NORWALK – As an investor or a business owner you were told that for every dollar of funding you put into a nonprofit it could generate a $45.72 return? Or that same nonprofit business helped launched nearly 60,000 small businesses that led to 143,623 new jobs?
Would you think such an operation that has been around for 61 years is worth funding? Well, the national directors of SCORE, an entrepreneur organization funded through the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), are scratching their heads wondering why such a question should even be posed.
SCORE Fairfield County is seeking donations to keep it afloat in light of federal SBA funding cuts. To donate, go to SCORE Foundation
SCORE Fairfield County and the 219 other chapters throughout the country are facing a bleak reality as the Trump administration has proposed pulling the $17 million in the fiscal year 2026 discretionary budget that funds the nonprofit starting Oct. 1, 2025. SCORE is an organization primarily run by retired executives who teach aspiring and maturing small business owners how to run their businesses.
“What we are hearing from our regions and district people is that the line item from the SBA as requested is zero,” said Ashwini Bhaskar, co-chair of SCORE Fairfield County. “That has been proposed by the administration a couple of months back.”
Bhaskar, who is an engineer with 30 years of management consulting experience including a stint at KPMG and IBM, has been in touch with the national SCORE office and its board since the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) budget cuts were first announced earlier this year.
“We don’t expect the number to be zero,” he said. “But we expect it to be cut. One of our co-chairs, Steve Smith (of Westport), happens to sit on the national board. Right now, they are trying to come up with a SCORE model that will presume we will not get any funding.”
Such a plan calls for SCORE trying to create its own revenue by charging $25 for national workshops and webinars. At the moment, the plan does not include charging for chapter programs, Bhaskar said.
So, how much funding does SCORE Fairfield County need to exist?
It has a budget of under $100,000, with $40,000 coming from the national office to provide marketing and infrastructure services. The local SCORE comes up with the rest of the budget revenue through sponsorships.
“If we lose the (SBA) funding, you are not going to be able communicate and do the marketing,” Tom Shimko, said co-chair of Fairfield County SCORE. “And you’re not going to be able to use the infrastructure.”
That infrastructure includes such things as keeping up the website, producing the webinars, and marketing for all educational services, according to Bob Hogan, SCORE Fairfield County business mentor.
For fiscal year 2024, SCORE Fairfield County had 2,231 client mentoring sessions, 110 local live workshops, and 9,046 total sessions that included national educational events. All of this was done with only 111 volunteers in Fairfield County. As a chapter, Fairfield County has created 822 new businesses and 1,699 new jobs.
One small business owner who has used SCORE Fairfield County’s services for years cites it as the primary reason she is still in business and has even expanded. She has been working with SCORE Business Mentor Hogan while she has gotten her businesses started.
Laura Sabia of Greenwich has owned three Pure Barre franchises in Darien, Westport, and Fairfield for more than a decade. Pure Barre is a low-impact, total body workout that utilizes the ballet bar for isometric movements. More recently, she became owner of three lifestyle magazines – Greenwich Lifestyle, Darien/New Canaan Lifestyle, and another in upper Westchester, New York. She oversees a total of 52 employees.
“For the fitness franchises, I moved here (Connecticut) when I was 25,” Sabia said. “I was a customer at a studio out of Florida where I was living and I absolutely loved it. I had just graduated from grad school with a masters in education and leadership. I was able to manage a bunch of college students. But I had never owned a business.”
“I have gotten everything from my experience with SCORE. I’ve had a lot of legal issues come up over the years. Talking out situations. I didn’t know what a balance sheet was. Understanding the financials and how making decisions impacts that. They have helped me with tons of employee issues, how to manage that. I have 52 employees. That’s a lot of people to manage.
It’s not sustainable to pay a lawyer $450 an hour if you have a question. That’s not sustainable.”
For Bhaskar, Laura’s story is just one of many that exist in Fairfield County thanks to the efforts of SCORE.
“We work with a million people in Fairfield County,” he said. “We have almost 14,000 in our database who have gone through our education. When a bank sponsoring a workshop for $1,000, we put the flyers that are sponsored by M&T Bank.
“So, they get all the eyeballs from the 14,000 people that we send it out to. Remember, we do our workshops in the library. And the library promotes it to their patrons. And we do partnerships with chambers of commerce, and they will put it out to their members.
“Our pitch to sponsors is that for just $1,000, they can get nearly 40,000 people seeing their bank while we are able to get out our message to prospective small business owners.”
