SCORE Volunteers: Learning Something Every Day

The Service Corps of Retired Executives’s (SCORE) New York City chapter (Chapter 1000) has four offices in the New York City metropolitan area and held more than 6,000 counseling sessions in the past fiscal year. Two of its volunteers, Martin Lehman and Phil Reynolds, CPA, recently visited The CPA Journal offices and discussed SCORE’ s mission and accomplishments.

“We want to make prospective volunteers aware of the opportunities and rewards of SCORE participation, and we also want to make prospective clients aware of the services we offer,” said Reynolds, a SCORE volunteer for 11 years, in explaining that community outreach is an ongoing part of their work. Both Reynolds and Lehman clarified that, although referring clients and prospective clients to professionals outside of SCORE on a fee basis is often appropriate, they never refer people directly to a particular practitioner. Instead, they refer people to organizations such as the NYSSCPA and the American Bar Association (ABA), which can help them find professionals in their area who specialize in their business or situation. Such organizations often have checklists and other resources that help members of the general public find the right professional, and the decision remains with the individual.

New York City has 41 counselors, four of which are CPAs (three with a corporate or industry background). Most of the other volunteers are entrepreneurs in small businesses, and a relative few have been senior executives of large corporations.

The SCORE counselors’ work is pro bono, although they receive a nominal daily stipend to cover public transportation to and from client meetings. Most SCORE clients are for-profit businesses. Counselors’ other work for SCORE includes serving on committees, interviewing prospective counselors, doing public relations, and conducting public seminars (the only service for which SCORE charges a nominal fee).

Lehman said SCORE counselors work at least two days each week. Although the federal government provides the basics in terms of office space, telephones, and computers, the organization has no paid office staff and the counselors are entirely self-sufficient. Lehman and Reynolds said this can make for an interesting adjustment for counselors accustomed to secretarial and other clerical assistance during their entire professional careers.

“I was very unhappy being inactive,” said Reynolds, who retired from public accounting in 1992 after a declining level of part-time work. “I learned about SCORE almost accidentally—from an AARP newsletter. I contacted SCORE about volunteering, and met with the recruiting committee. When they told me about the three-month training period, I thought: ‘What do I have to learn?’ I’ll tell you, I learned a lot! With SCORE, I was functioning in an entirely different environment than public accounting. I learned counseling techniques for working with clients, some of whom have limited resources and English-speaking skills. This work requires a lot of emphasis on things like listening and following up. I would never have expected it to be so different from my earlier career.

“I’m still learning every day,” said Reynolds. “For example, from working with a retail store, I’ve learned first-hand that many people have made their way in that business by combining skills and experience in surprising ways, and usually not by being highly competitive.”

Reynolds recounted another example, of a woman who wanted to open a bed-and-breakfast on eastern Long Island: “She’d found a building that she wanted to buy and renovate. The advice I was able to give her was entirely in the area of formulating and refining a business plan—that’s really most of what we do. But to figure out how to transform the building for her intended purpose, she also needed highly specialized advice about real estate and construction. But she did it, and now she’s in the process of making her dream happen.”

Lehman and Reynolds agree that the reward of volunteering is in knowing that they’re helping people fulfill their dreams of starting their own businesses. SCORE clients can continue to receive counseling for “as long as it takes to get it done,” said Lehman and Reynolds confidently.

Sometimes a SCORE volunteer can help a client avoid mistakes. Reynolds recounted that when he was going through the SCORE training program, he and his trainer met with a young man who wanted to create a business to export used cars to sub-Saharan Africa. The counselor asked the young man what experience he had in the used car business. Absolutely none. What he had was the idea that a market existed for exporting used cars from the U.S. to sub-Saharan Africa, and that this would be profitable and enjoyable. Reynolds remembered how the counselor gently told the young man, “Here’s what you can do: Go work in a used-car business, and go to school to learn about international business. Then you’ll have a foundation, and if at that point you still want to create this kind of business, we can help you. But you’re not ready for this yet.”

Lehman said that SCORE counselors benefit from their training and their exposure to many types of businesses and situations. He said that another reporter who met with them expected that they would be computer illiterate and generally out of touch with today’s business world. “Boy, was she surprised!”

“This keeps me busy and productive,” said Reynolds. “I feel an enormous sense of accomplishment—that I’m giving something back to the business community. Every day is rewarding. During that period of inactivity after I retired, I was increasingly unhappy, but this work gives me an immense sense of purpose. And I learn something every day.”

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