Brace yourself for the news: “Women are more successful in reaching their finance goals than men in all sectors and geographic regions across the globe” in crowdfunding.

It’s widely known that in the venture capital world – from employees to companies funding – that women are overlooked and under represented. Have been for years. But change is finally coming – through startup crowdfunding, says a new report.

While organizations such as the National Venture Capital Association and Silicon Valley-based tech companies have launched diversity efforts, the bottom line is this:

Real change is taking place at the grassroots level of entrepreneurship.

And from these startups where women are getting a truly fair chance, equality hopefully will spread upward as women-led ventures find success.

  • MORE COVERAGE: Action steps to end “endemic bias.”

“Who could have expected that when the middle-men are removed from the equation, and women and men entrepreneurs get equal and direct access to the market, it would turn out that women would, immediately and decisively, outperform the men, across the board?”

So says Barry James, co-founder and CEO of the Crowdfunding Center.

“Shining a new light on the endemic imbalance and the causes that have long fueled limited access to finance for female entrepreneurs via traditional financing routes. That only half as many women currently embark on a crowdfunding campaign is undoubtedly a reflection of low expectations stemming from the same roots. So, in that light, it’s time to readjust not just our expectation and perceptions but our attitudes, institutions, behaviours – and the way we make decisions.”

While men dominate among campaigns generating more than $1 million, the overall numbers should encourage women wanting to build startups.

After all, money follows success, not publicity and “feel good” initiatives.

With crowdfunding legislation having been finally approved in North Carolina, let’s hope that the results for women as reported by PricewaterhouseCoopers and The Crowdfunding Center will become apparent here.

“Women-led campaigns performed better in terms of securing their funding goals than campaigns led by men when we segregate the data for every sector and every country. In countries with the largest volumes of seed crowdfunding, the UK and the US, 20% of male-led campaigns reached their targets,” PwC and The Crowdfunding Center declared in the report issued Tuesday.

“Yet female-led campaigns outperformed, with 24% of women in the US and 26% of women in the UK successfully reaching their campaign funding target.”

The report is based on an analysis of more than 450,000 crowdunding campaigns.

Key findings:

  • Female-led campaigns were 32% more successful at reaching their funding target than male-led campaigns
  • While men typically seek higher funding targets, female-led projects achieve a greater average pledge amount than male-led projects: on average each individual backer contributes $87 to women and $83 to men (a difference of almost 5%)
  • Even in more male dominated sectors, such as the technology sector, where there are nine male-led campaigns to every one female-led campaign, female-led campaigns are more successful, 13% to 10% respectively
  • The US and the UK are the most thriving countries for seed crowdfunding with the largest volumes of campaigns. In both countries, 20% of male-led campaigns reached their targets compared with 24% and 26% of female-led campaigns respectively
  • Men continue to use seed crowdfunding substantially more than women and raise substantially more finance than female-led campaigns; 89% of campaigns raising over $1 million were male-led campaigns compared with 11% of female-led

Read more at:

www.pwc.com/womenunbound