AUGUSTA, Maine — A network of 12 volunteer mentors is linking up with Mainers looking for ways to start, grow or improve their businesses.
The state’s northern chapter of Service Corps of Retired Executives, more commonly known as SCORE, provides free one-on-one assistance to local entrepreneurs from the southern end of Knox County to the Canadian border.
International business consultant David Green of Bangor heads the chapter and travels to some of northern Maine’s most remote locations to help bring out the best in people, he said.
Maine is a state of mainly small businesses and Green said he wants it to be a place where people can make a comfortable living and thrive.
“The Small Business Administration says people with a mentor are twice as likely to succeed and that’s what we do,” Green said.
What started out as a northern Maine road trip with Green and two other SCORE executives three years ago to meet people in places such as Caribou, Van Buren, Presque Isle and Houlton has grown into a network of partnerships and cooperative events with rural towns as a way to reach out to local businesses, Green said.
The chapter works with local Chambers of Commerce, the Northern Maine Development Commission and the Southern Aroostook Development Corp., to name a few, and provides free business-related training sessions in addition to one-on-one mentoring.
Additionally, they work with school programs and other community organizations to provide business-related training and assistance.
The total in-person session attendance grew 30.2% last year, from 232 in 2024 to 302 in 2025; total services increased 28.4% from 1,165 in 2024 to 1,496 in 2025; and total local services from 836 to 934.
This month, the Northern Maine Chapter earned the U.S. Small Business Administration’s 2026 National Chapter of the Year Award, ousting much larger metropolitan chapters this year.
“The secret sauce is we have created partnerships in these areas and are doing more of what people need,” said Green.
Green, like all SCORE volunteers, brings a wealth of career knowledge to entrepreneurs seeking guidance. An engineer, he worked with Hewlett-Packard and ITT in the UK before moving to Canada to work for Nortel for 25 years. He now owns Bangor-based WardGreen Group consulting with his wife, Ginger Ward-Green.
He takes on a new SCORE client every week, he said.
One woman, who owns a consulting business and does strategic planning, process improvement, leadership development and coaching, has been working with him to pivot her business to leverage AI, he said.
“My help so far has been to introduce her to people who are on the leading edge of AI so she can refine her business model to focus on work she wants to do and where there is a market need,” Green said.
Some of the contacts Green has helped with include a city development director, a nationally known entrepreneur embarking on her next big thing using AI, and one of SCORE’s AI subject matter experts.
Another client in a small town had bought an old building with a commercial kitchen and asked for help starting a sandwich shop.
“By the time I met with her she had changed her mind about the sandwich shop and thought instead of renting the kitchen to someone she knew,” he said. “We brainstormed other options and one was an event center using a range of catering options from self catering to a high-end chef.”
Still, despite concerted outreach initiatives into Maine’s northernmost regions, many budding business owners, some struggling to stay afloat, are not aware of the help these executive volunteers offer.
Others are reluctant to reach out for help, often because they don’t want anyone to know, said Houlton entrepreneur Fred Grant, who has been a volunteer SCORE mentor for nearly two years.
“If that’s the case, the business can request a mentor from somewhere else,” Grant said.
Grant, president of Northern Maine Media, Market Pizza and the historic Temple Theater in Houlton, is currently working with four active mentees.
“The great thing about SCORE, we are driven by the business owner’s dream,” Grant said.
He’s currently working with a woman in Virginia who needs help marketing a cookbook she has created.
At first they have to figure out the target market and who is interested in the cookbook, and then match venues or outlets that will get that product in front of the target audience, Grant said.
“We do not do the work for them,” he said. “We are there to guide them in the process.”
Generally he works with businesses looking for technical, restaurant or front-facing retail expertise. It’s very rare to find a new business owner that has all the necessary skills they need, he said, adding that he wished he had a SCORE mentor when he was starting out.
“Most specifically, the restaurant was the biggest learning curve,” he said. “I highly encourage businesses to give SCORE a try. It’s such a fantastic resource.”
