DOVE Chocolate Awards InstaGrants To 3 Female-Owned Businesses

DOVE Chocolate brought back its #DOVEInstaGrants program, which encourages women entrepreneurs to pitch their business ideas or established businesses for a chance to receive a $10,000 grant, as well as further business promotion. This program was inspired from DOVE’s partnership with CARE. “DOVE Chocolate has had a partnership with CARE, a multi-year program to empower women in West African cocoa-growing communities to build their own small businesses and define their financial voice. As the brand looked further into how it could make an impact, it uncovered that here in the U.S., women entrepreneurs are 63% less likely to receive funding than men,” shared Martin Terwilliger, Senior Director of Marketing at Mars Wrigley.

The brand was inspired to bring the spirit of its work in West Africa to life in the U.S. with DOVE Chocolate InstaGrants, which was designed to uplift, celebrate and empower women entrepreneurs. In its first year, DOVE offered three women $10,000 to further their businesses, and this year, DOVE is taking its support a step further by providing more business promotion for both this and last year’s winners. To apply, DOVE encouraged female entrepreneurs to share their 30 second pitch for their business, whether established or still a budding idea, on Instagram or through DoveChocolateInstaGrants.com. “We saw inspiring entries in industries ranging from tech to education to sustainability and saw more than four times the number of entries from the program’s first year. Reviewing entries for the InstaGrants program was inspiring and empowering, as it showed the immense passion, grit and creativity of so many women. Ultimately, our winners were chosen through a criteria that prioritized impact to create positive change in their communities and the world, as well as the uniqueness of their idea,” shared Terwilliger on how DOVE selected the winners.

The 2023 winners include Isabel Last of Faena, an immersive language-teaching video game, Jillian Anderson of HERide, a rideshare app made for women by women to provide reliable peer- to-peer transportation, and Kiera Gardner and Margo Newkirk of Blend of Soul, a cold-pressed juice company encouraging healthier lifestyles with sustainably made products.

This year DOVE is assisting this year and last year’s winners beyond financial support to provide strategic business promotion leveraging DOVE’s platform. “We know that women are far less likely to receive funding than men, so our goal was to get these ground-breaking businesses additional visibility to be able to raise, encouraging business support and funding among two groups: Venture Capitalists and the public,” elaborated Terwilliger. “First, we partnered with Indiegogo in an effort to showcase these businesses on the crowdfunding platform programmed specifically for entrepreneurs. On Indiegogo, 47% of campaigns that exceed their goals are run by women and 10 million people worldwide visit the site each month. Second, we wanted to get the entrepreneurs a seat at the table at venture capital firms, which we did in a guerilla-style approach. We leveraged cutting-edge technology to develop holograms of each winner giving their business pitches. The holograms were featured on QR codes in delicious DOVE Chocolate gift baskets, which when scanned, put our entrepreneurs in the room with the firms. Lastly, we are leveraging our social platforms to excite and inspire fans to support these inspiring, empowering companies.”

One of last year’s winners, Brittany Rhodes, the Founder of Black Girl Mathgic, was able to develop a quarterly subscription box for boys and are growing our customer base to include schools, districts and youth-serving organizations through DOVE’s support.

This year’s winners share why they applied for the grant and how they hope to use the grant to continue to build their businesses.

Blend Of Soul

Why did you apply to the Dove InstaGrants?

We applied for Dove InstaGrants because as a Black-owned women led business, being a member of a historically underrepresented community has created a challenging pathway to navigate systemic barriers within our society as well as the entrepreneurial world. Creating access to capital, networking opportunities, and mentorships for our community and small business owners would bridge the equity gap and promote diversity. One of our biggest challenges that we face is having access to capital and resources to elevate our business. Representation matters, and this is what has fueled us in advocating for our business and many other women owned businesses in our community and across the world. There is a unique disparity that is explored and seen when advocating for ourselves and the necessary resources needed to grow our business, and we hope to minimize this disparity by creating a safe space for those that look like us, creating open forums to voice questions and concerns, and creating our own seat at the table. We thank Dove for starting this conversation and creating funding for underrepresented groups like us to continue spreading powerful messages within our businesses and continue to be the voices for our community.

What do plan on using the grant for?

We believe in speaking power into the things that we desire and the Dove InstaGrant will support us in securing our first food truck! With our food truck, we hope to incorporate a healthy menu with fun and delicious treats, juices, and smoothies for our community to enjoy. We hope to create more accessibility of healthy products to our community and surrounding areas by continuing our mission of keeping health and wellness at the forefront. Being awarded this grant not only means that we can secure our food truck, but it will allow us to take that blank canvas and paint it as our own. We dream of creating our own inviting space where everyone feels safe and welcomed, especially those that look like us. It’s equally as important for us to develop jobs in our community for Black and Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC) through our brand. We are passionate about standing in our culture and our blackness and we hope that through this grant, we can continue spreading our message across the world.

What do you hope the remaining perks of the grant bring for you and your business?

We hope that by partnering with Indiegogo to create our campaign and the Dove VC hologram pitch opportunity, we are able to raise more exposure to our mission and our business. We hope that through these added perks, we are able to also create more business and growth opportunities for our community. We love our brand and what we stand for, and we are so excited that we didn’t just win the grant, but Dove has offered us more opportunities to get our brand name out to the public. We love that companies like Dove are passionate about seeing small women-owned businesses grow, and strive to see businesses succeed beyond grant funding. We thank everyone on the Dove InstaGrants team for seeing us and believing in our vision to make our community healthier.

HERide

Why did you apply to the Dove InstaGrants?

We chose to apply for InstaGrants because DOVE continuously celebrates and supports women of all backgrounds. As a women led business, it is important to us to be aligned with brands that also believe in women empowerment.

What do plan on using the grant for?

Like many startup companies, we’ve been bootstrapped to date. We invested in our dream of being the #1 alternative ride share option for women, and now that dream is becoming a reality. With the additional funds from this grant, we will be able to invest in our marketing plans for Q2.

What do you hope the remaining perks of the grant bring for you and your business?

We look forward to the heightened exposure that our brand will receive through this partnership. We also look forward to connecting with VC’s that are interested in investing in a tech start up that is transforming the landscape of ride share safety.

Faena

Why did you apply to the Dove InstaGrants?

I applied for DOVE Chocolate InstaGrants for much-needed funding from a company looking to support and uplift female founders.

What do plan on using the grant for?

I plan to use the grant to continue to pay my cofounders so they can keep working on Faena full time.

What do you hope the remaining perks of the grant bring for you and your business?

We’re hoping the Indiegogo campaign gives us a wider fan base and allows our supporters to be a part of the Faena journey monetarily. We would love to see a few more small angel checks come in before our pre-seed round starts later this year.