Reimagining Pathways to Employment in the US Challenge
Paving Success Pathway for Black Womens
One-line solution summary:
Paving a success map for Black Women Leaders to become self-independent and successful entrepreneurs
Pitch your solution.
In an effort to increase diversity and inclusion within the global innovation ecosystem, we elevate and empower women esoecially black female leaders toward financial success and idea conception to business implementation and towards investment. Our project/business solution advances women from aspiration to investment.
The Majority of startup media platforms, conferences, incubators, accelerators and other venture programs lack diversity and cultural competency. Investors and firms are unable to support the early stage financing needs of black female due to high transaction costs and limited deal flow. Most diversity-focused groups and programs do not offer a pipeline to investment; rather they focus solely on networking and business remediation. Our solution is aimed to provide awareness, promotion, support and resources for Black women financially sustainable startups.
What specific problem are you solving?
Many black women entrepreneurs are facing a double bias due to both their race and gender. This in turn creates difficulties when it comes to obtaining funding, reaching out to network and potential partners. Networking events attended by very few women of color, if any, can also deter their them from making the right connections. It’s precisely the lack of access to these networks, as well as not having the right tools and resources to navigate them, that can prevent perfectly viable businesses from surviving.
Many women of color are often striving alone in industries and businesses dominated by men. As such, they are often talked down to, and have to constantly prove their worth and qualifications.
Different research confirms that investors actually prefer entrepreneurial pitches by attractive men. Black Women entrepreneurs get offered smaller loans across every product, from the same groups. Another factor that slows growth: a lack of educational resources and mentors to help black women entrepreneurs ramp up their business knowledge is also a pressing factor which slow down the growth of black female entrepreneurs.
What is your solution?
We aim for the following solutions..
- We want a black women to feel for themselves as "Be yourself, and have confidence in who you are". Therefore we will work on building the capacity of black entrepreneur, providing educational resources and mentorship to help black women entrepreneurs ramp up their business knowledge.
- Because the black women looking for business investors should build confidence through a great team and business plan, therefore we envision to work with key champions among black women and improve their business ethics and ultimately to become strong founders. If they have experts on their founding team that can execute the business well, investors will have confidence in their business.
- Get more female investors to support one another, we will help in building a network of female owned businesses and create enabling environment for black women to run their entrepreneurship initiatives.
- Help these black women in finding the safety nets and best insurance support which can secure their financial assets and as well as give them confidence to maintain sustainability in investments and finances.
Which dimension of the Challenge does your solution most closely address?
Drive resources and support to Black, Indigenous, and Latinx entrepreneurs and innovatorsWho does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?
Most black women young leader have wonderful ideas and initiatives but lack access toward the investment and venture capitalist due to their minority status, gender biased and lack of confidence.
This business/project is intended to serve marginalized population especially targeting black women entrepreneurs inclusively who are facing challenges in the way of their entrepreneurship journey . This solution will help them first of all to develop their capacity to learn basic business and entrepreneurial ethics, provide them the relevant knowledge resources, link them to the safety nets to insure safety for their investments and financial assets, connect them to the network of interested venture capitalist and firms especially female owned businesses and ultimately help them to run successfully their business and initiatives.
Explain how the problem, your solution, and your solution’s target population relate to the Reimagining Pathways to Employment in the US Challenge and your selected dimension.
Most startup media platforms, conferences, incubators, accelerators and other venture programs lack diversity and cultural competency. Most diversity-focused groups and programs do not offer a pipeline to investment.
The highest affected in youth are Black Female Founders. There is no full support for them to find the proper way to startup their initiative, find the relevant network and how they can secure and ensure safety to get financial sustainability.
Our proposed solution is proposing to enable these black women to know the way, show the way and go the way toward business success and financial independence.
In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?
Westerville, OH, USAIn which US state(s) will you be operating within the next year?
What is your solution’s stage of development?
Pilot: An organization deploying a tested product, service, or business model in at least one communityWho is the team lead for your solution?
Dr. Domonique Rice, CEO
How many people work on your solution team?
We are currently less than 50 people including our volunteers. Since the organisation is small, therefore we are outsourcing most of work to online experts and freelancers. Once we have resources to pay, we will bring more people to our team.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: What is your approach to building a diverse, equitable, and inclusive organization?
We have established established a sense of belonging for everyone within our organisation. We believe that for each individual to bring their best self forward, a sense of belonging must first be established.
We believe this world is shared village and every person has god gifted uniqueness and strength and it include no boundary for color, creed and culture. We celebrate the diversity.
One of our core value is to ensure every individual must see and understand their role in organisation culture. By this, we mean, identifying differences in employee experience and values across the organization so that change can be made relevant for each person and knowing that lasting change must activate different parts of the system — top down, bottom up, and middle out — in different ways.
Which of the following categories best describes your solution?
A new business model or processDescribe what makes your solution innovative.
Our Solution is different and innovative. Our organisation is designed to increase the diversity, help every human being we can reach and develop them personally and professionally. Our unique identity is to work with women especially black female leader and our unique approach is "helping black women help themselves. Under our professional development porgram of our organisation, we are intended to provide critical industry knowledge, mentorship, and business development tools to help fledgling startups succeed especially black female leaders.
Hope, Love, and Dream, Inc.is created by black female leader who is also a successful black female entrepreneurs with experience in support system development, individual self-help/self development, mental health and extensive experience providing individual, couple, families in different issues they are facing within community. As being leaded by a black female leader, ee understand the cultural issues facing black women founders.
Describe the core technology, if applicable, that powers your solution.
We will work on technology is in the form of a digital engagement platform, online knowledge base e-libraries etc. We are planning to scale to using AI in the near future to maintain a larger scale of customers and beneficiaries much more efficiently. We will later focus on the IT solutions to assist in maintaining compliance at a much deeper and efficient level for all beneficiaries of our organisation and programs.
We are intended to work on technology that will pave a digital platform for black female entrepreneurs to digitally engaged for learning opportunities, connecting with their networks, reach to their capital investors and as well to nurture their entrepreneurial skills. This technology will also help in external communication and marketing the skills of these black female entrepreneurs and showcasing the innovations and ideas.
Provide evidence that this technology works.
Artificial Intelligence is taking a high and digital engagement become a high demand for such initiatives nowadays. In addition COVID-19 will change the whole business working styles and lifestyle of office environment because of social distancing most of the business are going virtual and online. Therefore this digital and social media platform, e-learning and prototypes apps will be pioneer for such type of initiatives and projects.
Please select the technologies currently used in your solution:
What is your theory of change?
Goal/Impact: To create enabling environment where the rights of black female founders are protected and the can become innovative entrepreneurs to serve the community and to boost the contribute in boosting the country's economy.
Purpose/Outcome: To pave the way way for black female entrepreneurs to build their capacity, support them in finding the right networks, exploring investment opportunities and connect them to the relevant safety nets and insurance to secure their finances.
Results/Outputs
Black female entrepreneurs have built their confidence through secured and insured their investments and financial assets and start their way toward financial independence.
Black female entrepreneurs received the relevant trainings, education resources and awareness session to build their business development capacity and start up their initiatives.
Black female entrepreneurs are connected to the network of investment firms and venture capitalist to showcase their initiatives and find the investments.
Select the key characteristics of your target population.
How many people does your solution currently serve? How many people did your solution serve in 2019? 2018? 2017?
We served almost 20,000 individuals so far in different initiatives. Our idea and working experience is beyond 2017 but the most structural data we have available for our organisation is recently updated. We are intended to reach by 60,000 individuals by 2021 not only through this solution but also through our extensive programs and services.
What percent of the people you served in 2019 were between the age of 15 and 30?
What barriers currently exist for you to accomplish your goals in the next year and in the next five years?
COVID-19 and some unrest due to recent ethnic conflict are among the upcoming burning barriers.
Financing such initiative is a barriers since we have started this business on small investment. We have great ideas, initiatives and potentials but biggest barrier so far is funding this initiative.
What are your goals within the next year and within the next five years?
We are planning to serve 60,000 people within our next year. Within 5 years we are planning to triple the amount served at 180,000. (These are modest estimates)
Our long term goal is to empower and work with families and individuals impacted by incarceration to develop a successful future through individual, couple, and family therapy, personal development, and professional development. By assisting those affected by incarceration, we aim to serve, build, and strengthen’ individuals, families and communities by improving social bonds.
How do you plan to overcome these barriers?
To overcome pandemic and ethnic crisis, we are engaging digitally and bringing most of our services virtual. At the same time we have started advocating for peace a different platform and advocating for gender equality.
For financial challenge, we are optimistic to win this funding, prize and also have started grants and investment research to boost up the financial resources.
What outcomes data would you like to be collecting that you are not yet able to collect?
Most of our team members has worked on different initiatives. Since things were not very structural before as compared to today we are, and now due to the developed result based management framework, we are going to evaluate the real outcome of our programs we have completed so far and those which are running especially those which are related to working with marginalized women in Ohio State.
What type of organization is your solution team?
NonprofitIf you selected Other, please explain here.
NA
How many people are on your leadership team? (Of these, please provide the number of individuals from your leadership team that are full time, part time, and volunteer)
In the leadership team are CEO/Founder, Program Director/Lead Instructor , Administrative Assistant, Group Assistants and Office Manager. Almost all of them are volunteers.
What is the number of individuals from my leadership team that attended community college for at least one year?
1
In what year was your organization founded? How many years have you worked on your solution?
Hope, Love, and Dream, Inc. was developed on May 15th, 2020. But we have worked on our initiatives in different capacities from different platforms.
Why are you and your team well-positioned to deliver this solution?
We consider well positioned toward this solution because we are team of like minded person, mostly belong to same community, most of my team members are women and we as ourselves has passed through the same difficulties which a normal vulnerable women is passing especially a black female entrepreneurs through therefore we knows, what are the problem and what can be the best possible solution.
What organizations do you currently partner with, if any? How are you working with them?
We are well connected to same type of organisation and at the soonest possible we are going to get in a strategic partnership, alliance and consortium.
What is your business model?
The business model is developed from the understanding that re-entry s is one of the main routes to a lot of our social ills in the at-risk communities. There is a growing need for quality education, Community Services and Behavioral Health, empowerment and mentoring services through a well-structured and easily practicable measures; and there exists a substantial opportunity to cater for these needs, adopting innovative concept.
Our nonprofit business model is on a belief which is "to empower and work with families and individuals impacted by incarceration to develop a successful future through individual, couple, and family therapy, personal development, and professional development. By assisting those affected by incarceration, we aim to serve, build, and strengthen’ individuals, families and communities by improving social bonds."
Do you primarily provide products or services directly to individuals, or to other organizations?
Individual consumers or stakeholders (B2C)What is your path to financial sustainability?
Our path to financial sustainability involves billing Medicaid/Medicaid and private insurance companies for individual, couples, family, and group therapy services. We also plan to charge fee-based services for our consultation services to federal, state, county, city, and private correctional facilities on enhancing family engagement services. We will also offer Forensic Evaluation services as a fee-based service as well. This will help sustain the organization as well as the other program areas of personal development and professional development services. We also plan to offer fundraiser, identify investors, apply for grants, and solicit donations.
We are fundraising from individual donors, fundraising events, government contracts, institutional funding etc but it is very limited as for this year it is only reached to 100,000 USD.
We need almost three fold of this amount to reach the programs we are targeted and this why we are reaching to different funders and donors to fund our initiatives. We have now started strong resources mobilisation and we are confident, we will reach soon to our financial sustainability.
If you have raised funds for your solution or are generating revenue, please provide details.
As earlier mentioned, we are fundraising from individual donors, fundraising events, government contracts, institutional funding etc but it is very limited as for this year it is only reached to 100,000 USD.
At this time, we have begun to raise funds by selling Black Lives Matter signs. We also have plans to sale T-Shirts to help generate revenue. Our board of directors are also contributed to the revenue of the organization.
If you seek to raise funds for your solution, please provide details.
We are reaching to different funders and donors to fund our initiatives. We have now started strong resources mobilisation and we are confident, we will reach soon to our financial sustainability. We are targeting to raise 300,000 USD by next year.
What are your estimated expenses for 2021?
Our budget (including the program and operational cost) forecasted for next year will be in between 250,000 USD to 300,000. The major percentage (almost 85%) will go to program cost as we are decreasing time to time our administrative expenses.
Why are you applying to the Reimagining Pathways to Employment in the US Challenge?
We believe Reimagining Pathways to Employment in the US Challenge is the best and fit platform and challenge prize to bring this solution because no other platform will understand better the issues of marginalized young and black female entrepreneurs, other than solve. This fund will enable us to seed this initiative project and enable to serve the black female leaders.
In which of the following areas do you most need partners or support?
What organizations would you like to partner with, and how would you like to partner with them?
We would like to partner with the following organizations (this is not a fully encompassed list):
- Birthright Africa organization https://birthrightafrica.org/
- National Council for Behavioral Health https://www.TheNationalCouncil.org
- https://www.Homelessfamiliesfoundationorg
- Affordable Housing Trust for Columbus and Franklin County https://www.hztrust.org
We have almost the same shared goals and I am confident they can help us in our initiative in technical and also possibly in financial terms.
Please explain in more detail here.
We are intended to expand our partnership network where other partner, who have the same shared goals should come together, share resources and provide expertise we lack and as well provide financial support and assistance.
Solution Team
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Dr. Domonique Rice Founder/CEO, Hope, Love, and Dream, Inc.
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Solution Name:
Paving Success Pathway for Black Womens