By Jack Bernard, contributing columnist
PEACHTREE CITY, Ga. | Many small business owners will recognize the SCORE name (Service Core Of Retired Executives), affiliated with the Small Business Administration (SBA); it brings together volunteerism and entrepreneurship to benefit the small businesses.
Created nearly 60 years ago, SCORE has helped more than 17 million new and existing small businesses to grow and prosper.
Nationally, SCORE consists of 10,000 completely unpaid volunteers who, like the author, provide free mentoring to entrepreneurs in all 50 states. Last year, these volunteers gave four million hours of their time to these altruistic efforts, helping to create 143,000 new jobs.
In Georgia, SCORE has over 100 unpaid business mentors, businesspeople, most in the Atlanta area. There are also mentors in North Georgia, Macon and Savannah. Last year, these men and women conducted over 700 mentoring sessions with over 4800 clients. In Georgia, seminars on topics like marketing and business planning reached over 20,000 clients.
But SCORE has been defunded by Trump. Defunding SCORE, which helped create nearly 60,000 small businesses in 2024 is just one example of President Trump’s many unforced, easily avoidable errors affecting the economy.
The discrepancy between what Trump says and what he does is tremendous and being recognized by voters. That growing gap is why his support on the economy (36%) and the budget (31%) have fallen to an all-time low.
My story is typical. Formerly a senior vice president for a national corporation, I retired from corporate America over 20 years ago. But I was still young and wanted to give back. I eventually discovered SCORE and have been an active mentor for decades. I have mentored hundreds of small businesses in Georgia and, occasionally, other states.
Mentoring varies according to the needs of each individual client. Sometimes, we help with short-term crises specific to a business, like where to get a loan or how to secure a specific contract. Other times, our help is broader, strategic.
Typically, a small business owner is so overwhelmed with everyday pressures that he/she has little time to think long-term. We can assist by helping development of a business plan covering the marketing, implementation and financial aspects of an enterprise.
SCORE’s total funding from the federal government has been only $17 million annually. Since mentors are unpaid, funding has gone towards overhead, such as IT services to maintain the client data base. Federal funding for SCORE should be a “no-brainer.” And it would be—except for ideological factors driving this administration’s irrational, emotional funding decisions.
Many SCORE clients are considered “DEI” by the Trump Administration, women and minorities. Therefore, as the administration’s 2025 budget request states – “Eliminated programs include …SCORE, which in 2023 posted ‘Six Ways to Support LGBTQIA-Owned Businesses,’ and provided resources based on race.”
This intolerable situation, counter-productive to Trump’s economic development goals, should have received more national and state attention. But because of the chainsaw versus scalpel nature of Trump’s budget cuts, we should not be surprised. There are so many unjustifiable actions that have been taken by Trump that this one is far down on the list. But it’s hard for the SBA to tell that to the many small businesses that require free SCORE mentoring to grow and prosper.
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