Women-owned businesses: get counted now at ThisWayUpVT.com

“You can’t be what you can’t see,” is one of the motivators behind the launch of This Way UP: there’s power in our numbers, a new initiative from the Vermont Women’s Fund to identify and track women-owned businesses in the state.

While women business owners have been a backbone of Vermont’s economy for years, there is no conclusive data to determine how many there are, in what sectors, and what gender-specific challenges they might face such as lack of access to financing. This Way UP wants to fill that gap in knowledge and accountability. Together with the Vermont Women's Fund, ThisWayUpVT.com was developed for women business owners to sign up, be counted, and tell us something about their work and challenges. The end result will be conclusive information-rich data about women’s economic impact - and something even better. We believe by connecting women to their economic power and contribution to our state’s economy, it will be a motivator to start up or grow their business.

If you are a woman who is earning money through your own enterprise, This Way UP wants to hear from you! Even if you are doing something small, are not officially “incorporated,” or have any employees, you still count! By directly hearing from women, we can fully understand the impact of their businesses on the economy, and their communities. Head over to ThisWayUpVT.com to lift all women in Vermont. There truly is power in our numbers!

"With no hard data to identify how many female entrepreneurs there are in the state and what their challenges are, we are unable to quantify, assist, and most importantly, grow the number of female founders and business owners. We believe this is a major gap in Vermont’s potential for economic growth." - Meg Smith, Director of the Vermont Women’s Fund