Deadline: 09-Feb-22
The Acumen Academy is now accepting applications for the Gender Equity and Advancement Accelerator Program to refine and develop a profitable and scalable business model that advances gender equity.
Over 11 weeks, two members of your leadership team will learn the essentials for building a scalable business model that achieves both profitability and impact. Working virtually alongside your close-knit cohort of entrepreneurial peers and Acumen experts, you’ll design your plan to embed gender equity as you scale your business.
The program will culminate with a virtual closing gathering, including pitch practice and a celebration for all the hard work, lessons learned, and new relationships you’ll take with you as you scale your business in a gender-inclusive way.
Modules
- Visions of Scale for Social Enterprise Business Models
- Understand different, customizable models for scaling your social enterprise
- Develop a business model canvas that isolates key hypotheses for how your business model currently comes together
- Define scenarios for how your social enterprise could successfully scale and map out your vision for growth and impact
- Gender equity and advancement as you scale
- Build a deep understanding of both the moral and business case for embedding gender equity into your enterprise
- Learn key concepts, identify entry points, and pinpoint ways to engage more women in your value chain, workforce, and as customers
- Customer Insights
- Clearly define your core customer and value proposition
- Design experiments to test your critical hypothesis
- Conduct an experiment to better understand how women customers interact with your product or service
- Aligning a Pricing, Sales and Marketing Strategy to Your Value Proposition
- Build a value proposition canvas using data from customer interviews and experiments
- Develop pricing models aligned with your value proposition
- Learn sales and marketing tactics and strategies to optimize your scale strategy
- Operational Model: Team and Partnerships
- Learn common operational models for social enterprises
- Match your existing or desired talent with related skill sets and plan to expand your workforce in a gender equitable way
- Building Your Financial Story and Model
- Identify your major revenue and cost assumptions
- Define your major financial milestones for next two years
- Pitching the Strategic Story of Your Business
- Identify the right types of capital to finance your business as it scales
- Practice pitching your business to stakeholders
- Learn about the 2x challenge eligibility and how to attract investors who invest with a gendered lens
What’s Included?
- Six Learning Labs alongside your cohort of entrepreneurs
- Three one-on-one consultation calls with Acumen’s team
- Video tutorials on customer discovery, sales and marketing, financial modeling, pitching, and more
- Unconscious bias training, workshops, and self-assessment strategies for embedding gender inclusivity into your scaling plan
- Case studies from social enterprises that have successfully scaled and contributed to gender equity and advancement
Eligibility Criteria
- Run a social enterprise (nonprofit or for-profit) based in East (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, South Sudan, Ethiopia) or West Africa (Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Gambia)
- Have a demonstrated track record of at least 12-18 months, some market traction, and are preparing to scale
- Have a team equivalent to three or more full-time staff
- Have a commitment to serving women across three entry points, and evidence of action in at least one:
- Market (products and services)
- Internal organization (workforce and policies)
- Value chain (supply and distribution)
For more information, visit https://app.acumenacademy.org/gender-equity-advancement-accelerator