We Venture to Ignite the Economic Power of Women
We strive to be the leading voice and resource for professional women and female entrepreneurs on the Space and Treasure Coasts. We fulfill our mission by providing the following services:
- FREE one-on-one business consultations
- Low and no-cost business education seminars and workshops
- IGNITE 360® Mentoring Program and Peer Groups
- Purposeful networking events
- Leadership development opportunities for professional women
- We elevate the profile of women leaders and advocate for economic opportunities for women
Established in 2007, our non-profit program is part of the Nathan M. Bisk College of Business on the campus of Florida Tech and is funded in part by a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Small Business Administration. Since then, we have:
- Trained over 16,500 clients
- Helped over 250 business owners grow and expand their businesses through the IGNITE 360® Mentoring Program
- Helped clients to create and maintain local jobs
- Helped clients to increase revenues - an average of 40% for IGNITE 360® graduates
- Worked with clients from Brevard, Indian River, St. Lucie, and Martin counties.
Our team of 7 staff members and over 80 volunteer mentors and subject matter experts work to support clients from diverse backgrounds and industries to launch and grow their businesses.
In 2023-2024 Program Year*, weVENTURE WBC:
- Served 994 unique clients TOTAL. Counseling, education, and group trainings
- Assisted 381 Start-up businesses, helped 23 clients launch their business and worked with 219 aspiring entrepreneurs.
- 32% client diversity. weVENTURE WBC continues to focus our outreach and partnerships to make our services more accessible to underserved constituencies.
- Clients created 126 NEW jobs and 4,230 jobs were retained.
- Assisted clients with accessing capital, including private funding and SBA loans.
- 529 clients attended at least one our 53 group training sessions, Peer Groups or webinars.
- 601 clients received 1:1 counseling for a total of 1,261 hours of direct counseling.
- 71% of our clients were female and 29% were male clients or husband and wife partnerships.
- IGNITE 360® programs were busy, serving 26 Business Mentoring clients, 20 CEO Peer Group clients, 40 clients participated in 3 cohorts of Pathways Business Launch class, and 8 women graduated from the inaugural cohort focused on childcare industry, in partnership with the Early Learning Coalition.
- Four unique business summits provided tailored programming and outreach for diverse constiuencies: A Small Business Summit, Hispanic Business Summit, Techcelerator Summit, and the annual IMPACT Summit business leadership conference.
- 26 emerging leaders participated in the ATHENA Leadership Program.
View the 2022-2023 Annual Report
View the 2021-2022 Annual Report
View the 2020-2021 Annual Report
View the 2019-2020 Annual Report
*Our SBA program year runs October through September.
