIn features. We had about 1 mentor signup for every 10 mentors we contacted through LinkedIn.

Have a location and a start date for your first coding session before you begin to solicit mentors.

Setup Mentor Signup Form
Use a system like Google Forms or signupgenius.com to build a Mentor Signup Form. The CoderDojo McDonough Mentor Signup Form is an example google form. If you use Google Forms, make sure you set the notification preferences of the spreadsheet so that your are emailed when new mentors sign up.

Locate mentors
Using LinkedIn's advanced search feature, find LinkedIn members within 10km of your zip code who have a developer keyword in their profile. Keyword examples for finding coding mentors are JavaScript, HTML CSS, Python, Ruby on Rails, PHP, .Net, and csharp

Double check mentors
When we first sent messages to possible mentors, we recieved a couple of responses from developers who no longer lived in the area. We used whitepages.com to search for the developer's name and city to see if they still had a local address. This is not exact, but it will help filter out some developers who used to live near you but have moved and not updated their LinkedIn profile.

Upgrade your LinkedIn account to a Premium "Executive" trial or paid LinkedIn account
Try to obtain a 30 day free trial for a LinkedIn Premium account. A few days after I visited the page with details about paid accounts, I recieved a 30 day free trial email from LinkedIn. Choose the the Executive plan so that you have 25 inmail messages. Messages that are not responded to are returned to your account after 7 days, so in the 30 day period you should be able to send 70 to 100 inmail messages to local mentors. When you see a message from LinkedIn saying your inmail credits have been returned, make sure you message new mentors that day.

Send inmail messages to possible mentors
Use the Mentor Solicitation Email template as a starting point for the message you'll send to mentors. Keep a list of the mentors you've contacted. When you search for more mentors later it will be helpful to know which developers you've already contacted.

Follow-up with interested mentors
If a developer expresses interest but they do not complete the Mentor Signup Form, contact the developer again.