Mentoring is an effective tool, used widely in the world of business support. Research done by the Prince's Trust into 60,000 companies started by young entrepreneurs with the support of business mentoring schemes found that 60 per cent were still trading after three years. This is double the rate for businesses started without the support of mentoring.
The mentoring offered as part of the Social Economy Belfast programme is about building a relationship with someone outside of your organisation who can act as a sounding board for your ideas. Your mentor is also the person who can guide you through the phases of the programme. It always helps to know that you are not going it alone.
Mentoring is delivered using a combination of peer and expert mentoring.
Peer mentoring takes place with someone from another social enterprise - on a business to business basis. The beauty of this is that you will be dealing with someone who is in social business themselves, and who understands the environment you operate in.
Expert mentoring will take place with experienced business advisers and may be widely focused on achieving your social and economic goals – or it may cover specific topics which your social business may need extra support with – such as financial matters, marketing or ICT.
Regardless of the type of mentoring – sessions will take place on a one to one basis. They will support the training programme, giving you a chance to apply the theory you learnt in a group training session to your own specific needs.
Smaller, community-based, businesses really benefit from mentoring as it is a way of providing a direct network of support when you start out. Don’t take our word for it, click here to read some case studies from other social enterprises who have benefited from mentoring support.
