JANUARY 20, 2021
Why IFundWomen members are more successful in securing PPP loans
BY KAREN CAHN, FOUNDER & CEO, IFUNDWOMEN
Not-so-humble-brag: As of August of 2020, 10% of IFundWomen Members surveyed specifically about PPP, received Paycheck Protection Program loans. Compare this with 5%, which is the total proportion of female-owned companies that reported getting PPP loans during the same time period.
Here’s what we know:
- From the publicly available data from the SBA: roughly 5% of the loans went to women-owned firms
- From IFundWomen’s proprietary research, through a survey set of 20K women-owned businesses specifically asked about PPP, 10% of our members got their PPP loans
Here's what we don’t know:
How many women applied to PPP nationally but elected to not specify their gender for fear of getting rejected.
In fact, I did not specify my gender when I applied for IFundWomen’s PPP (which we were approved for), so IFundWomen itself is not represented in the 5%. Another nuance: IFundWomen was listed on the SBA website in the over $150K loan category, where there could be more savvy WOBs who didn't specify their gender, so theoretically, the SBA number could be higher than 5% but I doubt it's much higher.
It's my opinion that most women don't realize that the banks and financial institutions actually ding women borrowers because of a whole host of factors like credit scores, assets in the bank, lack of high-level relationships with the banks, and that the cards are literally stacked against them. So, these deserving women-owned businesses who dutifully specified their gender on their PPP application, thinking that it would be helpful, got dinged again. Reminder, this is my educated opinion on this subject on which I'm an expert. There is no way to get this data set.
Ok, so why are IFundWomen founders so successful? I’ll tell you.
Read the full blog post...