NatWest has teamed up with Crowdfunder to support more women to start businesses in the UK. It has launched an initiative called ‘Back Her Business’, which was unveiled recently at the Park Regis Hotel in Birmingham.

The idea behind the initiative is to support female entrepreneurs throughout the country by helping them prepare their business ideas for crowdfunding. The programme forms part of the bank’s wider commitment to reducing the gender gap when it comes to entrepreneurship. The aim is to create a further 400,000 female-led businesses by 2025.

The programme will help women to raise money for their businesses through crowdfunding. It will also provide free coaching, mentoring and opportunities to network with other like-minded women. Furthermore, the initiative will offer female entrepreneurs 50 per cent of their fundraising target (maximum of £5,000) in grant funding for certain successful projects.

As part of the ‘Back Her Business’ programme NatWest has partnered with the Pink Shoe Club [http://pinkshoeclub.com/] to host the Economic Blueprint for Women roadshow.

The Pink Shoe Club is a national network for women business-owners and female entrepreneurs that spearheads the UK Economic Blueprint for Women, which is designed to stimulate the growth of women-owned businesses in order to achieve economic growth.

The UK Economic Blueprint for Women is helping to create the conditions for female-led or owned businesses to gain a fairer share of business opportunities and contracts nationally, with a focus on helping women to scale up their businesses.

The roadshow is a series of roundtable events taking place across the country to facilitate a discussion by female entrepreneurs about how they can create tangible actions to combat the barriers they face.

The events provide the opportunity to connect directly with female entrepreneurs and business founders from every sector, and to take part in an interactive forum to share ideas on how to encourage and support more women to grow their businesses.

To find out more about the roadshow visit http://pinkshoeclub.com/events/forthcoming-events/.