Global Sisters Impact
5511
Women Supported
$5.6m+
Global Sisters exists to make business possible for all women across Australia
We unlock the potential of women to own their economic future. We do this by supporting women through a long-term, three stage program: Business education, Incubate and Accelerate.
In these programs, women access four main types of support: Business education; Business coaching; Microfinance; and Sales & marketing.
Our 2021 Impact Report tells the story of how economic security for women all over Australia is being achieved by good businesses that last.
Who are our Sisters in 2020
Impact Across Australia
Global Sisters embarked on a new 5 year strategy and scale model at the end of 2019, with a combination of place based regional hubs and a digital offering to enable access for women nationwide.
Our digital program offering, the increased demand as a result of COVID-19 job losses and targeted digital marketing to reach single mums and older women has resulted in significant increases in participation in late Q1 and throughout Q2 of 2020. We are now starting to see the impact of our scale strategy.
Social Impact
The Global Sisters social impact framework has six impact domains that we track over key milestones in each Sister’s journey through the 3 year roadmap:
Impact Domain Highlights 2020
Business Acumen
Making Business Possible
Sisters identified that the main barriers to them starting their own business (prior to participating in Sister School) were:
- 24% Lack of training or idea where to start
- 24% Challenges in navigating self-employment.
Global Sisters business education helped women to overcome barriers and increase their knowledge & skills in order to start their own business.
92%
of Sisters feel they have the business acumen to run a good business, an increase of 26% from the previous year.
Enterprise
Businesses Developing
Sisters are progressing through the business stages, from Pre Idea to Growth, and are growing their businesses:
85%
of Sisters were able to move their business idea to Set-Up stage and beyond by participating in our business education programs.
96% of Sisters who participated in the 90-day Planning sessions said that it improved clarity for them surrounding their business model and sales goals.
47%
or Sisters were making sales at the end on Incubate and 30% were ready to launch. The remainder were pivoting.
Financial Resilience & Wellbeing
Increased Income
Despite the challenges of COVID, Sisters are improving their business incomes:
59%
of Sisters who joined our business education in 2020 were able to start generating income from their businesses.
61%
of Sisters surveyed at the end of Industry Circles in Accelerate said the program helped them move closer to their financial goals.
220
women set up shops on the Marketplace since November 2020, with almost $35,000 in sales (as of April 2021).
Empowerment
Confidence
Global Sisters is supporting women to improve their self-belief and confidence:
58%
Sisters in Incubate reported that the barrier they had made the most progress in was improving confidence.
78%
of Coaches from the First 10 Customers said that the biggest part of their work in the program was to help their Sister overcome confidence barriers.
Influence
Sister Leadership
In this impact domain, we track how Sisters “give back” to the Sister Community and their increased social capital & influence. In addition to the individual stories of leadership, we have seen:
2x
More than doubling of engagement (peer learning, collaboration, encouragement) on the Sister Community over the last year.
15
Sisters stepped up as Sister Leaders in our Industry Circles program (Accelerate).
4
Sisters took on the paid roles of Community Ambassador in our face-to-face program.
Connection
Inclusive Community & Powerful Networks
Sisters are less isolated and have meaningful connections with coaches, other Sisters, local business networks and have access to corporate pro bono support & sales opportunities.
77%
increase in online membership of the Global Sisters Community Facebook group in 2020.
72
active coaches available to Sisters in the Incubate programs (Q1 2021), and 281 coaches cumulatively.
77%
of Sisters who participated in Industry Circles said that connection to other Sisters was one of the greatest impacts of the program.
$2.3M
total value of pro bono support from corporates transferred to Sisters.