SYRACUSE — The Syracuse chapter of SCORE provided guidance to about 65 business ventures in its territory during federal fiscal year 2018 that ended Sept. 30. The nonprofit SCORE is an organization of business entrepreneurs working to help small-business owners, entrepreneurs, and those who are “kind of dreaming” about opening a small business or having […]
SYRACUSE — The Syracuse chapter of SCORE provided guidance to about 65 business ventures in its territory during federal fiscal year 2018 that ended Sept. 30.
The nonprofit SCORE is an organization of business entrepreneurs working to help small-business owners, entrepreneurs, and those who are “kind of dreaming” about opening a small business or having their own business, says Marty Doto, a mentor with the SCORE Syracuse chapter. He calls it “trying to pay it forward.”
“We’re trying to take our expertise and our knowledge and share it with those folks to help them succeed as we did in our careers,” he says.
Doto, who has been a mentor for a “little over two years,” also handles marketing and communications for the organization. Doto, who is now retired, says he worked in the insurance industry both in upstate New York and elsewhere
SCORE Syracuse’s territory is a five-county area around Syracuse, including Onondaga, Oswego, Cortland, Madison, and Oneida counties. The SCORE Syracuse office is affiliated with the office in Utica.
“It’s a pretty broad reach and the clients can come from anywhere, and we can also do video conferencing,” Doto notes.
He describes SCORE as a “resource partner” with the Syracuse district office of the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), which provides “a lot of our referrals.”
Client meetings are by appointment. SCORE will meet with a client at the Syracuse SBA office or wherever it’s most convenient because the goal is to have recurring visits and mentoring sessions.
SCORE provides guidance for a lot of startups. About two-thirds of its clients are seeking help because they want to start a new business. The other one-third are people who are already in business, so SCORE works to be available to them as they continue to face different challenges.
“The goal is that we’re working with each other over years, not just over weeks or months,” Doto says.
About SCORE
SCORE has operated since the 1960s and “just about as long here in Central New York,” Doto says. SCORE started as an organization of retired executives “but that’s certainly not our make up now,” he adds.
The organization has members and mentors who are retired and semi-retired, along with small-business owners and entrepreneurs who are still working.
The name SCORE, for a time, was short for senior corps of retired executives, but that’s no longer the case. “We don’t consider it an acronym for anything. It’s just the name of the organization,” Doto says.
When asked how business owners become mentors with SCORE, he says “a lot of times, it’s word of mouth” and a recommendation from someone with whom the mentor is acquainted. Former SCORE clients sometimes decide to join the organization because they appreciate the help that the organization provided, he notes.
“When it was their time, they decided to join the organization so that they could give back,” says Doto.
The Syracuse chapter of SCORE has about 35 mentors as of now, but it also has subject-matter experts based on a client’s needs. It also has members and volunteers who conduct workshops.
“Because we’re part of a national organization, we can tap resources on the national basis as well … so the client gets a broad base of expertise to pull from,” says Doto.
