Westchester County Business Journal SCORE expand house-call program
SCORE expand house-call program
Volunteers offer RX for business ailments
The volunteers at SCORE Westchester, the county chapter of the national Service Corps of Retired Executives, make house calls to business owners seeking remedies for financial and other operations ailments and prescriptions for success. They don’t bill for their visits.
The chapter’s two-year-old house-call program has been broadened this year, SCORE volunteer Charles Auerbach said last week. Previously confined to urban centers in the southern part of the county, the program now is available to “any kind of store or office countywide,” he said. However, small businesses operated from offices in homes are not eligible for the free service.
In 2007, the program’s inaugural year, SCORE volunteers made more than 50 house calls. “Since then they’ve been few and far between,” Auerbach said. “A great number of the businesses that could be eligible are not aware of it. Many don’t know about SCORE and many don’t know SCORE will come to them and many don’t know it’s a free service.”
Also new this year, the house calls will be made by teams of two business counselors. Auerbach said roughly a score of the chapter’s 40 active volunteers can be tapped to call upon retail and office owners who cannot break away during business hours for counseling at the SCORE office at 120 Bloomingdale Road in White Plains.
“We always try to provide counselors who have some particular experience or knowledge of the field involved,” Auerbach said. “When we get an inquiry, we try to find out as much about the needs of that person and on that basis we provide the counselors according to the skills required.” Their range of advice and expertise includes sales and marketing, financing and financial control, personnel management, strategic planning, information technology and record keeping.
Auerbach, a past chairman of the SCORE chapter, said businesses visited by volunteers have included a burglar alarm installation company, a 40-employee used auto parts and wrecking company, a computer maintenance business, an accounting service for art galleries, general contractors, restaurants and a clinical psychologist seeking guidance on a move into corporate counseling. In New Rochelle, an ornamental iron works company wounded by an embezzling manager and “hanging on by the skin of their teeth” was saved by financial counselors from SCORE, he said.
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