[Mark McLeod]

I've organized/coordinated Northrop Grumman mentors in the Bethpage Long Island area since 2003, although I've now handed off that responsibility.
While occasionally it has been possible to arrange for paid mentor time, it has only been under very special circumstances, starting up new teams in under-served communities for instance, and only when special budgets happened to be available. The limited paid-mentor time I was able to arrange for was always for normal work hours, e.g., afternoon mentor visits to the schools that didn't meet after work and never as event or team volunteers. Those special budgets tended to evaporate as belts were tightened and were more a sniffing out of discretionary funds than any coordinated funding efforts by the company.

All my volunteer time, most of March for events and after school to lots of Long Island teams has come out of my own PTO. However, a lot of PTO buildup made it easier vs a new employee.
Can you offset hours?

Other companies, e.g. Bloomberg in NYC is tremendous, have a much more supportive volunteer program.