Funding announced for 10,000 small business mentors – A waste of money

With regard to the article below – is this really the best use of funding for SMEs?

The first question that it begs is, “How do you train experience?”. And, why would experienced business advisors want to give away their services for free? There is the old adage that you actually get what you pay for in terms of value.

A recent comment by UK Business Advisors questioned the effectiveness of these mentors as, due to liability issues for poor advice, the individuals are actually unable to provide any to the business they are supposedly mentoring – crazy!!

Grant of £1.2 million to provide experienced advisers for businesses

Funding to recruit and train an additional 10,000 business mentors has been announced by the government today.

A new grant of £1.2 million will be made available to the ‘Get Mentoring’ scheme from the Small Firms Enterprise Development Initiative so it can enlist 10,000 business volunteers from SMEs, the Department of Business Innovation and Skills has confirmed.

This latest move comes in addition to the funding announcement for 5,000 mentors to support female entrepreneurs earlier this month, and will add to the 11,000 business mentors already available through the website mentorsme.co.uk.

Read full article.

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