It’s time for some good business news! Savannah SCORE is celebrating a successful Fiscal Year (FY) 2020. Savannah SCORE’s achievements include a client satisfaction rating that is more than four percent higher than the national SCORE average and is one of the highest in the nation.

“Overall, we had a 39.6 percent increase in total services provided to our clients, the highest among all SCORE chapters in the Southeast Region,” Michael Siegel, Certified Mentor and SCORE Chapter Chair said. SCORE is the nation’s largest provider of free business mentoring and educational programs for aspiring entrepreneurs and small business owners and Savannah SCORE is one of 300 SCORE chapters in the U.S.

According to Siegel, “Our mentors, who are all volunteers, provided nearly 1,700 hours of services to Savannah SCORE clients. That’s a 28.5 percent increase from FY 2019. During Savannah SCORE’s FY2020, we helped 842 small businesses and aspiring entrepreneurs, up from 705 clients served in FY2019. We also went from 799 local workshop attendees in FY2019 to 1,551 in FY2020 and had a 28.6 percent increase in the number of local workshops we were able to provide.”

Siegel added that Savannah SCORE and its mentors also improved an already high client satisfaction rating known as the Net Promoter Score (NPS). “Not only did we improve our high FY2019 NPS rating, our 91.4 FY2020 rating is more than four percent higher than the national SCORE average and it is one of the highest in the nation,” Siegel said. 

Savannah SCORE’s Top Performers, defined as volunteers who were in the Top Five for four out of the six most important NPS metrics, are Bill Bruner, Bill Izzard, Renee Vivea, Gloria Strauthers, Jess Belfry, Thom Greenlaw, and Ned Duffy. 

The organization’s Volunteer of the Year honors went to Bruner, who had exceptional performance in all six NPS metrics. Belfry, who has been a SCORE Volunteer for just over six months, won Savannah SCORE’s Rookie of the Year Award.