Statement of Bridget Weston, SCORE Association — Senate Small Business Committee, February 1, 2022

Summary

A statement by Bridget Weston, Chief Executive Officer of the SCORE Association, to the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship for a review of SBA entrepreneurial development programs and initiatives, dated February 1, 2022. It describes SCORE as a network of more than 10,000 volunteer business mentors and reports that in FY 2021 SCORE received $12.2 million and helped clients start 24,742 new businesses and create 71,475 new jobs. The statement says SCORE saw a 30% increase in demand during the COVID-19 pandemic but did not receive CARES Act funding or a Community Navigator grant, and describes its Small Business Resilience Program launched in May 2020. SCORE requests an increase of $9.5 million for FY 2022, for a total annual appropriation of $21.7 million, and outlines diversity programs and planned uses of added funds, including $3.25 million for local chapters.

Summary drafted by a model from the document's text below and checked by script against that text before publication. It is a navigation aid, not a reading of what the document proves. Where AI is used

Full text

                                                                                                          1


                                                             Bridget Weston
                                                             Chief Executive Officer
                                                             SCORE Association

                 Review of SBA Entrepreneurial Development Programs and Initiatives
                  Statement to the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship
                                        United States Senate
                                          February 1, 2022

Chairman Cardin, Ranking Member Paul, and members of the committee – thank you for the
opportunity to offer testimony on SCORE’s impact, including our response to the COVID-19 pandemic
and the funding challenges we currently face in effectively serving American small businesses.

SCORE is the nation’s largest network of volunteer, expert business mentors, with more than 10,000
volunteers across 240+ chapters offering free and confidential advice, and free or low-cost educational
workshops to current and aspiring small business owners.

Founded in 1964 as a resource partner of the SBA, SCORE has now helped more than 11 million
entrepreneurs to start, grow or troubleshoot their small business. SCORE’s mission is to foster vibrant
small business communities through mentoring and education, and we envision every person having the
support necessary to thrive as a small business owner. Today, SCORE stands as a uniquely American
organization in its synthesis of two historic national ideals: the entrepreneurial spirit and volunteerism.

SCORE would like to express our gratitude for this committee’s continued support for our annual
appropriations – in FY 2021, we received $12.2 million. We were very grateful for this funding, and
have used it to create an immediate positive impact on the small business owners that SCORE
volunteers serve in their local communities every day.

In FY 2021, SCORE helped its clients to start 24,742 new businesses and create 71,475 new jobs.
Despite the challenging business climate of the COVID-19 pandemic, 77% of clients stayed in business
throughout the year, with help from SCORE.

SCORE remains the most efficient, effective business formation and job creation engine funded by the
federal government. In FY 2021, our cost to create one new job was $170 and $493 to create one
new business. These metrics demonstrate how SCORE provides tremendous return on investment to the
American taxpayer, with every dollar invested returned to the federal treasury many times over. In FY
2021, SCORE clients returned $58.93 in new federal tax revenue for every $1 appropriated to
SCORE, ($718.9 million in total).

Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, SCORE has seen a 30% increase in demand for our mentoring
and educational services. However, unlike our fellow SBA resource partners, SCORE did not receive
any CARES Act funding; nor did SCORE receive a Community Navigator grant to meet these
unprecedented demands.




www.score.org
                                                                                                            2

Despite the increased need for our services and the immense challenge presented by this lack of funding,
we worked with corporate partners through our SCORE Foundation to meet this demand by quickly
standing up our Small Business Resilience Hub in May 2020. The Resilience Hub consists of
mentoring and online educational resources designed to help business owners successfully navigate
federal and local government programs, adapt to change, launch new businesses and inspire their
customers to rally around their business. Since its launch, the Resilience Hub has helped more than
850,000 small business owners to pivot, survive and thrive.

In the words of Louisville, Kentucky Massage Envy business owners Theresa Paradise and Marcia
Connelley: “SCORE saved our business! SCORE has had such an instrumental impact on our business.
It is hard to define in words how thankful we are for the success they have helped us create."

SCORE’s ability to meet this unprecedented and continued demand, fueled by the pandemic, is
unsustainable without additional federal funding. We are grateful to work with key members of this
committee to request and secure additional appropriations for our program. To that end, based on our
continued demonstrated impact, increased demand for services and SCORE’s specific plans to reach
more business owners in underserved and disadvantaged communities hardest hit by the COVID-19
pandemic, SCORE has requested an increase of $9.5 million in funding for FY 2022, for a total
annual appropriation of $21.7 million.

With additional funding, we are confident we can drive significant new business creation, while also
helping business owners who are currently struggling to stay in business and thrive. Our projections
estimate that this increased funding would help us to deliver 540,243 additional client services
(mentoring, workshops, education), with a projected outcome of 100,131 additional new businesses
started and/or jobs created.

ABOUT SCORE

SCORE helps small business owners through three main vehicles: 1) Free business advice and
mentoring 2) Low or no-cost business training and education 3) Free business templates and resources.

Mentoring
SCORE is proud to be the nation’s largest network of volunteer, expert business mentors, and our
10,000 volunteers are the lifeblood of SCORE. The majority of our mentors are current or former
business executives and entrepreneurs, giving them firsthand experience of best practices and pitfalls to
avoid, which they pass on to our clients through online or in-person sessions. In FY 2021, SCORE held
326,600 mentoring sessions. The high quality of these services is captured in a very high Net Promoter
Score (NPS) of 89.22 on a 100-point scale of customer satisfaction and willingness to recommend the
brand. To provide context, an NPS of 30 and above is considered good, while 70 and above is
considered excellent. The 2020 NPS benchmark for education and training industries nationwide is 71,
while the consulting industry scored 51.

By creating meaningful, and often long-term relationships with our clients, SCORE mentors help clients
to start new businesses or operate existing small businesses more efficiently, effectively and with greater
success. Mentors provide the personal experience, practical knowledge and coaching support that clients
need to thrive in the small business arena, offering information and strategies for improvement.



www.score.org
                                                                                                        3


In FY 2021, SCORE mentors donated 4,580,420 hours of total service to mentoring and educating our
clients. Through this generosity and the wisdom of their firsthand business experience, our volunteers
have a profoundly positive effect on our small business owner clients, which, in turn, positively impacts
their communities. SBA data shows that mentoring works – with business owners who receive three or
more hours of mentoring reporting higher revenues and increased business growth.

Business Education and Training

Online Education
SCORE national headquarters provides ongoing workshops in both live webinar formats and on-demand
training housed on the www.score.org website. These educational services are critical to our clients,
providing information on numerous aspects of starting and growing a business. At least once a week on
average, SCORE hosts live webinars in conjunction with SCORE volunteers, sponsors and outside
subject matter experts. 120,800 clients attended these national online workshop sessions in FY 2021.

SCORE chapters also offer local workshops that complement SCORE headquarters’ national webinar
program, which are tailored to the needs of the local business community. Local workshops can be in-
person or online, and may be a single session or a multi-day series. Topics include everything from
finding financing to digital marketing tips, HR best practices and business planning. Popular local
workshops include Simple Steps to Starting Your Business and Legacy Planning for Farmers. 280,700
attendees were served through local workshops in FY 2021.

Virtual Conferences
Now in its seventh year, SCORE’s Virtual Conference series allows individuals in any geographic
location to remotely participate in an online educational environment that offers the look and feel of an
in-person event. These conferences meet the needs of our clients on their own terms, and are perfect for
entrepreneurs who are short on time or geographically dispersed. Combining the educational elements of
a small business conference with the networking and interactive features of a trade show, virtual
conferences allow participants to listen to keynote speakers, visit virtual booths to download materials,
meet sponsors and mentors, and ask questions and connect with each other via a live-chat feature.
Sessions are also recorded and available on demand after the conference, with topics including various
aspects of starting or growing a small business, including marketing, finance technology and human
resources.

SCORE typically collaborates with the SBA to host the National Small Business Week virtual
conference, with the next event scheduled for May 2022. The September 2021 multi-day event drew
12,746 attendees and 30,528 unique webinar views.

Online Resource Library
An online resource library on the SCORE website serves as the central hub for free business templates,
e-guides, checklists, blogs, infographics, videos, tools and other helpful resources to help entrepreneurs
start and grow their small business. In FY 2021, 4,252,852 people visited the score.org website. SCORE
chapters also have their own websites, which offer local resources and showcase local stories of business
success.




www.score.org
                                                                                                        4

SCORE’S RESPONSE TO COVID-19

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, many more business owners reached out for SCORE’s help than
ever before, as evidenced by a 30% increase in FY 2020 total annual services. SCORE quickly pivoted
to delivering 100% virtual mentoring and education without missing a day of service. While the U.S.
House of Representatives supported additional funding for SCORE’s COVID-19 response in the
HEROES Act, SCORE did not ultimately receive any of the $10 million we requested to support our
clients in crisis. SCORE did not receive any CARES Act funding; nor did SCORE receive a Community
Navigator grant. Instead, we worked with corporate partners to launch our Small Business Resilience
Program (SBRP).

The SBRP helps small businesses navigate the challenges they’re facing through the COVID-19
pandemic and other catastrophic business interruptions. Using SCORE’s free expert business mentoring
and online educational resources, entrepreneurs use the SBRP to successfully navigate COVID-19
federal and local government programs, adapt to change, launch new businesses post-pandemic, and
inspire their customers to rally around their business.

Launched in May 2020, the SBRP has helped thousands of business owners to pivot, survive and thrive
through a three-pronged approach of mentoring, education and resources. As of Sept. 30, 2021, 853,063
users visited the SBRP content on SCORE.org, with 1,236,561 total page views. Mentors provided
40,846 mentoring sessions focused on pandemic response. 209,025 attendees benefited from business
training workshops and webinars on COVID-responsive business strategies.

SCORE client Laura Licursi, owner of Elite Virtual Assistants in Mayfield Heights, OH, said of her
mentor: “Mark has been amazing. I initially sought out a mentor when COVID-19 hit and I needed
someone to talk to, bounce ideas off of, and help me develop ideas to generate new business. Mark
always has great insight, has gone above and beyond with finding new information to share, pointing out
new opportunities for me to explore and helping me find answers to see if a direction I wanted to go was
viable.”

Julia Petrus, owner of Cozy with Posey of San Francisco, CA, said: “When COVID-19 hit and I lost my
job, I finally had the time to follow [my] passion. [My mentor] Susan really encouraged me to start my
business and taught me the basics. She made me aware of what I had to do and how to get there. It was
great to be able to really lean on someone who had been there. She’s always so excited and supports
every decision I make. I wouldn’t be where I am today without SCORE.”

Part of the success of this outreach owes to its grounding in real-time client research. Starting in March
2020, SCORE began surveying small business owners to understand the challenges they were facing and
the resilience of both start-ups and established businesses. This research was used to inform SCORE’s
content strategy, and shared with the public through a series of infographics and the data report: “The
Megaphone of Main Street: The Impact of COVID-19.”

Utilizing both qualitative and quantitative data from a diverse group of roughly 3,500 small business
owners across the nation, the Megaphone showed how COVID-19 has significantly and negatively
impacted U.S. small businesses in terms of revenue, employment and cash flow. Black and Hispanic
business owners were harder hit than White business owners, particularly in regards to funding



www.score.org
                                                                                                         5

opportunities. Data shows that Black and Hispanic business owners were more likely to seek both
private and public funding opportunities than their White counterparts, and much less likely to receive it.

Since the pandemic began, we have seen firsthand how desperately small businesses owners need
SCORE’s guidance and support. Many business owners told us they would not have applied for PPP or
EIDL without a SCORE mentor to walk them through the confusing and overwhelming process, step by
step. New federally-funded opportunities are extremely valuable to business owners, but only if those
who need help the most can take advantage of it. SCORE stands ready to help the most vulnerable small
business owners navigate these opportunities and utilize them effectively, so they can keep their doors
open and keep people employed. Continued federal investment is critical to the survival rates of small
businesses across America. Our clients are depending on us to help them succeed.

DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSION

Fostering an inclusive and diverse volunteer membership is critically important to SCORE, and one of
our core values is, “Diversity Matters.” This means that we believe in the importance, value and power
of diversity – diversity of people and diversity of thought.

SCORE continued to diversify our volunteer ranks with women and minority volunteers climbing to
40.7% of total volunteers in FY 2021. While we are focusing even more on diverse volunteer recruiting
going forward, this 5% increase from the previous year represents the single biggest annual growth since
we began tracking these metrics in 2012.

Several national volunteer committees exist to foster an inclusive environment. Among them are the
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee, the Black American Committee, the Hispanic Volunteer
Committee, and the National Women’s Committee. Their purpose is to help strengthen SCORE’s
culture of inclusion, recruit diverse clients and volunteers, and to assist in creating and executing
diversity-focused client events.

SCORE for All
SCORE is working harder than ever to reach underserved entrepreneurs, including minorities, women,
veterans, disabled people and rural business owners. Currently, our client base includes a diverse
population of American small business owners and entrepreneurs, including 61% women, 46%
minorities and 10% veterans in FY 2021, as reported by our clients.

We regularly survey and connect with our clients and other business owners to fully understand the
challenges facing small business owners today, ranging from lack of access to capital, to difficulty
finding and keeping employees, to struggles accessing government programs.

Through our SCORE for All program, we continue to build equity-based programming for specific
segments of underserved business owners, in order to help meet their specific needs. Current offerings
include:
    • SCORE for Black Entrepreneurs
    • SCORE for Hispanic Entrepreneurs
    • SCORE for Women Entrepreneurs
    • SCORE for Veteran Entrepreneurs


www.score.org
                                                                                                          6

Through these hubs, small business owners can utilize SCORE’s Resource Library, which includes
hundreds of free articles, templates, tools, videos, and checklists to meet any business need. They can
also connect with our diverse group of experienced, volunteer mentors, who are available to answer
questions about starting and growing a small business.

Partnerships to Serve Diverse Entrepreneurs

SCORE forms alliance partnerships with other organizations who can introduce us to new communities
of small business owners, particularly in underserved markets. Examples of national alliance
partnerships include the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, The Latino Coalition, the BIPOC
Support Foundation, the National Black Chambers, the Touglaoo Research & Development Foundation
and Women Entrepreneurs Grow Global.

National corporate sponsors who partner with The SCORE Foundation also allow SCORE to facilitate
additional programming beyond what federal funding allows. Recent examples include Facebook’s
partnership to support veteran entrepreneurs, and Constant Contact’s partnership to support women
entrepreneurs.

Local Community Partnerships

SCORE has also seen tremendous success working in local communities to help underserved business
owners and reach those who are disadvantaged.

One example is in Cleveland, where economic and social conditions showed little improvement from
2010 to 2020, and high poverty rates persisted alongside low small business growth. These problems
were worsened by the pandemic. As many as 30% of Cleveland’s small businesses have been
permanently closed, with minority communities disproportionally affected.

Over the past year, SCORE Cleveland has rededicated itself to bring its services to this very vulnerable
community. The chapter has partnered with several leading nonprofits that target these communities
e.g., Cleveland Foundation, Urban League SBDC, ECDI (Economic and Community Development
Institute), the Women’s Business Centers, Jump Start, the Business Growth Collaborative and Cleveland
Neighborhood Progress. The results have been very positive, with service more than doubled compared
to last year. Some of the most valuable services provided included assisting clients with the SBA’s PPP
and EIDL loan programs.

In response to the pandemic and the challenges minority business owners are facing, another chapter,
SCORE Inland Empire, has partnered with several outside organizations to provide outreach, guidance
and content to help bridge the gap that exists and help these businesses achieve success. Partners include
AmPac Business Capital, the City of Ontario, education institutions, the Small Business Development
Centers, Inland Empire Women’s Business Center, CEEM, Hispanic Chambers of Commerce, Black
Chambers of Commerce, and the Micro-Enterprise Collaborative Inland Southern California.

In the state of Maine, SCORE chapters are working together with a number of other organizations to
reach both urban underserved businesses and rural entrepreneurs. Partnerships include The Indus Fund,
a community-supported micro-loan program for immigrant entrepreneurs in Maine, the Portland Office



www.score.org
                                                                                                           7

of Economic Opportunity, and Prosperity Maine (PME), the Fork Food Lab food-based business
workspace celebrating food from entrepreneurs’ home countries. Other partners include the Maine
Department of Economic and Community Development, where SCORE mentors provide assistance for
businesses reaching out to the DECD for help with PPP/CARES Act funding applications, and Maine
Accelerates Growth, a network of economic development and business support organizations throughout
Maine.

With approximately 240 chapters across the SCORE network, and an existing infrastructure that allows
us to access the entire wealth of resources and people, SCORE is well-positioned to scale our efforts to
connect with partners and provide vital resources and connections to disadvantaged business owners.

SCORE was not selected to receive a Community Navigator grant from the SBA. We have reached out
to several of the grant recipients to offer our assistance through mentoring and educational resources that
are already available to help underserved business owners.

SCORE VOLUNTEERS
Since 1964, SCORE volunteers have helped more than 11 million entrepreneurs to start, grow, or
troubleshoot a business. SCORE’s volunteer corps consists of 10,000 experienced businesspeople who
are passionate about helping small businesses succeed. Volunteers come from all across the country,
with diverse backgrounds and experience in different areas of industry. Our 2020 client engagement
index score is an impressively high 4.15 on a 5-point scale, and SCORE’s overall NPS (Net Promoter
Score) also slightly increased to 89.22.

SCORE volunteers are active and well-networked members of their communities. They often provide
valuable connections for SCORE clients, whether to local financial institutions, media outlets,
government offices or other small-business-oriented organizations.

Each year all SCORE volunteers undergo mandatory online training that reaffirms their commitment to
SCORE's Mentoring Methodology, represented by the acronym SLATE: Stop and Suspend Judgment.
Listen and Learn. Assess and Analyze. Test Ideas and Teach with Tools. Expectation Setting and
Encouraging the Dream. Following this methodology, mentors take the extra time to listen to and
understand each business’s unique needs and challenges, resulting in a transformational relationship, as
opposed to a merely transactional relationship.

Conversations between SCORE mentors and their clients are strictly confidential, with all mentors
signing a Code of Ethics and Conduct that addresses the protection of each client’s information and
business ideas. Each year, all volunteers are also required to read, understand and agree to the Code of
Ethics through mandatory online training in the SCORE Learning Management System.

In addition to volunteer mentors, who offer confidential business mentoring services, other types of
SCORE volunteers exist. These include subject matter experts, who provide focused knowledge based
on their professional skills or industry, workshop presenters, who lead local workshops, seminars and
events, and administrators, who share their skills in marketing, technology, finance or fundraising, in
support of chapter operations.




www.score.org
                                                                                                          8

ONE SCORE

SCORE’s operations are anchored and directed by a five-year strategic plan and annual tactical plans.
These plans are developed based on trends affecting small businesses and volunteerism, extensive data
collection in our business and from other organizations serving small businesses, as well as input from
our key stakeholders. Above all else, our top goals are to help more small business owners and engage
our volunteer corps.

The “One SCORE” initiative emphasizes operational efficiency, consistency and effectiveness so that
everyone who interacts with SCORE has the same incredible experience. SCORE’s volunteer mentors,
The SCORE Foundation, donors, corporate partners, board members and staff work together with shared
vision, consistent focus and renewed energy, as we serve our clients and prepare SCORE for continued
success.

With all of SCORE working together, clients have access to any mentor and any needed information, no
matter where they may be located. Chapters can learn from any other chapter and share information.
Volunteers can connect with any other volunteer, client or staff member. Stakeholders benefit from
partnerships of the entire SCORE organization.

Working together requires increased process capability and capacity, supported and enabled by
information technology. “One SCORE,” has generated centralization initiatives that ensure consistency
across all chapters, and reduce administrative burden on the volunteer, allowing them to focus on
mentoring and educating their clients.

“One SCORE” also ensures SCORE continues to be a good steward of the federal dollar. SCORE
successfully closed all findings from the Office of Inspector General’s FY 2017 report (released in April
2019) ahead of schedule. Through the implementation of many of our “One SCORE” programs, we
continue to demonstrate our commitment to compliance.

Centralized Accounting
All SCORE chapters were transitioned to centralized accounting system by January 1, 2020. Uniform
policies and procedures for treasury operations nationally and at the chapter level reduces the risk for the
overall organization, accounting for every dollar – restricted or unrestricted – at the chapter level, and
provides improved insight into SCORE’s financials to better support national accounting and
fundraising. The SBA has reviewed and approved this system.

The system helps by reducing the burden on chapters due to reporting requirements, bookkeeping tasks
and clerical duties, while allowing chapters to maintain control over how, when and where they raise
and spend funds. It also enables more consistent onboarding and training for chapter treasurers.

SCORE Engage: CRM Implementation
The “Engage” Customer Relationship Management system replaced the old database and intranet.
Engage improves the quality of engagement between users and SCORE through three main journeys –
client mentoring, volunteering and training. Engage improves the mentor matching process, and provide
better insight into chapter performance through reports, dashboards and additional tools that enable
integration between systems and data. All SCORE chapters were officially transitioned onto the Engage



www.score.org
                                                                                                          9

system by September 2021, following a pilot period in which “early adopters” representative of all
SCORE regions and chapter sizes tested the system and helped inform the business requirements,
system user experience, features, functionality and change management.

Volunteer Onboarding
A revamped volunteer onboarding program launched in FY 2019 now welcomes our provisional
members and provides them with the tools and information they needed to start their experience with
SCORE off right.

The program creates a more flexible and inclusive SCORE for the next generation of volunteers. As part
of the onboarding program, SCORE added new official volunteer classifications in addition to the
traditional “mentor” designation, including subject matter experts, workshop presenters and chapter
support roles. These new roles permit more flexibility for prospective volunteers who have valuable
skills to contribute to SCORE but may not have the time to become full mentors.

Chapter Social Media Program
Now in its fifth year, the SCORE Social Media Program provides baseline content and centralized
oversight of chapter social media content to drive local mentoring and workshop attendance, build local
awareness of SCORE’s services, and ensure online brand consistency. The program also manages
participating chapters’ online directory listings to ensure they are claimed, managed and fully optimized.

Proper management of this social mobile ecosystem has helped significantly improve organic search
results in Google. This means that more people actively searching for “small business help” are finding
their local SCORE chapter.

Last year, 92% of chapters ranked in the top ten search results for key search terms, compared to 68% at
program inception, and 89% of chapters ranked in the top three search results. Social media users for
participating chapters grew by 11.57%, bringing the total community of local chapters to 168,307 fans.

METRICS AND REPORTING
SCORE depends on accurate management data and metrics to track progress, program success and
impact. As such, we work annually with PricewaterhouseCoopers to capture our full program impact
through statistically-significant, relevant and accurate data in the form of client and volunteer
engagement surveys.

In addition to these surveys, SCORE collects a variety of data and metrics throughout the year, which
are used to measure performance and inform decision-making at both the headquarters and chapter
levels. Reporting begins at the national level, and narrows down to the regional, district, chapter and
individual volunteer levels.

Specific reports include:
    • Dashboard Report: Shows the performance metrics and client satisfaction rates for chapters and
        districts according to the number of unique clients, historic session and workshop data, client
        return rates and volunteer demographics and certifications.
    • Client Impact Survey: SCORE’s annual measure of customer satisfaction, with data sortable
        according to individual district, chapter and state.



www.score.org
                                                                                                        10

    •   Net Promoter Scores (NPS): NPS scores are service metrics that measure client satisfaction
        based on the quality of the client-mentor relationship, and willingness to recommend SCORE.
        The results are used to identify and promote best mentoring practices. The SCORE national
        average NPS for FY 2021 is strong, at 89.22. The vast majority (86%) of clients are likely to
        recommend SCORE services to others.
    •   Volunteer Engagement Survey: Measures volunteer engagement and satisfaction, both across
        SCORE nationwide, and at the local chapter level.
    •   Local workshop reporting: Measures attendance and attendee satisfaction, including a national
        ranking in comparison to other SCORE chapters.
    •   Management Information System Reports: Provide up-to-date information on total services
        (both mentoring and workshops).

SCORE has historically experienced challenges with the SBA’s EDMIS system, culminating in recent
outputs for FY2021 that have dramatically underestimated SCORE’s impact data. The EDMIS
management reports (as of January 25, 2022) do not reflect the SCORE data being entered into the
system. We continue to work closely with the SBA to resolve these errors and want to ensure SCORE’s
impact is properly represented to our important stakeholders.

APPROPRIATIONS REQUEST
SCORE’s mentoring and education are critical to helping small business owners overcome their
challenges and succeed. Additional funding would sustain our Small Business Resilience platform, and
significantly expand the number of clients we help through our COVID response model, empowering
businesses to adapt, grow, and thrive, and positively impacting our nation’s economy.

Based on our continued demonstrated impact, increased demand for services and SCORE’s specific
plans to reach more business owners in underserved and disadvantaged communities hardest hit by the
COVID-19 pandemic, SCORE respectfully requests an increase of $9.5 million in funding for FY 2022,
for a total annual appropriation of $21.7 million. This funding level was supported by the U.S. House of
Representatives through an amendment spearheaded by Reps. Crow and Spanberger that received strong
bipartisan support.

SCORE is scalable. With a relatively small investment, we can provide even greater value to business
owners and the economy. Over the past five years, SCORE has helped start 186,685 businesses and
create 378,550 non-owner jobs. In FY 2021 alone, SCORE helped its clients to start 24,742 new
businesses and create 71,475 new, non-owner jobs. Our projections estimate that this increased funding
would help us to deliver 540,243 additional client services (mentoring, workshops, education), with a
projected outcome of 100,131 additional new businesses started and/or jobs created.

SCORE also provides tremendous return on investment to the American taxpayer, with every dollar
invested return to the federal treasury many times over. In FY 2021, SCORE clients returned $58.93 in
new federal tax revenue for every $1 appropriated to SCORE, ($718.9 million in total).

Please see below for details on how additional funding would be utilized, and what results we expect to
achieve.




www.score.org
                                                                                                      11

Help More Underserved Businesses: $2.5 million

   •   Development of timely educational content including accessing emergency capital, thriving post-
       pandemic, and specialized content for businesses hardest hit by COVID-19.
   •   Increase content accessibility for disadvantaged entrepreneurs – for example: Black, Hispanic,
       Asian and Pacific Islander, indigenous, disabled, women, veterans and 55+ communities. This
       includes conducting research into specific client needs, translating content to Spanish and
       developing targeted educational programs.
   •   Nationwide program awareness campaigns and localized marketing outreach to attract new
       clients and volunteers from underserved markets and diverse communities.
   •   Add key staff positions to support diverse volunteer mentor recruitment and increase outreach to
       underserved communities, with a focus on partnership building.

Increase Mentoring and Education by Reducing Administrative Burden on Volunteers: $3.75
million
SCORE Headquarters shoulders some operational and administrative processes that demand
considerable time and resources from our volunteer mentors, giving mentors more time to focus on what
they do best – helping businesses succeed.

Our “One SCORE” initiative facilitates information and resource sharing across state, city and chapter
lines, so clients and volunteers benefit from our nationwide network. SCORE is evolving to a more
centralized operating model, with support functions executed and coordinated at the headquarters level,
while direct client services are delivered through our local chapters. Centralization guarantees
consistency across the entire organization, ensuring a high quality of service no matter how, when or
where clients interact with SCORE.

Examples of this centralized operating model that have already been accomplished include: the
centralized accounting system, chapter score.org websites, the chapter social media marketing program,
implementation of @scorevolunteer.org email addresses for every volunteer and our Engage customer
relationship management system (CRM).

With additional funding, SCORE would expand this “One SCORE” initiative through:
   • Technological improvements to the Engage CRM that seamlessly connects clients with
       volunteers.
           o On-demand communication features including live chat on website and text messaging.
           o Development of customized learning management and marketing automation systems
               that offer clients personalized advice and resources based on their unique needs.
           o Educational training and support for volunteers to mentor using these new capabilities.
   • A centralized administration system to connect clients with volunteers faster, and guarantee
       effective mentor pairing.
   • Given the critical importance of complying with our federal grant, and being good stewards of
       our federal dollars, SCORE would maintain newly added staff positions, including a compliance
       manager and accounting specialist, and implement a procurement tracking system for all
       chapters who work directly with vendors and event spaces, to ensure contract process
       compliance.




www.score.org
                                                                                                        12

More Support for Community Outreach/Local SCORE Chapters: $3.25 million
Each year, SCORE’s chapters must raise additional funds to supplement our federal funding – typically
$5 to $8 million in total. With an increase in direct field allocation, volunteers will be free to focus on
their primary objective – mentoring and education – which will result in helping more businesses to
start, grow and succeed. Funds would be used for local client marketing and volunteer recruiting (50%)
and operations including administrative support, office space rent and utilities, and phone service (50%).
Funds would be allocated based on chapter performance metrics, opportunities for growth, and field
leadership evaluations.

Thank you for allowing SCORE to submit this written testimony. We welcome any further questions.




www.score.org


File and source

File

Weston_Testimony.pdf

Size

97,261 bytes

SHA-256

662e5b6b770fb4892102af4da246a8f7cd44995c1b8e7f480532f3d86727f9af

Our copy

Weston_Testimony.pdf

Original

No public link identified.