Why Inspire Access?

By: Patrice Brickman, CEO of Inspire Access

For as long as I can remember, from growing up in Gaithersburg, Maryland, I have seen a world that worked for some people, but not as well for others. As an adult moving to Potomac didn’t change that. While I have been privileged in many ways, and am a financially empowered woman, I witness gender and racial disparity in our community every day. I have watched deals being done on the manicured lawns of exclusive country clubs where I am not permitted because of my gender.   

We live in a world with a staggering racial and gender wealth gap, with less than 3% of all investment capital going to women and people of color, and the number dipping to under .08% if you happen to be a black woman.

This disproportionate flow of capital does not work for the people on the wrong end of the gap, and it doesn’t work for our community at large either.  

By denying women access to capital to start and run businesses, we were missing “Half our Sky” literally 50% of our brain power, ideas, solutions, and successful companies. Fold in people of color, and we are missing 75% of our collective power as a global community. 

Unfortunately, these statistics are not new, and they don’t seem to be changing. If we keep doing things the way we have been doing them, we will wake up in 20 more years to the same statistics, having the same conversation…it will be Groundhog Day.

Here is how we can do things differently.

We are going to tap into the $234B that is sitting unallocated in Donor Advised Funds (DAF’s) and other philanthropic capital to help close the racial and gender wealth gap.  

A few years ago, I learned that there are hundreds of billions of dollars sitting in donor-advised funds sitting unallocated in the U.S. alone. Around that same time, I learned that the IRS decided that if we are solving for one the of 17 UN Sustainability Goals, then we can use philanthropic capital to do it, even if it means investing that capital in for-profit companies. So, I founded Inspire Access.

Inspire Access can flow capital from a charitable fund or a tax-deductible donation, and invest it in the founders who have been and are still disproportionately underfunded. Further, any returns from that investment could flow back into your charitable entity or be reinvested.

I believe we are living in a defining moment. We can change the course of capital. I believe history will record and reflect when philanthropic capital finally got strategic and was able to make the seismic changes it was intended to make. 

So I invite you to join this movement and this moment, to be on the right side of history, to dust off your charitable funds, get them out working in the world, provide much-needed capital to great companies, and make returns for you to have an impact again and again.

Make your impact here.