Interactive resources for incubators and accelerators
Interactive resources for incubators and accelerators
Attracting the best entrepreneurs is a powerful and consistent source of competitive advantage for accelerators and incubators, enabling you to attract more funding, build a stronger brand, and achieve your impact goals.
Your program fails to attract enough female/gender diverse applicants.
Gender diversity in the applicant pool for your program.
Example measurement indicators and collection methods can be found here.
Having gender diversity across your cohorts is a key way to diversify your and your investors’ portfolios. When running mixed-gender programs, it also enhances the cohort’s learning experience by bringing a diversity of thought as well as insights into the needs of users and customers who identify with different gendered groups. In order to select a diverse cohort, you need to ensure gender diversity first exists in your applicant pool.
How is our program advertised?
What channels are we using?
Are these accessible to entrepreneurs who identify with all genders?
What is contained in our marketing collateral?
Is the imagery and language used attractive to the female/gender diverse entrepreneurs we are hoping to communicate with?
How does our organisation’s website appear? Is there gender diversity in the stories that we are telling?
Is there gender diversity in the leadership team within our organisation?
Are our facilitators and mentors gender diverse?
Review and revise your marketing and advertising collateral.
Ensure that the channels used to advertise your program reach different gendered groups. If women don’t have access to the internet, digital marketing will not work. However, if they can see and readily access print media, this might work better. Adapting the language used for specific channels can also increase accessibility. Roadshows and community events: partner with organisations that service these women is a fantastic way to create pipeline into your program and to enable cross-promotion.
Create an Advisory Board with some of your region’s best female/gender diverse entrepreneurs. This Advisory Board can not only support curriculum development, but also attract other gender diverse entrepreneurs who see them as role models and know that they have access to the region’s best to support them in building their enterprises.
If you are trying to attract more female entrepreneurs, have highly experienced female facilitators and mentors that other female entrepreneurs can relate to.
If you are trying to attract more women entrepreneurs, create a program specifically for female entrepreneurs, that caters to their unique needs. For example, ygap runs a program called yher that is designed and delivered by females for female entrepreneurs. The reason it is an all-female program is not to exclude other genders, but to create a psychologically safe space where women feel comfortable to share their personal stories, and learn from one another.
