When a company like the financial services firm Goldman Sachs decides to invest resources in a new social venture, its leaders bring to that effort the same commitment to measurement and evaluation that they bring to the firm’s core operations. In 2008, Goldman launched the 10,000 Women Initiative, a worldwide effort to promote women’s entrepreneurship through training, mentoring, and other forms of assistance. In “Applied “Womenomics,’” a Field Report article published in the Summer 2014 issue of SSIR, we profile that initiative. Spanning more than 40 countries and drawing on $100 million in funding from the Goldman Sachs Foundation, the 10,000 Women effort amounts to a very big bet—and firm leaders have kept a close eye on how it has paid off.
As we note in the article, Goldman enlisted the expertise of professional evaluators at the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) to investigate the outcomes of the 10,000 Women Initiative as the first, five-year-long phase of the program came to a close. In 2013, ICRW issued a report that focused on implementation of the initiative in India. Here, we invite readers to download and review that document. (The report comes to us courtesy of Goldman Sachs.)
Catalyzing Growth in the Women-Run Small and Medium Enterprises Sector
Although the 10,000 Women program has only been operational for a relatively short period of time, this initial assessment of the businesses and lives of women entrepreneurs in India leads us to believe that the potential for more widespread gains in the future is high.—from the report
Download the complete report here.
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