Mentorship, for every student in the Dayton School of Business.
The Dayton School of Business puts its students across the table from working professionals outside the university — people who have already wrestled with faith, work, and money, and who give one semester to one student. It starts in a classroom, with a course called Give, Save, Spend.
Mentors: watch the 5-minute walkthrough- Faith
- Family
- Excellence
- Service
How a student gets a mentor
This is a mentorship program first. Give, Save, Spend is the way in — the course everyone takes before they are paired, and where a student learns how a conversation like this is held.
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Step one
Give, Save, Spend
The course comes first. You meet the questions about giving, saving, and spending in a classroom, so that the conversations later start from somewhere, and so you have held one before you are sitting across from a stranger.
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Step two
You apply
One application, about ten minutes, open to anyone. If you are in Give, Save, Spend, this is your survey for the course as well — there is no second form to fill out.
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Step three
You are paired
A mentor from outside the university, chosen against what you wrote, for one semester.
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Step four
Four conversations
Four hour-long conversations across the semester, yours to schedule. What the four are.
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And then
The door back in
When the semester ends you can come back for another one. Returning is a stage of the program, not an exception to it.
Four stages, and a return
A student does not use this program once. They enter through a classroom, get paired, come back for another semester, and some of them end up on the mentor’s side of the table.
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01
Give, Save, Spend
The course. The student meets the questions in a classroom before they meet a mentor.
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02
Mentored
One semester, four conversations, one mentor from outside the university.
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03
Returning
The student comes back for another semester. Same program, more of it, usually a longer relationship.
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04
Varsity
The long commitment. Multi-semester, deeper on both sides, and the mentors the program is built around.
Returning loops back into Mentored. That arc is the point. No stage is a failure state, and a student who finishes one semester and stops has completed the program.
The four conversations
Each pairing runs for one semester and centers on four hour-long conversations. Your mentor already knows the questions. You lead the conversation, and the two of you go as deep as you’re both ready to go.
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Conversation one
Share your stories
Get acquainted. Before talking about money, you talk about where you’ve each come from.
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Conversation two
Your mentor’s calling
How your mentor has integrated faith and finance in their own life and career, including Compass and Generous Giving.
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Conversation three
The practical conversation
Earning, giving, saving, investing, and spending wisely. By the end of the semester, you’ll build a budget based on a starting salary of $60,000.
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Conversation four
Godly counsel for what’s next
Wisdom for launching into adulthood as a financial disciple, from someone a few decades further down the road.
Professionals from outside the university
Mentors work in business, ministry, and everywhere between, and they have already done the work of connecting their faith to their financial life. Many have gone through Compass or Generous Giving themselves. What they’re asked for is four hours across a semester, and a willingness to be honest with a student they’ve never met.
- 270
- Mentors currently on file
- 1,159
- People, mentors and mentees together, who have been part of the program’s history
- 102
- Mentor and mentee pairings made across the program’s history
Figures pulled from the program’s own historical records, September 2026.
In their own words, when they are ready
The best evidence for what these conversations do is the people who have had them. Their stories will be told here by the students and mentors they belong to, and nothing on this site will be written for them.
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Told by
The person it happened to
A student or a mentor tells the program what a conversation meant, in their own words.
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Shared with
Their permission, and only that
A story is used on this site only with the permission of the person whose story it is.
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Named if
They ask to be
A name is published only when that person asks for it to be. Otherwise the story stands on its own.
One application, either side of the table
Students apply for a mentor. Working professionals apply to be one. Both start on the same page, and neither takes more than about ten minutes.