Meaningful Connections Strengthened Small Businesses in 2022

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The last couple of years have presented incredible challenges all around the world, including a pandemic, inflation, regional human rights crises, and climate change induced natural disasters. Entrepreneurs are starting, growing, and maintaining their businesses amidst these difficulties. Simultaneously, we have seen record community growth, with over 95,000 entrepreneurs and more than 21,000 mentors joining MicroMentor.

Mentors make MicroMentor’s mission possible. These mentors listened deeply, shared their wisdom, expertise, and technical advice, and helped entrepreneurs navigate their businesses through these trying times. Their contributions allowed us to reach 28,619 entrepreneurs that helped create and retain 43,909 jobs in 2022.

Purpose-driven entrepreneurs and business mentors are creating powerful connections, solving problems, and building successful businesses. When entrepreneurs have easy access to an experienced mentor through MicroMentor, they make better business decisions, experience greater access to resources, and build more resilient businesses. 

As you will find in our 2022 Impact Report, entrepreneurs were 12% more likely to access financial capital and 20% more likely to report improved access to resources. And 51% of women owned small businesses increased their revenue when they worked with a mentor. 

Crucial to scale and impact, MicroMentor partners with a diverse set of organizations from civil society, corporations, governments, and replication partners to deliver country-specific, regional, and global mentoring programs that promote economic development and skills-based volunteering. The diversity of MicroMentor’s partnerships and programming commits to bridging the digital divide for under-resourced entrepreneurs.

Since 2008, more than 80,000 mentors have donated their time, knowledge, and insight on MicroMentor; guiding entrepreneurs on their journeys and supporting small businesses through challenging times. Last year, entrepreneurs on MicroMentor received an estimated $84 million USD in pro bono hours donated to mentoring. As Nigerian entrepreneur Razaq Ogunbanwo said about his mentorship with Carlos Villatoro, “It’s invaluable. Mr Villatoro's contributions cannot be quantified, and yet it is free.”

Read more about our year at MicroMentor and the individuals who made it so impactful in our 2022 Impact Report

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