The Inclusive Entrepreneurship Investment Checklist appears at the end of a report that the Technical.ly team put out in August 2023. Below is a copy of the categories and questions they share in the checklist. If you manage startup portfolios or programs, this is a must-read.
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Defining Inclusive
What does underrepresented mean for your investments? Are you prioritizing race and ethnicity? What about gender, age, income or geography? Will you fund those who are disabled, LGBTQ, immigrants, U.S. veterans or from other specific backgrounds?
What industries and types of companies constitute entrepreneurship? Is your focus on any business incorporation? Does that include sole proprietorships and any small business, or will you focus on those more likely to employ others? Does high-growth matter?
Are you focused on supporting new entrepreneurs or advancing those further along? Is your key goal to increase rates of incorporation, the survival rate of those who start or the growth rate of the companies you serve?
Program Design
What are you offering underrepresented entrepreneurs? Is it capital, connections or other services?
Is your approach executed through in-house programs or in partnership with external organizations with deep expertise in the issues you seek to solve? Both approaches have value.
Do your investments center proximate leadership? (i.e. providing funding to entrepreneurs who are closest to the issues they seek to solve or have lived experience with those issues)
How risk tolerant is your approach? Oftentimes to create change, investments are needed most in areas that seem newer, nuanced or less developed, yet have great potential to create change. What kind of failure is acceptable?
Differentiation
What are other efforts that offer complementary services? What organizations and programs online, nationally or in your community have similar offerings?
What policy or project priorities could advance your work? Are there local or national policies you should support? Or within your own program, what have you learned that can be improved?
Outcomes
Does your approach to inclusive entrepreneurship seek to center equity or equality of access? Is your strategy primarily to uncover “lost Einsteins” to unlock economic potential, or are you primarily aiming to undo past social injustices? How does that align with your organizational priorities? What other organizational beliefs reinforce these investments?
Are the outcomes your approach seeks to create designed to benefit an individual or a system? (i.e. providing funding to an individual entrepreneur or providing funding to increase the capacity or functionality of a system that can support and/or benefit many entrepreneurs)
Are the outcomes your approach seeks to create incremental or sustainable? (i.e. is the funding one-off versus multi-year, do your investments seek returns that can be recycled?)
Impact Measurement
What will be signs of success for your inclusive entrepreneurship program? How will you mark that success? What is your desired return on investment? How long are you committing?
What outside factors would shift your strategy? If a key metric was suddenly reached, would you change your program?
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Find the full report here.
TUNING Design Co. 