Let’s Get Funded: How Working With Lenders, Not Just Entrepreneurs, Unlocked About CAD 10M in SME Financing

Key numbers

USD converted at the 2019 to 2020 average of about CAD 1.33 per USD (Bank of Canada).

The challenge: why capital wasn’t reaching immigrant women entrepreneurs

Racialized and immigrant women in Canada were building businesses, but capital wasn’t reaching them on equal terms. Lenders said they were open to women. Few understood that many of these women, permanent residents and naturalized citizens, still carried unrecognized credentials and smaller professional networks (New Canadian Media).

The national data show the same pattern. In 2020, businesses entirely owned by women were the least likely to request debt financing: 13.6%, against 22.8% for businesses where women owned between 1% and 49% (Statistics Canada). Immigrants, meanwhile, were more likely to run a business than Canadians whose parents were also born in Canada, 11.9% against 8.4% in 2016, partly because suitable paid jobs were harder to find (Statistics Canada).

The process assumed one way to pitch, one code, one attitude. Women who didn’t match it were left out of a system that called itself open.

For lenders, the problem wasn’t money. Capital was available, but their outreach wasn’t reaching these women. It ran through channels they didn’t use, with messaging they didn’t see themselves in, aimed at women who often didn’t trust financial institutions to begin with.

In Senegal, the gap was structural. Formal lending was built around collateral, while many women financed their businesses through tontines that banks didn’t count as a track record (AFP via Gulf News). Even in 2023, only 3.5% of women entrepreneurs in Senegal accessed credit from financial institutions (FSD Africa), and lenders lacked methods to assess the creditworthiness of women without collateral (WOCCU). Structured gender lens capital mobilization was still new in the market.

What we built: both sides of the pipeline

Let’s Get Funded worked both sides of the pipeline at once: preparing women to ask for capital, and preparing institutions to say yes for the right reasons.

“Darine took something I cared about and turned it into an ecosystem where women get funded, get access, and get the foundation for lasting success. She brought the lenders to the table, built the methodology, and made it work in Canada and then in Senegal. I learned so much from her about what it really takes to get capital to women. If you’re serious about it, work with Darine.”

The entrepreneurs’ side

• A business plan and a complete funding application, built with each entrepreneur
• Access to business loans of up to CAD 65,000 for startups (under 2 years) and up to CAD 250,000 for existing businesses (over 2 years), plus business grants of up to CAD 50,000
• A bilingual website (French and English) and social media presence
• Customized coaching in English or French, so each woman could pitch lenders on her own terms

The lenders’ side

• Partnerships with BDC and federal financial institutions in Canada
• Financial tools and an approval methodology that kept capital moving after the first deals
• A bilateral private investor network linking Canada and Senegal
• Alignment with government agencies, financial institutions and civil society on national women’s economic empowerment priorities

Replicating it in Senegal: one methodology, two financial systems

The model built in Canada was replicated in Senegal in 2019 and 2020, and the two ran at the same time across different regulatory environments and financial systems.

In Senegal, the programme partnered with Banque Islamique du Sénégal (BIS), BICIS and private lenders. The Senegalese arm was funded by Senegalese institutions. The same approval methodology carried across both markets, adapted to each system’s rules.

What changed on the lender side: Senegalese lenders had capital but couldn’t reach or attract women-owned businesses. The programme hosted its own events where lenders met the entrepreneurs directly, each with a complete funding application in hand.

What was hard

COVID-19 arrived in 2020, while the Canadian loans were in repayment. Small businesses lost revenue all at once, and repayment settled at 80%. The programme responded with easier repayment plans and more room for women to build their online presence, move their businesses online and diversify their revenue.

Some criteria couldn’t move. Canadian lenders were required by regulation to apply a minimum credit score, which not every woman could meet yet. Women who weren’t ready yet left with a strategy to raise their credit score and an open invitation to come back.

Results

Capital reached women in both markets through institutions that had previously not reached them. In Canada, the 24 businesses financed span professional services, fintech and diversified industries. In Senegal, the 10 businesses financed span agriculture, fish farming and real estate, and the programme opened a structured route to capital in a market where few existed.

The approval methodology and investor network outlasted the first deals: they are what kept capital deploying across both markets through 2020.

Before and after: before the programme, lenders had capital and no route to women-owned businesses. Through it, every participant in the Canadian programme who met the regulatory criteria was funded, and the Canadian portfolio held 80% repayment through the pandemic.

“The capital was there. What was missing was a bridge between the lenders and the women. So we built the bridge, and the ecosystem around it.”

What funds and lenders can take from it

1. Design both sides together.Training women alone sends confident entrepreneurs into unchanged institutions.
2. Build the approval methodology with the lender.If it lives only in a programme, it ends with the programme.
3. Put lenders and entrepreneurs face to face.Events where lenders met women with complete applications did what outreach campaigns couldn’t.
4. Expect the model to travel.It moved from Toronto to Dakar because the problem was the same: institutions reading women through one code.