Grant: Applied Research and Development Grants - Level 2

The Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT) is requesting NSERC Applied Research andDevelopment grant funding for a project with GOmentr Inc. to rebuild and advance the development ofMentorship Marketplace, the company's online mentoring solution that easily connects university faculty,alumni and students for the exchange of knowledge, experience and opportunities. GOmentr is a softwarecompany established and headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, which built a white-labeled software as a service(SaaS) application, which is licensed to organizations that want to utilize an online social network gearedspecifically for mentoring. GOmentr's clients receive the full benefit of GOmentr's platform with the ability toapply their own branding, bring their own community, and maintain ownership over their content and data. Theproposed project will streamline and automate GOmentr's SaaS delivery and deployment so that clientorganizations can self-deploy their online communities which will allow them to scale up and grow much morerapidly, while supporting a single code base for thousands of independent install communities. Further, theproject will help develop a new data architecture to allow for an innovative distributed mass data (content andcontact) network, so the company can have a global network of independent and interconnected school""communities"". This project has the potential to revolutionize how Canadian universities and colleges interactwith their alumni, students, faculty and staff. It promises to bring significant benefits due to more rapidexchange of ideas and enhanced engagement, leading to new revenues and increased funding, new jobs andinnovation including spin-off companies in Canada.