Be a Coastal Mentor
Fuel business growth in your community.
Mentors can:
- Provide expertise & practical “know-how.”
- Identify new strategies & ideas
- Suggest useful business tools
- Become your trusted small business advisor
- And more!
Let’s get to know each other.
Learning more about your unique experience and skill set helps Coastal Mentors make the best possible connections. Shortly after you apply to volunteer, a team member will contact you to set up a brief (30 min) meeting to discuss why you want to volunteer, what skills you want to share, and your desired commitment.
We prepare you for a successful relationship.
Coastal Mentors meets with every entrepreneur before matching them to a mentor. The meeting helps uncover: industry, business stage, mentor-capability, and goals. When we understand the goals and reason they signed up, we can ensure that they get connected to the best mentor or resource to help them with their specific business goals.
Setting specific goals
Before you meet an entrepreneur, we help them clarify the goal they are aiming for or the challenge they are trying to overcome. We share that information with one of our volunteer mentors with experience in their industry or solving that type of challenge. If they know they can help you- we make an introduction.
Making a connection
Once we make an introduction, it is the responsibility of the mentor/entrepreneur to make arrangements to connect. Coastal Mentors can provide online tools like ZOOM or a physical office to meet, but we ask for at least 48 hours’ notice to make arrangements for your meeting.
You set the amount of time you can commit to working with the entrepreneur; however, we request at least three hours per entrepreneur completed within three months. of the introduction.
Confidential
All program participants are required to sign an ethics pledge. The pledge includes a privacy statement. At no time will Coastal Mentors request sensitive nor proprietary information from one of our clients or volunteers.
Progress Matters
Coastal Mentors cares about the success and satisfaction of our entrepreneur/mentor relationships. Mentors can expect to receive surveys to learn more about the experience working with your entrepreneur.
Cost
This program is offered at no cost and managed by a group of volunteers that want to support our community through entrepreneurship. To help us track the program’s success and qualify for future grants, we require a small amount of information from the business owners. We report the data in aggregate form and not individual businesses.
Will I make a difference?
New firms — those under six years of age — are the source of all net job growth in the United States economy. These firms are also the source of new entrepreneurial creativity. New and small firms also know that they cannot compete for head-on with older, more established businesses. To survive, the new, the small, the creative, must compete around the edges of the market with niche/unique goods and services.
The Small Business Administration reports that small business owners who receive three or more hours of mentoring report higher revenues and increased growth.
Sharing your skills and experience with new or small firms can have a major impact on the success of our community.
