Our Mission
We exist to support women-led social enterprises scale and become more sustainable to have greater social impact.
We work with corporate law and professional service firms to help female founders overcome barriers to business development and achieve greater success.
Our Objectives
Improve the scale and sustainability of female-led, “mission-led” businesses
Increase confidence and business acumen/skills of female entrepreneurs
Improve the social impact of female-led social businesses
“As a minority and social entrepreneur, I care about all forms of inequality. Women of Impact addresses inequality and encourages social change - that’s double impact.”
Our Story
Women of Impact was started by Anthony Murphy, Founder & Managing Director of Prime Advocates. With a background in law and social finance, Anthony has always been passionate about creating positive social change in communities.
In 2015, while working on a finance project, Anthony realised there was a significant disparity in the levels of business support and investment that male versus female entrepreneurs received. For example:
Only 1% of venture capital in the UK goes to female-led businesses
Women are statically shown to believe less in their own capacity
Nearly 40% of female founders say they encountered sexism while running their startup
Only 14% of social enterprises are women-led
As a social entrepreneur and minority, Anthony realised he could use his skills to address inequality in business and increase social impact - the beginnings of Women of Impact.
The programme first began as a way to provide business and legal support to female entrepreneurs by leveraging skills of corporate professionals.
We formed our first partnership with international law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges which initially provided nearly 200 hours of pro bono support to social enterprises and enlisted 23 corporate volunteers in the process of one engagement. Since our inception, we have developed multiple legal and financial firm partners and provided thousands of hours of pro bono support for social enterprises.