As one of the most hotly anticipated grants of the year, Round 2 of the Boosting Female Founders Initiatives grant in March attracted thousands of applications from female driven start-ups across Australia.
With up to $480,000 on offer per applicant, this grant offered a rare opportunity for female founders to overcome disadvantages to access finance and scale their start-ups into new domestic and global markets.
Why is this important – right now, today?
This morning the Grant’d team received an onslaught of messages from many members of our grant seeking community celebrating their Boosting Female Founders wins after this e-mail landed into their inboxes:
“Your Boosting Female Founders Initiative Round 2 Expression of Interest stage 1 application was successful and you are invited to submit a next stage grant application”
Imagine the unbridled excitement coursing through the female founders who had received this e-mail, especially after the year that has been for many of us.
Guaranteed funding? Not quite yet...but after that communication, these applicants certainly believed that they were that much closer to securing the funding that would power their game-changing visions for growth. And given that female founders have long had the cards stacked against them despite having the potential to contribute up to $25b to the Australian economy, it would be more than fair to assume that a number of champagne bottles were uncorked this morning in celebration.
Yet one hour later, these same people received an automated e-mail stating that their application in fact, had not been successful after all.
Winners one hour... soul-crushing devastation in the next.
Upon contacting the BFF grants team to investigate what had happened, a source confirmed that no less than 1,800 e-mails were sent out to Boosting Female Founder hopefuls first to inform them of their success in progressing to the next stage, and then again an hour later to inform them that this was, in fact, not true.
This couldn’t have been a more crushing development for 1,800 applicants, particularly those currently caught up in the COVID-19 lockdowns which are now exacerbating an already precarious situation where 72% of Australian businesses have reported reduced revenue after a year of COVID-19.
In fact, business owners have been identified as a segment that is at high-risk of poorer mental health outcomes amidst economic instabilities. And at a time when the mental health of many business owners is at an all-time low as a result of the pandemic, the hypocrisy of the Federal Government in plugging the importance of mental health support for affected business owners even as it fails to support BFF grant applicants with sensitivity and respect in the wake of their error is loud and clear.
Here’s what a BFF applicant in Melbourne had to say about this morning’s situation:
“Our business would have gone under if it wasn’t for the Victorian Business Assistance grant. So when I got news of our BFF success, I was incredibly excited and took it as a sign to keep on fighting. Then came the news that we were actually unsuccessful. We’re devastated and don’t know what to do next” - Niki
And the corrected e-mail was no less devastating for those not in lockdowns:
“I’m not in lockdown and it was a real slap to the face. We know what we sign up for when we take on the role of starting your own business – its bloody hard. Everyone would agree with that. I think it hurts more because we really learn the celebrate the wins, even the little ones, like Stage 2 BFF because that is what keeps us going” - Deb
In speaking with many of these business owners this morning, two things continued to be highlighted time and time again even as they shared their stories of juggling businesses alongside caring for their families. Firstly, female founders are real, living and breathing human beings...just like you and me. And secondly, that there is a rising need for the grants process to be humanised – something that has been part of our vision at Grant’d for a long time.
When we say humanised, we’re talking about grant makers recognising that there are real people behind every application – and treating them as humans with ambitions, goals, and visions rather than as numbers. We’re talking about moving away from automated processes, towards proactive relationship and engagement building processes that allow grant makers and grant seekers to see and understand each other.
We’re talking about increased transparency and information sharing between grant makers and grant applicants at every step of the grants process, towards achieving mutual understanding and rapport. We’re talking about actively empowering humanity to shine through bureaucracy and smart-forms.
Without question, it’s time for change.
In the meantime, if you’re a business or nonprofit impacted by the NSW and Victorian lockdowns and are in need of a safe place to connect and access advice with shoulders to lean on, we’d love to invite you to join our free, one hour Lockdown Session led by our Founder Janine Owen on Friday from 12pm via Zoom. To register, simply join Australian Grants and Funding Support by Grant’d and register via the link in the pinned post.