Last year, the Aspen City Council took a chance by bankrolling a citizen-led initiative meant to help young entrepreneurs.
The “Create Mentorship Aspen” program is a concept of the city’s Next Generation citizen commission. The idea is to pair young entrepreneurs and early-career residents with established Aspen professionals. In the fall of 2015, council okayed a $30,000 investment to get the ball rolling. At the time, Mayor Steve Skadron voiced concern during a council meeting about such a big payment being offered to staff a citizen commission.
“We have other commissions… and we have to be careful that this does not establish a precedent,” said Skadron. “What I don't want, what I can't have, is other commissions coming to us and asking ‘can we have money too?”
The public dollars, along with a $10,000 contribution from the Aspen Rotary Club, were meant to cover a single year’s budget for the mentorship program. The expenses included a $35,000 director's salary, a couple thousand dollars for office supplies and web development, and nearly $7,000 for an online hub that would assist in matching and supporting the mentorship groups.
The year went by with several false starts though, and by this past September the director, Mike Jahn, stepped aside.
“The biggest challenge for me was building some sort of structure behind the program to ensure that once we made those pairings there was a path through for a participant,” said Jahn. “So we had a few good events at the beginning but then realized that there wasn't the structure behind that we needed to move people through the program.”
According to expense reports filed with assistant city manager Barry Crook, $329 has been spent on mentorship-matching software, $17,000 on Jahn. Crook is tasked with accounting for the financials before releasing the quarterly sum of $7,700 dollars to the group. This year’s final payment has yet to be released.
Valley newcomer Julie Engels is now the executive director. Her background is start ups, and she was immediately drawn to the “incubator” potential of the group.
“He’s a great IT person, he has a great vision. So he was able to figure out how we could make these pairings and hold on to them in terms of information, and then I think my coming on, my specialty is really activation,” said Engels of the transition from Jahn to her.
One year after council’s initial approval of the program, no solid matches had been established, but eight have been made in the last several months. Engels knows that the funding from city hall comes with no guarantee for renewal. She said the trial year’s final financial quarter is crucial.
“I think Q4 and the beginning of Q1 are really about getting those stories and metrics of the pairings to be compelling so that we can go back and determine what our next fundraising initiative should and can be,” said Engels.
She is hopeful; the mentorship program is meant to strengthen the entire community so there is an argument to me made that it should be community-funded.
“I think everybody is a little bit worried about keeping the integrity of what Aspen has been and what we want it to continue to be,” she said “And the best way to do that is to keep young people who have that same vision caring about it and in town.”
The one year follow up with City Council has yet to be scheduled.
This story is part of Aspen Public Radio’s on-going series following the mentorship pairs of Create Mentor Aspen.
