Community building can happen one of two ways. It can be a long, arduous process where you seed conversations, work hard to create connections, and curate a strong community and culture that slowly grows and builds. Or, you can stumble upon a desperate need - a void that once filled, starts flourishing. The latter was true of InnovateHER KC for Lauren Conaway. While serving as the Director of Operations for Kansas City Startup Foundation (now Startland), the universe smacked her in the face, so to speak, to make her realize her true purpose.
As a woman who had spent most of her career in male-dominated industries, Lauren has always had a drive for serving women and helping women leaders. But when her career path took her to work in the entrepreneurial community for Startland, her passion became more evident.
“I don’t think it’s any secret that the Kansas City startup community - and startup communities in general - tend to be pretty white and pretty male. I was meeting all of these women and I thought they were so cool. I admired them, I wanted to be friends with them, I wanted them to mentor me. But I found that I was not connecting with them in deep and meaningful ways,” says Lauren.
Lauren saw a need and an opportunity for women within the entrepreneurial community in Kansas City to connect to each other more deeply - as people - beyond the standard networking event. And so she put together a Friday afternoon, mani-pedi get together for entrepreneurial women to just hang out and be girls.
“We had snacks, we had drinks, we got our nails done - it was just a really fun afternoon. There were no agendas or name tags, just people connecting to people.”
After the event was over, Lauren started getting emails from women who didn’t attend - who she didn’t even know - asking to be put on the mailing list for the next event. There was not, in fact, a mailing list or even a next event in mind but because the demand was so high she thought, “Ok, I’ll take that on.”
Right around the same time, a female entrepreneur friend of Lauren’s needed some feedback on a product she was developing. She wanted to get a group of women together to talk about their bra buying experience to help develop a digital bra measurement tool.
“To be lazy” as Lauren says, she started a Facebook chat of women she thought could give great feedback. After one woman cracked a joke about how difficult it is to find a well fitting bra, the conversation exploded. And it kept going. And then the conversation turned towards what it was like to be in the entrepreneurial space as a woman. And that conversation kept going.
“Generally in group chats people tend to leave because you’re not seeing relevant information, you’re getting all of the notifications, and it’s just not really useful. Well, nobody left this chat. Not only that, women started adding other women. It went on for weeks,” Lauren explains.
Between the demand for another event and this new space she accidentally created for women to connect, Lauren realized she had something. That women in Kansas City were looking for ways to connect with each other in very real, authentic, transparent ways. And InnovateHER KC was born. Over the next few months Lauren began to develop what is now a flourishing community of innovative women across multiple fields who support each other in their work. The community is not just for entrepreneurs. Its members are entrepreneurs, community advocates, civic leaders, educators, and creatives.
“People often ask me, ‘What are you most proud of with InnovateHER KC?’
The thing that I am most proud of is the thing I have the least to do with. It is this amazing, badass community of women that we have pulled together and cultivated.”
“We have been very thoughtful and intentional about cultivating a diverse group of individuals not just by industry but by background, race, religion, ability, orientation. We do that because we want to create a safe place for women leaders to come together and convene to have as many perspectives and as many thought leaders at the table as possible. We are all women, transgender women, nonbinary femmes, who come together and each in our own way are enacting what we call radical positive change. I think one of the most beautiful stewarding this group is seeing all of these women who come from such very different backgrounds, come together with a sense of purpose and the belief that we can be stronger and go further together,” says Lauren.
InnovateHER KC serves women in a very “industry agnostic” way through 6 Pillars of Action: social connection, professional development, amplification of work, championship, mentorship, and resource sharing. The group is now over 4200 members strong and continues to grow while keeping a 95% engagement rate month-over-month.
“It is incredible to watch. Someone will come in and ask for assistance and within moments you have 30 women who are either raising their hand, making referrals, offering help, or giving encouragement and support,” says Lauren.
Engagement Despite COVID
A lot of organizations have struggled throughout COVID; losing members, momentum, funding, etc. While the organization has also lost a few financial opportunities due to the shifting needs of the community during COVID, they remain strong.
“One of our core values - and the most important to me - is low barrier-to-entry. When we talk about barriers we talk about cost, time, and geography. We were already doing a lot of virtual stuff to make it as easy as possible for our members who might have children or multiple jobs or other obligations,” explains Lauren.
Despite not having to pivot much due to the pandemic, there’s something to be said about the strength of the community and its growth. Plenty of virtual based organizations fizzled over the past year because members were just too busy dealing with the pandemic to remain engaged. The InnovateHER community stayed strong.
“People often ask me what are you most proud of with InnovateHER KC. The thing that I am most proud of is the thing I have the least to do with. It is this amazing, badass community of women that we have pulled together and cultivated. Our engagement is on them. It is a self-fulfilling system. Women join, they activate, they invite other women, they contribute, they want to be a part of what is being built here. I’m so proud but I can’t really take much credit for it,” Lauren says.
So why are their members so engaged? Because the organization focuses on amplification of work (aka storytelling) across its very diverse membership to keep them informed and excited about what’s happening in the community.
“One of the most powerful things that we do organizationally and what I do personally is amplification of work in an inclusive, industry-agnostic way. We don’t focus on one community. So being able to broadcast what our members are doing, what our community partners are doing, making sure that we’re shining a light on their hard work, it ultimately not only benefits them, it benefits us. If our goal is to build a strong ecosystem and community, one of the best ways we can do that is by helping other organizations do their work better. For so many, that comes with visibility. Oftentimes people in the educational sector don’t know what creatives or entrepreneurs are doing - and vice versa. And so the way that we approach that breaking down of silos is through promotion. We have a pretty strong digital footprint and work to cultivate that for that reason.”
The Future of InnovateHER
InnovateHER has some big things planned to help continue to serve women leaders. One of the most exciting things they are rolling out is the ConnectHER Database to help connect members to each other and to opportunities. Within the InnovateHER community, admins constantly see requests for volunteers, new board members, connections to someone who does X…
“We wanted to find a way to connect these women in a consistent, meaningful way. Leaving it up to the Facebook algorithm and who happens to see a post is not consistent. So we created a database in partnership with Prime Digital Academy, where women can put in their information and select/raise their hand for things [like serving on a board, running for office, volunteering for a specific group, etc]. We’ll be able to provide those profiles to folks who are looking for those kinds of candidates. We’re calling it our opportunity database because we want to put these opportunities in front of women that would not have otherwise heard about them.”
They also just rolled out a virtual gallery for their creatives to showcase their work called InnovateHERS Create during a time when gallery and exhibit attendance is at an all time low, as well as a 9-week series called “Spring Clean Your Business.” This series is meant to help members address some of the most frequently asked questions and requests within the community.
Finally, as of May, the organization is moving towards paid memberships but with a focus still on a low barrier-to-entry price point with add-on services available like The Woman Card, a perks program that offers discounts on women-owned, women-led products and services, the InnovateHER KC Mentorship Program, and Mentor Mingles.
Biggest Challenges
Lauren notes that tactically, for her organization, the challenge is garnering resources to keep growing and getting better - especially during the pandemic. But philosophically, her challenges are the same as other ecosystem builders: the fundamental lack of understanding of ecosystem building, why it’s important and the breaking down of division across communities.
“We see so many silos amongst the different communities who aren’t talking to each other. It makes it more difficult for us to make powerful, positive decisions that affect the greatest number of people. [...] How do we help people understand that the most powerful way we can enact change is together?”
Why SCN?
What does Lauren like about SCN? Simply put: the shared understanding of the work we all have.
“When I went to the Portland SCN Summit with Startland, I had never been in a room full of people who had a shared understanding and vision of what we’re trying to accomplish. When you’re doing ecosystem building work, there are two things you are doing - first you have to explain the benefits of ecosystem development in the scope of communities and get buy-in. And then you actually have to do it.”
She adds, “Startup Champions Network is fun. It’s populated by smart, passionate, fun people that you just want to be around.”