Why we are offering Crowdfunding

Funding is vital for businesses – whether you are starting up or scaling up your business having the capital to fund your plans can help speed your way to success. 

In this day and age, the statistics on women’s access to finance can come as a shock. While funding can be a challenge for many businesses, it’s heightened for women. The Rose Review of Female Entrepreneurship found women start up in business with just 53% of the capital of their male peers and remain undercapitalised. In the world of equity investment studies by the British Business Bank found little has changed for women founders in the past decade and they receive just 2% of equity investment funds. Yes, you read that correctly – just 2%. 

Our own research conducted with women business owners consistently points to the challenge of accessing funding. Determined to make a difference, we started to research the latest innovations and funding opportunities. Crowdfunding cropped up again and again – most notably as a method of funding where women were successfully raising finance at a greater rate than their male peers. Well, that caught our attention! 

Through our research we discovered more and more business owners were taking advantage of rewards and donations-based crowdfunding to access finance. This method of crowdfunding enables businesses to pre-fund their sales and gain valuable customers right from day one. Another big benefit to help businesses get off to a good start, or to support existing businesses to diversify into new products or markets. 

Our platform is specifically designed to support women to raise capital for their businesses and to encourage and increase women’s participation in enterprise. Just 20% of businesses are majority owned by women. We know crowdfunding can appear daunting, so we provide training and practical hints and tips from women who have already run successful business crowdfunding campaigns.  

Importantly, the model of crowdfunding we are using enables businesses to keep all the funds they raise, regardless of whether they achieve their stated crowdfunding campaign goal amount or not. Plus, crowdfunding isn’t just about raising funding, the platform highlights the very latest products and services to hit the market. Providing a mechanism for businesses to prototype and test product-market fit, while affording consumers the ability to be the very first to try out the latest innovations.  

Many women (and men) want to help women business owners succeed and donating to crowdfunding campaigns and/or purchasing rewards available through crowdfunding campaigns is growing in popularity as a way to give back and support others coming through. Market analysts expect crowdfunding to grow significantly over the next few years, in particular as more and more entrepreneurs use crowdfunding to highlight their latest innovations and gain customers. 

And our vision doesn’t stop at the end of the crowdfunding campaign. We are working with debt and equity follow-on funders to create a pipeline of scaling women-owned businesses with an appetite to gain further funding to sustain their growth trajectory.  Through our crowdfunding platform data capture, we can help evidence the value of the businesses to follow-on investors and unlock more vital business funding. All of which will grow the community of women-owned businesses and provide greater access to the capital they need to achieve their ambitions. 

Sign up for news and updates about Crowdfunding here.