More mentors wanted

Two of Australia’s biggest not-for-profit providers of mentoring services are looking for volunteers. The Small Business Mentoring Service in Victoria and Business Mentor Services Tasmania provide mentors to small business owners and community groups. Both need more mentors to provide this important business service.

SBMS has 75 volunteer mentors, with the majority in Melbourne and the rest located in the regional centres of Traralgon, Shepparton and Geelong. Peter McDonald , SBMS president and a retired National Australia Bank branch manager and small-business banker, says most of his organisation’s mentors are retired or semi-retired business people.

McDonald encourages fellow retirees to get in touch, but he would also like to see younger people sign up. “Mentors with information technology and internet marketing experience are sought after. A lot of our older mentors don’t have experience in these areas,” he says. “As the current crop of mentors gets older, we need renewal at the other end.”

SBMS is especially keen to hear from women. “We have about a dozen women mentors but we need twice as many,” McDonald says. “We’ve been receiving a lot more inquiries from the owners of home-based businesses. Usually they are women and their preference is to have another woman as their mentor,” he says.

Across Bass Strait, BMST has 100-plus mentors and needs more, especially from the north and north-west of the state. “Seventy per cent of our mentors are in the south,” general manager Graham Marshall says.

As with its Victorian counterpart, most of the mentors at BMST are men. “Fifteen per cent of our mentors are women: we would like more women,” Marshall says.

BRW

Comments (0)