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Managing Cohorts

How to organize members into cohorts for structured programs

Open-ended mentoring programs often lose momentum. Without a clear timeline, participants deprioritize meetings and goals drift. Cohorts solve this by creating shared deadlines, peer accountability, and a sense of collective progress. Programs that use cohorts consistently see higher completion rates and stronger engagement than those that leave mentoring open-ended. The Cohorts page lets you group members into structured program cycles with defined start and end dates.

Cohorts page
Cohorts page

What is a Cohort?

A cohort is a batch of mentoring relationships that run on the same timeline. They're useful for:

  • Structured programs with fixed durations (e.g., a 12-week mentoring cycle)
  • Onboarding groups where new hires are paired with mentors together
  • Leadership programs with specific curricula and deadlines

Creating a Cohort

  1. Navigate to the Cohorts page.
  2. Click Create Cohort.
  3. Set a name, description, start date, and end date.
  4. Add members to the cohort, or let members self-enroll.
  5. Click Create.

Tip

Create matches within a cohort to keep pairings organized by program cycle. This also makes it easy to compare outcomes across cohorts and refine your approach each time you run the program.

Managing Cohort Members

From the cohort detail page, you can:

  • Add or remove members
  • View cohort-specific analytics
  • Send announcements to all cohort members

Cohort Lifecycle

Cohorts move through stages: Draft → Active → Completed. Active cohorts appear on members' dashboards. Completed cohorts are archived but their data remains accessible for reporting.

Getting the Most Out of Cohorts

  • Keep cohorts between 6 and 16 weeks. Shorter than 6 weeks doesn't allow enough time for trust to develop. Longer than 16 weeks and urgency fades.
  • Run a kickoff event. Cohorts that start with a group introduction (even a brief video call) build stronger connections than those that begin with a silent email.
  • Use cohort analytics to iterate. Compare completion rates and engagement across cohorts. Each cycle is a chance to improve your matching and cadence.
  • Stagger your cohorts. Rather than running one large cohort per year, consider quarterly cycles. Smaller, more frequent cohorts are easier to manage and let you apply lessons faster.