Funding Strategy Review

You cannot retrofit
your way to
structural change.

A decade of gender lens overlays applied to funding strategies, investment theses and grant programmes. Even with more women at the table, the numbers are getting worse. Women do not need another layer on an existing model. They are calling for a structural review — and in some cases, a complete rebuild.

The Evidence

Women are both deploying capital and building the businesses it is meant to reach, and yet the current structure is failing both groups.

21.6% → 18.6%
Investment in female-led businesses in the UK — despite women now comprising 34% of angel investors.
1.2%
VC investment in companies with women CEOs in 2025 — lower than at any point in the previous decade.

More intent. More representation. Worse outcomes. The lens was never the problem. The structure underneath it was.

When funding programmes are designed around where women-led businesses actually are, the results are unambiguous.

78% vs 35%
Queensland's Ignite Ideas Fund: firms with at least one female founder generated revenue at more than double the rate of all-male-founded firms.
4.2 : 1
Victoria's Alice Anderson Fund: private sector co-investment ratio against an expected 3 to 1 — $7.1M invested activating more than $41.2M in follow-on capital.
The variable is not the founder. It is the structure they are being assessed against.
The Structural Problem

What's underneath.

The intent has always been there. Foundations have updated their grant strategies. Impact investors have built gender-informed investment theses. Corporate philanthropic arms have restructured their social impact programmes. The commitment is real.

And still the numbers move in the wrong direction.

Because the problem is not at the surface. It runs through the entire model.

The criteria women-led businesses are assessed against assume a level of maturity many have not yet reached — not because the businesses are not strong, but because women founders have historically had access to less early-stage capital to build with. The model then compounds this by deploying funding in ways that do not match where these businesses actually are: large, infrequent grants where smaller amounts offered more regularly — evolving into lending products, evolving into equity when defined milestones are met — would reach far more of the women the funding was designed for.

Adjusting language, adding diversity criteria, or increasing female representation on panels does not reach any of this. It cannot — because the problem is in the structure, not the surface.

The women being filtered out are not underfundable. They are being measured against a framework that was not designed with their growth trajectory in mind.
Lisa Erhart, Founder of Funding4Growth
Both Sides of the Table

The perspective
that changes
everything.

Reviewed over $50 million in grant funding applications from the assessor side.
Secured over $4.2 million in non-dilutive funding for clients across the UK, Australia and Europe.
Has seen — from inside the assessment process — exactly where the structure fails the women it was designed to reach.
Has designed alternative funding models at national scale — built around where women-led businesses actually are, not where existing criteria assume they should be.
Author of Advanced Grant Writing for Female Founders. Background in corporate technology transformation and sustainability consultancy. Founder of Funding4Growth.
The Funding Strategy Review

Stop. Examine.
Rebuild where
necessary.

The Funding Strategy Review is a structured audit of your existing funding strategy, investment thesis or grant programme — examined honestly against what you intend it to do.

Over four to six weeks, it maps your eligibility criteria, application process, assessment framework and decision-making structure. The purpose is not to apply another overlay. It is to identify precisely what is working, what is failing, and what needs to be rebuilt — specific to your organisation, not a generic set of diversity recommendations.

You receive a clear report: a structural gap analysis, prioritised findings, and a grounded starting point for redesign.

Available as a standalone engagement or as the opening phase of a complete structural reform programme.
Eligibility Criteria
Are your criteria calibrated to where women-led businesses actually are in their growth trajectory — or where you assume they should be?
Application Process
Does the format, evidence requirements and timeline work for the founders you are trying to reach?
Assessment Framework
How is risk being read within your scoring? What assumptions are embedded — and whose business model do they reflect?
Decision-Making Structure
Where does the process compound structural disadvantage at the final stage — and what would change if it didn't?
Funding Strategy Review

If your funding strategy, investment thesis or grant programme is designed to reach women-led businesses — and the outcomes are not yet reflecting that intention — the structure is worth an honest examination.

Book a Conversation with Lisa

30 minutes. No obligation. To establish whether a structural review is the right next step for your organisation.