SCORE:
No Longer Your Old, Retired, White Man’s Organization by Montrie Rucker Adams, APR Gone are the days when connecting with someone at the Service Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE) meant you were paired with an elderly white man who knew little about what you desired to do, especially if it involved technology. At least that was my experience in the mid-1990s when I was contemplating starting a business and was encouraged to talk to someone at SCORE. When SCORE was founded in 1964, the national non-profit’s sole purpose was to provide free business counseling to people running small businesses. At that time, they pulled from a pool of retired male executives. To be fair, white men were the business owners in those days and overwhelmingly served in executive positions. Today, the national organization utilizes the expertise of a variety of individuals with business experience. SCORE Cleveland has 85 volunteers: 30 percent are minorities and 33 percent are women. Of their more than 1,500 clients, 60 percent were women, 46 percent were minorities, and 9 percent were veterans (from 2020 statistics). Nationally, SCORE boasts 250+ chapters. Annually they provide counseling services in all business areas to more than 300,000 entrepreneurs and business owners. Since its opening one year after the national organization, Cleveland SCORE, the Northeastern Ohio SCORE chapter which serves Cuyahoga, Lake, Lorain, Geauga, Ashtabula, Huron, and
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