The greatest challenge for women-led ventures globally is accessing capital and financial services. According to a 2023 report by the IFC, there is a $300-billion global gap in financing that exists for women-owned small and medium-sized businesses and remains a major constraint to their growth. This challenge is most pronounced in developing countries. Businesses with male founders or co-founders receive nearly seven times more funding on average than women owned businesses. Through our first-hand experience working with entrepreneurs across Africa, Asia, The Pacific and Australia, we know that the traditional funding system doesn’t necessarily fit the entrepreneurs we work with because of how investability is defined. We also know that the gender-funding-gap is far more pronounced for women-entrepreneurs of colour who will make up the majority of the demographic we work with across our different regions.
Putting the right kind of capital in the hands of underrepresented entrepreneurs is a mission we are committed to. Because behind this substantial gender-gap are hundreds of individual stories of entrepreneurs who have graduated from our ygap Accelerators.
Our aim is to raise $1 Million by 2025. Our goal for this project is to raise $250,000 by the end of FY 2023-24 in aligned capital towards women-led ventures graduating from ygap Accelerators by 2025.
Capital is successfully deployed and aligned with entrepreneur's needs and profile.
All participating ventures in the pilot comfortably being able to pay-back the loan within the agreed time enabling us to build a business-case around this funding model.
A consistent and aligned pipeline of ygap Partners to help us test and grow this funding model beyond the pilot.
A successful pilot that enables us to grow this to support women-led ventures in every location where we have influence.
Ventures go on to crowd-in future investment based on track record established through this program.
We will be collecting data from the program participants as per our monitoring, evaluation and learning standard across three surveys: before the program starts, after the program ends and twelve months after program completion.
The key outcomes we will be monitoring against include:
After analysing the endline survey results, we will be reflecting as a team on the progress towards the outcomes and program learnings. This will then be shared with the participants as well as other stakeholders. A year after the program, we will do a similar process with the follow-up survey results and team reflection hoping to build upon this pilot and inform all of ygap's programs globally in order to increase access to capital for women-led businesses.
ygap is an international organisation that supports local entrepreneurs who deeply understand the unique challenges of their communities and are best placed to develop solutions. We believe in the power of entrepreneurship as an effective way to make sustainable and equitable change in the world. Women, refugees and migrants, climate-focused and rural entrepreneurs are our priority.
We work directly with entrepreneurs, increasing their capacity and agency to run successful businesses. Our aim is to level the playing field for every entrepreneur by breaking down barriers and increasing access to finance, markets and support systems. By offering the necessary support and resources, ygap strives to enable all entrepreneurs to create, launch, scale and sustain businesses that are making an impact.
Since 2008, we have run 65 programs that have supported 626 ventures – majority are led by women and operate across Africa, South Asia, the Pacific Islands and Australia. ygap has offices and local teams that lead our programs in each area that we work.
Inherent differences between men and women, we have come to appreciate, remain cause for celebration, but not for denigration of the members of either sex or for artificial constraints on an individual’s opportunity.
Australians Investing in Women acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.
Also known as Australian Women Donors Network (ABN: 28 141 197 471), Australians Investing in Women is a registered charity endorsed by the Australian Tax Office as a deductible gift recipient (DGR1) under a special listing, all donations over $2 are tax deductible.
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