For the second year in a row, SCORE National has awarded SCORE Bucks County the 2020 Platinum Leadership Award, the highest recognition possible for any local chapter. Notably, only a small percentage of SCORE’s 348 chapters nationwide qualify for this annual honor.
SCORE Bucks County chairwoman Linda Zangrilli said the chapter provided 2,457 services to Bucks County small business owners and entrepreneurs from Oct. 1, 2019 through Sept. 30, 2020 – a 63.26 percent increase in total services as compared to the previous year of 1,505 total services.
“Because of COVID, we dramatically increased the number of services we provided to the community,” she said. “Business owners have turned to organizations like ours to keep them alive.”
In addition to offering free webinars on a range of topics, including starting a franchise, cash flow management, business funding, and sales and marketing, SCORE Bucks members provide free virtual mentoring sessions, as well as email and telephone sessions with clients. Prior to COVID, most one-on-one mentoring sessions and educational workshops were held in-person.
“Everything is virtual,” Zangrilli said. “It has actually been a benefit for a lot of people to do their sessions via video.”
As part of the Platinum Leadership Award designation, SCORE National reviews more than 20 areas, including assessments from clients, technical skills, ethics, leadership, diversity among the chapter’s volunteer mentors, and total services within their area. Zangrilli said she was proudest of the chapter’s 93 percent net promoter score, which is calculated based on surveys that clients complete rating their SCORE mentor and the likelihood of recommending SCORE to someone else.
“The Platinum Leadership Award exemplifies not only the quantity of work SCORE Bucks has undertaken, but more importantly, the quality of our work as reported by our clients,” Zangrilli said. “The qualifier for this honor is customer satisfaction as shown by positive feedback from our clients. We have succeeded in our mission only if they say so.”
For the coming year, Zangrilli said she plans to make greater strides for volunteer and client engagement.
“We’re going in the right direction,” she said.
Visit buckscounty.score.org/ for more information.
