Best Ways to Support Black Women During Female Founders Month

Female Founders Month is dedicated to celebrating women-owned businesses and promoting their success.

Female Founders Month is a global event that happens every year. It is dedicated to celebrating women-owned businesses and promoting their success. There are a myriad of ways to support Female Founders Month, such as:

• Attending events in your community that highlight the work of female entrepreneurs.
• Joining organizations that champion women in business and invite them to share their stories directly with their communities.

To learn more about how you can best support Female Founders Month and its efforts, visit the official website: female-founders.org.

Without an acceleration in funding, it will take Black women 231 years to close the funding gap.

Black women founded companies received only 0.2% of venture capital funding in 2018 despite representing the fastest growing group of women entrepreneurs in the United States since 2014, according to a new report from digitalundivided (DID) published recently.

To put that even more starkly: In 2019, Black women-led startups received just $42M out of $131B in total venture capital funding — this means that Black women founders received only 0.03% of all VC funding and 0.04% of all women-led startups get funded by VCs.

The study also found that without an acceleration in funding, it would take Black women 231 years to close the current funding gap — meaning, at this rate and pace, it will take Black female founders living today 231 years to receive the same amount of capital as their white male counterparts have already received.

The U.S. economy would increase by 3% if the number of Black-owned businesses grew at the same rate as White-owned businesses.

According to a study from the American Express Foundation, Black-owned businesses have proved to be an important economic force during the pandemic.

In fact, if the number of Black-owned firms grew at the same rate as White-owned firms, the U.S. economy would increase by 3%, which is equivalent to $290 billion.

Additionally, if Black women started businesses at the same rate as White women (and with no changes in their companies’ performance), it would add $42 billion to the U.S. economy each year.

That’s why supporting female founders is crucial, both now and in any economic climate—by helping these businesses thrive, we’re strengthening our entire economy and making it possible for more people to take care of their families.

U.S. Black women represent 46% of the nearly 60 million minority business owners in the nation, yet only account for 0.02% of venture funding.

According to the Center for American Progress, “Black women represent 46 percent of the nearly 60 million minority business owners in the nation, yet only account for 0.02 percent of venture funding in the United States.”

It’s clear that Black women business owners are severely underrepresented and underfunded.

Although White women have historically faced challenges as entrepreneurs, according to a report by Kapor Center, Black women founders “experience gender-based challenges at approximately twice the rate of White female founders.”

The gender gap in entrepreneurship is growing. Women account for 39 percent of all businesses in the U.S., but only 24 percent have employees other than the owner and just 3 percent have employees and annual revenues above $1 million—the threshold typically used to define a high-growth company or scale up.

Black female entrepreneurs are even less likely to lead a scale up business than their White peers: Only 1 out of every 10 Black female founders leads a scale up versus 7 out of every 10 White female founders.

Only 39% of Black women have access to capital needed to start or grow their business.

Some of the greatest ideas, no matter how big or small, innovative or controversial, were born from the efforts of Black women.

Entrepreneurial drive is an important characteristic of strong communities—and as a Black woman, you need to make sure that you’re helping to fuel this fire in your own community.

While a few hundred dollars won’t necessarily change your life for the better, it could provide the buffer needed to get things going and keep you going once things start taking off.

So what does venture capital look like? It’s a mix between private equity (which allows investors to buy shares in a company) and business loans (which are secured by collateral and typically have interest rates below 20 percent).

In addition, angel investors are usually people who have had success in other areas like startups or yourself who invest money according to their knowledge and conviction they will get enough out of those investments to see them through.

You can support this community by donating to groups like #ProjectDiane, a research initiative led by digitalundivided that tracks progress for Black female founders and aims to dramatically increase funding for Black women entrepreneurs over the next decade.

You can support this community by donating to groups like #ProjectDiane, a research initiative led by digitalundivided that tracks progress for Black female founders and aims to dramatically increase funding for Black women entrepreneurs over the next decade.

To learn more about #ProjectDiane, read digitalundivided’s press release announcing their new goal of hitting $1 billion in funding for Black women-led companies in 10 years (or less).

There are many ways you can support female founders and female-owned businesses.

The movement to support women in the tech industry is an important one, especially as more and more female founders are breaking through the glass ceiling and heading to Silicon Valley.

For our fellow brothers, we’d like to offer some suggestions for how you can be the best advocate for these women.

• Support female-owned businesses. Consider buying from companies that are majority owned by women or that have a significant female presence (60% of employees or more). These companies include Etsy, Warby Parker, Thinx, Thornhill Apparel Group, Plated, Lululemon Athletica, Honest Tea and many others.
• Mentor female entrepreneurs: It’s common for men to mentor other men about entrepreneurship; make it a point to mentor women about her business’ growth and development so that she has role models to look up to instead of having too much time stuck in a creative rut feeling alone with her problems.
• Join groups supporting female founders: Women who were once hesitant about starting businesses will never achieve their full potential until they’re surrounded by people who believe in them and are willing to support them along the way—and this means showing up at meetups as well as committing financially on their behalf!