Women own only about 32 cents for every dollar of wealth owned by men.  In 2020, women’s median weekly earnings were 82.3% that of men. The wage gap is even larger for Black women who are paid 63 cents for every dollar paid to white, non-Hispanic men. What’s more, women spend nearly twice as much time on unpaid care and domestic work as men. 

Persistent pay gaps and unequal caregiving responsibilities lead to lower lifetime earnings, limited wealth, and financial insecurity for women, which are even more pronounced for black and hispanic women. These disparities perpetuate cycles of poverty, discrimination, and hinder women’s economic opportunities and wealth-building potential. 

Spring Impact is thrilled to introduce Lean Impact for Scale: Women’s Wealth, Pay, and Unpaid Care Gap: a fully-subsidized program designed to help mission-driven organizations at the forefront of this issue in the United States gain the skills, strategies, and mindsets to forge a path towards effective and sustainable scale. 

Scaling social impact is complex. Going on this journey, you might find yourself wrestling with uncertainties about your impact strategy and execution. Perhaps you’ve developed a groundbreaking intervention that has huge potential, but you’re grappling with the intricacies of funding it on a larger scale. Or maybe you’re standing at the crossroads of multiple high-potential avenues for scale, struggling to navigate the trade-offs that lie ahead.

The Lean Impact for Scale Programme is designed to help you test and refine your scale strategies, to forge a sustainable path towards enacting change at scale on gender-based wage and wealth disparities, as well as the disproportionate burden of unpaid care in the US. Participants will receive support to:

• Define scale strategies, identifying viable partners and payers
• Learn how to de-risk uncertainties by testing with community, partners and payers
• Use data driven insights to improve scale strategies
• Develop a roadmap for continuous testing and improvement

Over the course of 10 weeks, you will be part of a select training cohort, where you will take part in peer-learning within a cohort of like-minded senior leaders, in an environment of mutual support and shared growth. You will also receive personalized coaching sessions and individualised advisory support from our team of scaling experts, who will help to help you answer key questions, such as: 

• What scale pathways are right for us and how can we avoid wasting resources pursuing the wrong strategy?
• How can we find sustainable funding beyond grants?
• Who are our partners at scale, and will they deliver  with quality and at scale?

The Lean Impact Program has been delivered across multiple countries, with previous cohorts evaluations showing that: 

• 100% of participants have successfully formulated a crystal-clear scale strategy hypothesis.
• 100% have actively executed at least one real-world test alongside partners or funders, with 60% taking the remarkable stride of conducting three or more tests. 
• Over half of the participants rated their likelihood to recommend the program at a perfect 10/10, while every participant scored it at 8 or above.

The program is based on Spring Impact’s lean testing methodology, designed to help organisations build truly scalable models by following these three principles:

• Think Big – Commit to making impact relative to the size of societal problems
• Start Small – Immediately test scaling solutions and pathways through lean experiments with constituents, doers, and payers 
• Relentlessly Seek Value, Impact, and Scale – Continue to iterate on scaling solutions and pathways until unlocking a model that is deeply valued by all stakeholders, equitably and lastingly impactful, and financially sustainable beyond philanthropic dollars 

Applications are open until 30 November, with the program due to start in January 2024. To find out if it’s the right fit for you, check your eligibility here.