Impact Report: Entrepreneurship and Women Owned Businesses

In September of 2018, the Utah Women and Leadership Project along with the YWCA of Utah brought a group of experts together to identify current resources/strengths, challenges, and potential interventions that would help Utah women become entrepreneurs and business owners. What follows are their recommendations organized by category.  See the comprehensive list here. Clearly, there is much we can do.

Financial Incentives and Support

• Create a central clearing house or “hub” of what is available (recommended for the Women’s Business Center of Utah, WBCUtah); need more collaboration and sharing of information, resources, opportunities. Need networking opportunities for women to talk to each other to share that information. 
• Explore crowd funding platforms; audience for crowd funding has been more focused on men, but it’s an improving area for women. There is a need to increase awareness and education on crowd funding for women, so their campaigns are profitable.
• Need Chambers of Commerce to work with organizations and groups who offer these resources so awareness increases.
• Offer information and resources on exports and the associated banking processes; provide exporting assistance.
• Provide assistance or otherwise make federal grant programs more available to/accessible by women. Although most federal grants are for nonprofits, federal contracts are available, and we should help women research, bid, and win.
• Work with the Utah Supplier's Development Council and the SBA to see how we can better serve women business owners and give them the support they need to secure government contracts as well as mentors.

Technology Infrastructure

• Continued work on single sign on state registration portal (see first column).
• Recommend that the information and resources discussed in this document should be linked to or on the registration website/online portal.
• WBCUtah is moving up their website restructuring; will include community calendars, regional and general resources, and could have other things too; the hope is that Utah resources can all be here.
• Social media needs to be utilized to reach women where they are spending their time.

Creation of Economic Opportunity

• Could create an ambassador program to collaborate with both men’s and women’s organizations (including Chambers of Commerce) to make this available and more public.
• Resources and opportunities need to be split out by local, state, and federal levels when provided.
• Work with local Chambers and groups that focus on disadvantaged populations (e.g., Hispanic Chamber of Commerce) to host events, provide training, and create resources to help women of color consider and start businesses in Utah.

Capacity Building 

• Utah needs mentoring programs for women who want to start businesses (formal and informal programs).
• We need to engage men in the mentorship conversation; they have formal and informal networks and have greater access that can help. There is a need for these formal programs for women to address this gap until it starts to happen more organically.
• Increase awareness and visibility of existing resources and programs. Create connections, educate people on what is available. WBCUtah should be the center of this. Need a central go-to resource to help steer people in the right direction, narrow in on what they really need.
• Need Chambers to work with organizations and groups who offer these resources so awareness increases.
• Opportunities for greater collaboration between groups and organizations who help women in this area is needed. Getting all information and resources in one place is critical and getting them online will help rural areas of Utah.
• There is a need to market business and entrepreneurship college/university majors to high school and postsecondary female students, so they know they have options; in addition, there needs to be marketing to students that they don’t have to be a business major to be an entrepreneur (need training though); an entrepreneurship minor could compliment any major.
• Help women who are considering starting a nonprofit organization explore entrepreneurship. Women don’t necessarily need to start another nonprofit because there are other options that include a benefit to society but are still for-profit (you can do good and make money); help them create business with a purpose—social entrepreneurship.
• Women can amplify each other and promote one another’s events and programs especially with social media. Commit to helping each other get what we’re already doing and offering out there. Seeing other women as examples is very powerful.

Advocacy and Shaping Attitudes

• We need to help girls and young women understand that they have a lot of choices and can feel empowered to pursue business, technology, etc.
• To help them envision themselves having entrepreneurship success, women need exposure to mentors and other women who have “gone bigger.”
• Need to increase visibility of women leaders and women-owned businesses; this often remain hidden or unknown.
• Host events to help girls and women explore entrepreneurship.
• Teach/educate/help women overcome their own misperceptions and socialization around pay, valuation, having to do it all themselves.
• Create a branded entity or public awareness campaign (WBCUtah); the resources are out there, often free, but women don’t know how to find them.

Laws, Policies, Regulations

• The State of Utah should require a defined business owner gender questions on business registration.
• Request funding from legislature for more data collection and resources for women-owned business

Research and Data

• As stated above, encourage the State of Utah to require a defined business owner gender question on business registration, in order to have data/reports to share.
• Share focus group information more broadly so regional specifics/needs are more widely known.
• Gardner Policy Institute is willing to perform a comprehensive statewide survey of women business owners but needs to figure out funding. 

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To learn more about Women and Finance in Utah read the entire impact report.