Today, SCORE announced the launch of its new small business community at http://www.scorecommunity.org
For those of you not familiar with SCORE, it stands for “Service Corps Of Retired Executives” and was started in 1964 as “Counselors to America’s Small Business”. Over time, this non-profit organization has helped more than 8.3 million aspiring entrepreneurs and small business owners through counseling and business workshops. More than 11,200 volunteer business counselors in 370 chapters serve their communities through entrepreneur education dedicated to the formation, growth and success of small businesses.
Connecting through Online Communities
Continuing their mission, they have extended their knowledge and outreach to an online community of small business that need this mentorship. I speak from experience because I worked with SCORE back in 1999 to write my first real “raise some money” business plan and I couldn’t have done it without my SCORE mentor.
The community is powered by PartnerUp, which has a large online community geared solely toward small business owners and entrepreneurs. PartnerUp is the leading provider of enterprise solutions software for companies looking to target the small business market. PartnerUp was founded in February 2005 and acquired by Deluxe Corporation in July 2008. PartnerUp is headquartered in Minneapolis. For more information, visit http://corporate.partnerup.com.
Essentially, the community is a private labeled version of PartnerUp with content from their site taking advantage of their already established network. This is important for first impressions because many people who visit a community like this for the first time are looking for value and people using it already. Over time, this will grow on its own with specific content and an exclusive community but for now this is a great start in the right direction.
For more information check out the SCORE Community at http://www.scorecommunity.org
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