Mentoring service deserves support

By Rod Oram

Between the lines

Business in the Community, an excellent model of how New Zealanders can help each other, deserves to be a far bigger success than it is.

Small and medium sized companies around the country have a huge need for its mentoring service. Yet, its growth is hampered by its own need to keep scrambling to meet its tiny budget.

The beauty of the scheme is its simplicity. People with business skills mentor the less skilled, giving their time and knowledge for free. Their reward instead is the satisfaction of helping and of learning.

"To teach is to learn twice," says Alison Quesnel, Business in the Community's chief executive. "Being a mentor makes me a more rounded worker."

The programme plays well to an essential need in New Zealand. We are a nation of small businesses - 230,000 companies employ 25 or fewer people - but many companies are short of the skills required to survive, let alone fulfil their potential.

The lack reflects mainly the short time intense competitive pressures from home and abroad have been at work in the economy. To survive in business these days you have to be very competent. We have some excellent companies and executives but we need mechanisms such as Business in the Community to spread the skills.

In its financial year to March, Business in the Community mobilised some 850 mentors to help nearly 3000 companies. That was virtually double the work load it managed in the previous year, thanks to its own efforts to make its systems more effective.

The organisation operates with a paid staff of two - Alison Quesnel and a secretary - and an army of volunteers on an annual budget of only $500,000 in cash and some $400,000 worth of goods and services in kind from its patrons.

Perhaps its financial constraint is partly of its own making. It charges companies only $5000 a year to be national patrons or $2000 to be regional patrons. As a result Alison Quesnel and her board members spend a lot of time fund raising. One of the most effective is Sir James Fletcher, long a supporter of the movement.

A few months ago, Business in the Community secured a new line of financing - $100,000 a year for two years from the government under its new Biz Programme designed to upgrade small business skills.

The funding is unfortunate in two ways: first, some of the scant money the government makes available to business is diverted to basic programmes which the business community could support. The money should go instead to more complex tasks such as helping small companies research foreign markets, as used to happen under the Biz's predecessor.

Second, the funding reduces the pressure on the corporate sector to take ownership of the movement. It should rally behind it - to help establish a vibrant enterprise culture in New Zealand and for the sheer mutual reward Business in the Community brings.

Business in the Community, an excellent model of how New Zealanders can help each other, deserves to be a far bigger success than it is. Small and medium sized companies around the country have a huge need for its mentoring service. Yet, its growth is hampered by its own need to keep scrambling to meet its tiny budget.

The beauty of the scheme is its simplicity. People with business skills mentor the less skilled, giving their time and knowledge for free. Their reward instead is the satisfaction of helping and of learning.

"To teach is to learn twice," says Alison Quesnel, Business in the Community's chief executive. "Being a mentor makes me a more rounded worker."

The programme plays well to an essential need in New Zealand. We are a nation of small businesses - 230,000 companies employ 25 or fewer people - but many companies are short of the skills required to survive, let alone fulfil their potential.

The lack reflects mainly the short time intense competitive pressures from home and abroad that have been at work in the economy. To survive in business these days you have to be very competent. We have some excellent companies and executives, but we need mechanisms such as Business in the Community to spread the skills.

In its financial year to March, Business in the Community mobilised some 850 mentors to help nearly 3000 companies. That was virtually double the work load it managed in the previous year, thanks to its own efforts to make its systems more effective.

The organisation operates with a paid staff of two - Alison Quesnel and a secretary - and an army of volunteers on an annual budget of only $500,000 in cash and some $400,000 worth of goods and services in kind from its patrons.

Perhaps its financial constraint is partly of its own making. It charges companies only $5000 a year to be national patrons or $2000 to be regional patrons. As a result, Alison Quesnel and her board members spend a lot of time fund raising. One of the most effective is Sir James Fletcher, long a supporter of the movement.

A few months ago, Business in the Community secured a new line of financing - $100,000 a year for two years from the Government under its new Biz Programme designed to upgrade small business skills.

The funding is unfortunate in two ways: first, some of the scant money the Government makes available to business is diverted to basic programmes which the business community could support. The money should go instead to more complex tasks such as helping small companies research foreign markets, as used to happen under the Biz's predecessor.

Second, the funding reduces the pressure on the corporate sector to take ownership of the movement. It should rally behind it - to help establish a vibrant enterprise culture in New Zealand and for the sheer mutual reward Business in the Community brings.