Women Who Cowork
We are a community for the community builders. This campaign supports our growing circle of female coworking founders across the world.
Project Description
Women Who Cowork is a membership platform for femme-identified coworking space operators around the world.
Our mission is to amplify the coworking movement by providing women with support, resources and mentorship.
Women make up 86% of the world's coworking employees yet only 36% of the coworking spaces are women-owned. Coworking is literally "women's work", yet the barrier to ownership is high for women.
Female coworking founders are struggling to bring their spaces to market, or are being forced to close, because they lack access to funding, support and resources.
We recognized this gender gap and decided we had to create a solution. We envisioned a place where femme identified coworking owners and operators could gather in a supportive community of peers.
In 3 short years Women Who Cowork has grown from a blog post to a thriving community of 750+ femme identified founders and operators across the globe. Our members currently receive support through our community of peers along with individual and group coaching and consulting from us.
We hold retreats, meetups and online events, all designed to foster our growing coworking movement from the unique perspective of being a woman in business.
In early 2019, we launched an online community platform that connects the world to a map of women-owned spaces across the globe and surfaces the women leading those spaces through unique founder profiles. We currently have 114 spaces listed and more are joining every day.
With 19,000 coworking spaces across the globe and more opening every month, the demand is greater than we can support with our current resources.
Women Who Cowork has been bootstrapping for 3 years and we are now fundraising in order to answer the need for increased offerings including:
Web-based resources:
- online forum
- more extensive founder profiles
- support for our map (currently functions slowly)
Business resources
- access to funding
- women-owned certification
- local chapter tool kit and support
Educational programming and workshops:
- financial education
- fundraising
- contract and lease negotiation tactics
- business knowledge and tools that are traditionally not taught to women.
We chose to work with iFundWomen because we believe in the value of women supporting women and because our women are already here, fundraising for their spaces. We want to support them in their efforts to build effective community funding campaigns.
Our founders, Laura Shook Guzman and Iris Kavanagh, have been each working in the coworking movement since 2008 and have a combined 22 years of coworking experience!
Laura, a practicing somatic psychotherapist, opened the first coworking space in Texas and the first wellness-focused coworking space in the world.
Iris was the founding employee of one of the world's most well known original coworking brands and scaled the company from 1-9 locations in 6 years. Since 2015 she has worked as an independent consultant supporting coworking operators in building their operations, communities and hiring and managing their staff.
Together they have taken a Facebook group and blog post meant to inspire and connect women in coworking into a global community serving a combined network of over 125,000 freelancers, entrepreneurs, small business owners and remote workers.
When women are in leadership positions, we reinvest 90% of our earnings back into our communities.
We know that in supporting women space operators, we are supporting grassroots economic development in communities across the globe.
Each woman running a coworking community is supporting each of her members. The members are, in turn, supporting their larger communities. We call this the Women Who Cowork Ripple Effect.
When women succeed, communities succeed.
We thank you for supporting us as we build a movement to support women-owned businesses. When you support a women owned-coworking space, you support her entire community and push the needle forward towards true gender equity in business.
Updates
The Campaign FAQs
Frequently Asked Questions:
- Why are you raising money?
- We are raising money to be able to bring additional services to our community of operators.
- Complete the build out our of web platform and member portal
- Create a local chapter toolkit to help our women connect locally
- Create a woman-owned certification program.
- Build a library of tools and resources
- We are raising money to be able to bring additional services to our community of operators.
- Are you a coworking space?
- No. We are a community of coworking space operators.
- Are you a non profit?
- No, we are an LLC
- Why do women need their own alliance?
- Women need to have a place where we can speak freely about our experience, ask questions and share our concerns without feeling like we are going to be judged, made to feel less than or put in our place. When women work together in a supportive community, we do better.
- Aside from donating, how can I support you?
- Please share our campaign and share our mission. And work out of one of the woman-owned coworking spaces on our directory.
- Are you just in the US?
- We are a global movement of women, though currently most of the spaces listed in our network are in the US. With your funding we will be able to reach more women across the world.
Custom design printed on a modern fit T-shirt, with an ultra soft hand. You will receive an email with design options so choose your favorite one!
This is for the busy entrepreneur who needs a tool to help slow down, focus and care for yourself in order to better manage your business. You will receive a link to download a custom entrepreneur's guided meditation, led by our cofounder, Laura Shook Guzman.
Our super awesome branded mug,
Community&Connection&Coffee&Coworking.
Perfect for hanging on your mug hook in your coworking space!
A perfect bundle of WWCO swag for the busy entrepreneur in your life. Includes branded notebook, T-Shirt, pen, stickers, meditation or Spotify list and your name on our website in our Allies section.
If you love food as much as we do, join us for a private farm to table dinner in Seattle in April 2020.
1 ticket
Location and date to be announced.
Dedicated hour zoom call or in person mentoring session with WOMEN WHO COWORK Co-founders Laura Shook Guzman and Iris Kavanagh.
Invest in our platform and become a founding member at the Founder Membership level.
This is a full year of membership for a female or non-binary founder of a coworking based business.
You will receive exclusive pricing to all of our events, discounted access to our programming, a selection of Mastermind calls to join each month, an opportunity to have your space and profile featured on our website and member only content. You will also be added as a founding member on our website.
We will list you in the Allies section of our website and work with you to develop a sponsorship package that best suits your needs.
You will receive our unending gratitude and appreciation and we will get in touch to see how we can best show our thanks.
Invest in our platform and become a founding member at the Collaborator level.
This is a full year of membership PLUS a coaching call with one of our co-founders!
You will receive exclusive pricing to all of our events, discounted access to our programming, a selection of Mastermind calls to join each month, an opportunity to have your space and profile featured on our website and member only content.
We will add you as a founding member on our website PLUS this reward includes one hour of coaching with either Laura or Iris.
Just Because I Care
Rewards
Custom design printed on a modern fit T-shirt, with an ultra soft hand. You will receive an email with design options so choose your favorite one!
This is for the busy entrepreneur who needs a tool to help slow down, focus and care for yourself in order to better manage your business. You will receive a link to download a custom entrepreneur's guided meditation, led by our cofounder, Laura Shook Guzman.
Our super awesome branded mug,
Community&Connection&Coffee&Coworking.
Perfect for hanging on your mug hook in your coworking space!
A perfect bundle of WWCO swag for the busy entrepreneur in your life. Includes branded notebook, T-Shirt, pen, stickers, meditation or Spotify list and your name on our website in our Allies section.
If you love food as much as we do, join us for a private farm to table dinner in Seattle in April 2020.
1 ticket
Location and date to be announced.
Dedicated hour zoom call or in person mentoring session with WOMEN WHO COWORK Co-founders Laura Shook Guzman and Iris Kavanagh.
Invest in our platform and become a founding member at the Founder Membership level.
This is a full year of membership for a female or non-binary founder of a coworking based business.
You will receive exclusive pricing to all of our events, discounted access to our programming, a selection of Mastermind calls to join each month, an opportunity to have your space and profile featured on our website and member only content. You will also be added as a founding member on our website.
We will list you in the Allies section of our website and work with you to develop a sponsorship package that best suits your needs.
You will receive our unending gratitude and appreciation and we will get in touch to see how we can best show our thanks.
Invest in our platform and become a founding member at the Collaborator level.
This is a full year of membership PLUS a coaching call with one of our co-founders!
You will receive exclusive pricing to all of our events, discounted access to our programming, a selection of Mastermind calls to join each month, an opportunity to have your space and profile featured on our website and member only content.
We will add you as a founding member on our website PLUS this reward includes one hour of coaching with either Laura or Iris.
Just Because I Care