Mentors can provide your business with advice, skills and new ideas to help you succeed at all stages of your business journey
There are many rewards to business mentoring for both the mentor and mentee. Whether you are looking for extra support from an experienced and successful organisation or hoping to mentor someone, there are a number of mentoring schemes around the country that you can get involved in.
Leading national mentoring schemes include:
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The Everywoman mentoring programme everywoman has developed an electronic business mentoring service that offers members online access to business mentors, coaches, expert advisors and specialists, which aims to help female business owners build their confidence, grow their businesses and take their ideas to fruition.
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Shell LiveWIRE provides an online forum, business advice, one-on-one mentoring for 16-30 year olds starting out in business, case studies and a social networking business community.
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The Princes Trust - As well as offering loans, the Prince’s Trust offers support, grants and mentoring to entrepreneurs aged 18-30.
PRIME Cymru is a Welsh organisation designed to keep older people active. It recruits older volunteers in Wales to work as business mentors.
Women’s Enterprise Task Force Organises mentoring for women in business.
Mentoring and Befriending Foundation (MBF) provides guidance and support to organisations that already run, or want to set up, a mentoring and befriending programme. It has regional co-ordinators established in each of the nine government regions with responsibility for engaging with and supporting practitioners in the field
In addition, the BCC and Business Link offer advice and support on a range of business topics (starting up, finance, regulation, etc) both online and over the phone. Seminars, workshops and some face-to-face mentoring are also organised, but this is done at a regional level, usually partnered with the RDA. This report provides a good overview of the economic importance of mentoring to UK business, and summarises key UK schemes (although worth noting that it is a few years old so figures may be out of date: Click here to read report
Regional Mentoring Programmes
RDA's and Local Authorities are the leaders of regional mentoring schemes, often in partnership with other charities or business organisations.
Click on regions of the map below to see the main Mentoring Schemes taking place within that region.
