Thursday was a very special day at SCORE Chester and Delaware Counties.

One nonprofit and three small businesses were honored at the June 10 annual Small Business Achievements Awards program. 

Client success and client recognition are very important to SCORE.  This year, it took on even more significance after 15 months navigating a pandemic crisis.

It is a time of reflection and pause, and a time to celebrate how resilient entrepreneurs can be with the conviction to focus on what is possible when everything around us is so unpredictable.

About SCORE

SCORE, the nation’s largest network of volunteer business experts, is dedicated to helping small businesses get off the ground, grow and achieve their goals.

Locally, SCORE Chester and Delaware Counties has been operating since 1985, with over 100 volunteers today who provide confidential mentoring at no charge as well as business training to benefit the local community. 

Keynote Speaker

Maria Smith, SCORE Chairwoman, kicked off the virtual awards program.,

“At SCORE, we are committed to client success.  It is our ‘reason for being!’… Each year since 2010, we review milestone achievements of our clients who have engaged with our SCORE mentors. This helps us to learn, to improve, to share, and to recognize.”

For the first time, a keynote speaker joined the event. 

Susan Springsteen, CEO of H2O Connected, spoke about her lessons learned through years of innovative product startups.

She emphasized the importance of perseverance for business owners and the value of peer and mentor relationships early on.

“Good judgment comes from experience and experience often comes from bad judgment,” Sue says. “It’s best to learn as much as you can from others to avoid making the same mistakes.”

A Q&A session with Ms. Springsteen followed.

Sue and her business partner are establishing an Innovation Center and a startup hub as well as an engineering and fabricating operation in Coatesville, Chester County, a Qualified Opportunity Zone in Pennsylvania.

This initiative represents the first major construction in the city in over 50 years.

The Award Winners

The four award winners and their SCORE mentors shared their stories explaining how they worked together to successfully shift business models, pivot to digital marketing and e-commerce or telemedicine to keep products and services available to their customers while keeping their employees on the job.

Chester Community Project Improvement

Philadelphia Integrative Medicine

Form-A-Tread®

Resch Enterprises

These four leaders and their companies were selected from a group of nominations by SCORE mentors. Each business case was reviewed by the team to understand:

• their mission and unique value proposition
• their path to success
• how SCORE helped them
• how the business is doing today

Read their success stories here:

Previous SCORE Award Winners

Updates and messages of encouragement were presented by four previous SCORE Award winners: VISTA Today, BigBoize BBQ, Gemelli and SubstiTooth Fairy.

Owners missed seeing their customers but found ways to operate during the crisis and reflected on the guidance from their SCORE mentors.

They all congratulated the 2021 Award winners and encouraged them “to never give up” and “take things one step at a time.”

SCORE Partners

SCORE is fortunate to have strong relationships with its community partners who provide quality meeting spaces across the counties for mentoring and workshop sessions and collaborate to reach and support more entrepreneurs and business leaders every year.

Special recognition was given to Citadel Credit Union who has been a loyal sponsor of the annual Awards event since its inception eleven years ago. 

Delaware County Council members sent over a letter praising the Award winners for being “innovative and dedicated.”

The Chester County Commissioners complimented the SCORE award program and the clients for “the example of how mentorship and community connectivity really lead to successful businesses.” 

It was a good day for the entire SCORE community.  Congratulations to our small businesses and nonprofits in Chester and Delaware Counties!

Find a SCORE mentor today.

SCORE, the nation’s largest network of volunteer business experts, is dedicated to helping small businesses get off the ground, grow and achieve their goals.

Since 1964, it has provided education and mentorship to more than 11 million entrepreneurs nationwide.

SCORE Chester and Delaware Counties has been operating since 1985, with over 100 dedicated volunteers today who provide confidential mentoring at no charge and offer business seminars, workshops, and webinars to benefit the local community. 

SCORE is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and a resource partner of the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA).

Find out more by clicking here.