By Judy Mann
Friday, May 5, 2000
The Washington Post
Iris Burnett and Nell Merlino were at a White House women's economic summit in 1997, and after two days of meetings, they realized something extraordinary. Women were viewed as consumers of products, but they were invisible as producers of wealth.
"We knew we needed to make a statement that would demonstrate women's power in the economy," Burnett recalls. "And we knew it had to be something to do with money." And they wanted it to be something that women could do together, regardless of race, physical ability, age or income.
They knew that women continue to have serious problems getting access to credit. Their work and family lives do not conform to the standard credit-rating scores. Women may be out of the work force for 30 years; they take time out to care for children and parents; they get bad credit ratings if they divorce men who have bad credit ratings.
Merlino, who created Take Our Daughters to Work Day, and Burnett, who developed the "Erase the Hate" campaign for USA Network, hit upon the idea of creating a special fund. It would loan money to women starting or expanding businesses, and it would provide scholarships for training.
The fund drive is called "Count Me In for Women's Economic Independence," and you can join for as little as $5. Its Web site, www.count-me-in.org, tells you how to contribute. The campaign also has a toll-free phone number, 877-542-6445. Count Me In will make loans of $500 to $5,000 during an applicant's first round of borrowing, and if she repays a $5,000 loan on time, she is eligible for the maximum loan, which is $10,000. The Web site is full of examples of how small amounts of money have enabled women to start or expand a business.
"Men have banks, and we don't," Burnett says. "We thought if we could make a big enough statement that financial institutions would see women as a good investment and start to look at us in a very different way. We need to start thinking of ourselves as business people. Women employ 27 million people and own 9 million small businesses, but most of us didn't start our businesses with loans from banks."
The campaign is also working with experts to rewrite the conventional credit-scoring system in ways that reflect the reality of women's lives--so that being out of the work force for 30 years is not held against a Count Me In loan applicant.
Even if women aren't in the work force, they often have been doing volunteer work on the side, such as fundraising for a homeless shelter, Burnett says.
"You'd like to have a business that does that, but you need some equipment to do it," she says. "On our application, instead of how many years have you been in business, we say how many years have you been selling your service or product or donating it? We estimate there are 6 million women who'd like to have their own business."
She cites a woman in Atlanta who had been selling pasta sauce to family and friends but needed about $1,500 to bring her kitchen up to health department standards so that she could produce the sauce full-time and sell it commercially.
Once women get Count Me In loans and build up their businesses, they will not only be able to support themselves and their families, but they also may expand their businesses to the point of employing others. At the same time, women are establishing good credit for themselves. "Most women start business on personal credit cards," Burnett says. "We'd like to change that and say to banks, 'This is what we're doing, and you should be doing this, too.' "
Many women have had unpleasant experiences when they've tried to get loans, and they don't want to go back to banks, Burnett says. She hopes that Count Me In will ally itself with several female-friendly banks so the organization can refer women who can qualify for loans to banks. "We'll use money from Count Me In for those who don't qualify," she say.
She and Merlino ran the idea by several prominent women in the New York media world.
"Who can't afford $5?" was the reaction. They held a media breakfast that drew all the heavy hitters from women's magazines, women's television, the Working Women's Network and women's Internet sites. They all agreed to get behind the drive. "We said to them, if the women's media works together on this, it can really work." Among those behind the effort are Nancy Evans, co-founder of iVillage.com, and Geraldine Laybourne, of Oxygen.com.
They and many others, including Lifetime TV, www.lifetimetv.com, have pledged to drive their Web site traffic and viewers to www.count-me-in.org on Thursday, May 11, for a huge fundraising launch for what they hope will become a $25 million revolving fund. Support has already come from the Rockefeller Family Foundation, from the Reebok and American Express foundations, BP Amoco, as well as from Peg Yorkin, chair of the Feminist Majority Foundation.
While the effort is being run by powerful media women in New York, prominent activists such as Judith Lichtman, of the National Partnership for Women and Families, and Jane Smith, president and CEO of the National Council of Negro Women, also have been involved.
Women own 38 percent of all businesses in the United States, but only 1.7 percent of the $12 billion in venture capital committed to new businesses in 1998 went to projects owned by women. Count Me In is a low-cost way of doing something that could turn women's access to credit and venture capital on its head and break down the economic barriers to female entrepreneurs once and for all.
Count Me In may prove to be one of the women's movement's most important milestones. Powerful women who are business rivals in their day jobs are working together to help women. This is a formidable group of women, who are at the top of their game, and they're not afraid to share.
