Field Leadership

• Chapters must have leadership structures in place that are approved by the District Director (DD) and Regional Vice President. Each chapter, in conference with the DD and Regional Vice President, can determine the correct structure.
• Leaders at SCORE are appointed, not elected. 
  1. Chapter Leaders - Appointment includes Chapter leadership positions. District Directors and Regional Vice Presidents working in conjunction with the chapter members will identify key, willing candidates for the main leadership positions. The creation of a slate or an election is no longer required. Chairs report to District Directors.
  2. Chapter committees and committee leads are defined by the chapter and committee chairs selected by the chapter leaders.
     • Chapter Executive Committees can exist to aid in the management of the chapter. The Chair leader(s) may select their own Executive Committee. 
     • The District Director is by default a non-voting member of every Executive Committee within each of their district’s chapters. While the DD does not ‘vote’ on key chapter items, they do have approval responsibility for those items to ensure compliance, focus, and proper use of resources.
  3. District Directors are selected and appointed by the Regional Vice President, with approval from the Vice President of Field Operations. DDs report to Regional Vice Presidents.
  4. Regional Vice Presidents are selected by and report directly to the Vice President of Field Operations.
• Leaders can be removed from the leadership roles.
  1. A leader may be removed or lesser action may be taken if the officer knowingly:
     • Does not comply with policies set forth in the SOM.
     • Fails or refuses to comply with a decision or directive of SCORE or their direct leader.
     • Fails to fulfill in a substantive way the responsibilities of the office held.
     • Acts in an improper manner so as to discredit the office, chapter, district, SCORE or the SBA.
  2. Removal action may be initiated by the District Director, the Regional Vice President or the SCORE Vice President of Field Operations. 
     • In addition, a majority of chapter volunteers may petition for the removal of any leader. An attempt shall be made to resolve the matter informally with the officer at the chapter level, with the District Director, with the Regional Vice President, and/or the SCORE Vice President of Field Operations participating.
  3. In the event a leader is removed, a replacement leader is to be appointed by the District Director or Regional Vice President.

SCORE welcomes the opportunity to hire, onboard and retain qualified employees and volunteers who are related to one another by blood, marriage, partnership or otherwise. However, since such relationships could be viewed as an opportunity to show inappropriate favoritism if the related employees or volunteers are in a supervisor-subordinate relationship, it is the policy of SCORE that:

1. Any employee or volunteer of SCORE who is a related party (as defined below) to another employee or volunteer shall not have any direct or indirect administrative or operational authority over the other person.  This prohibition means not only that a person cannot supervise a related party but also that the related party cannot be in that person's chain of command; for example, a related party cannot work in a department in which a related party is the Vice President, or a related party cannot be a volunteer chapter chair in which a related party is District Director or Regional Vice President. The exception is that a related party can volunteer in a chapter in which a related party is chapter chair.
2. An employee or volunteer of SCORE cannot use his/her authority or position with SCORE to benefit or to hinder another employee who is a related party.  Although all such potential misuses of authority cannot be listed here, examples include an employee signing an evaluation for a related party or signing/approving a check payable to a related party.
3. Employees and volunteers are required to notify volunteerservices@score.org of (a) any existing related party relationships (b) any related party relationships that are created among employees or volunteers (for example, by the marriage of two volunteers) (c) the potential employment or volunteer onboarding of a related party
4. SCORE will refuse to hire a job applicant who is related with a current employee if the applicant would be in a supervisory or subordinate position to the existing employee.  SCORE employees or volunteers who marry one another during their employment will be allowed to remain with the company unless they are in a superior-subordinate relationship and there is no open position to which one of them may be moved.
5. “Related party” within the meaning of this policy means two employees or volunteers (or an employee and a job applicant) in the relationship of husband, wife, father, mother, brother, sister, son, daughter, uncle, aunt, nephew, niece, grandfather, grandmother, grandson or granddaughter, or any of those relationships arising as a result of marriage (for example, brother-in-law). Related parties also include business partnerships and committed domestic partnerships.