Women involved with the Unreasonable Institute. And now we ask this question because it may have had some effect on the number of women entrepreneurs we can attract to the Unreasonable Institute. Here are a few stats on the matter:

• Of the 284 applications we received for the Unreasonable Institute, 97 (34%) were female
• 16 of 47 of our mentors are female (34%)
• 11 of our 33 finalists are women (33%)

A lot of people I’ve talked to (both women and men) suggest that these numbers are high, arguing there just aren’t as many female entrepreneurs and male entrepreneurs (a contention the data and my personal observation appear to support). But the question is then why aren’t their as many female entrepreneurs as male entrepreneurs? Are women simply less likely to start their own ventures? Are women facing discrimination in areas outside the entrepreneurial space, like in education, that are obstacles to their being entrepreneurs?

The Data on Women Entrepreneurs. Apparently not. Vivek Wadhwa wrote a great post in Tech Crunch entitled “Silicon Valley: You and Some of Your VC’s Have a Gender Problem” highlighting data from a recent Kauffman Foundation study (being release in the spring) on this very subject. He indicates that the study’s analysis of 549 startups concluded the following:

Women entrepreneurs were as highly educated as their male counterparts, had the same early interest in starting their own business, and learned the same valuable lessons from their work experience and from prior successes and failures. The only real difference was that women put a higher value on their business partners and on their personal and professional networks.

Is it that women are less competent than men? Quite to the contrary. An analysis performed by Cindy Padnos, managing director of Illuminate Ventures, showed that women are more capital-efficient than the norm and that venture-backed companies run by a woman had annual revenues that were 12 percent higher and used an average of one-third less committed capital. Women-led high-tech startups have lower failure rates than those led by men. And organizations that are the most inclusive of women in top management achieve 35% higher return on equity and 34% better total return to shareholders than do their peers.

Considering this information, it would seem that it’s not the quality of women or their drive as entrepreneurs that keeps them from participation in the field, but something else.

What can we do? Especially considering Vivek Wadhwa’s contention that “we’re holding back the most productive half of our population,” what else can we do to encourage the involvement and participation of women entrepreneurs as a space and at the Unreasonable Institute?

Each week, the amount a donor can give to any single entrepreneur on the marketplace is capped. The first week, this cap is $10, the second week it’s $50, the third week it’s $100, and so on (until the last two weeks, when there is no maximum contribution limit). This means entrepreneurs will have to galvanize the support of hundreds of people from around the world to raise the full amount and earn a seat at the Unreasonable Institute.

So this post includes our 5 tips for reaching hundreds of people and enlisting their support, based on our experience attracting applicants (almost 700 young entrepreneurs from 50 countries began applications before we ran our first Institute).

1) Maximize Your Strengths. Galvanizing the support of hundreds require you take full advantage of all the assets at your disposal. Let’s consider, as an example, a compelling concern one of our finalists raised on the phone with me this morning. She’d just run a fundraising campaign over the holidays and asked hundreds of donors for financial contributions. She understandably feels it’s inappropriate to ask them for funding yet again to raise $6,500. I totally agree. However, this donor base is not only a source of money, but also an incredible marketing base! Instead of emailing these donors to ask for contributions, this finalist should do the exact opposite. She might email them saying “Please do NOT make a contribution. Instead, tell five people you know about the opportunity to sponsor our venture on the Unreasonable Finalist Marketplace.” This strategy makes sense considering that an entrepreneur on Kickstarter (the online fundraising marketplace that inspired our marketplcae) receives the majority of her funding from contacts of her contacts. You might be surprised how many ways you can leverage your assets!

2) Find the Hubs. As a young startup, the Unreasonable Institute lacks a number of important assets including a credible brand and a proven track record. But in the 6 weeks our applications were open, nearly 700 young social entrepreneurs from countries like Mauritania, Benin, and Serbia, began applications to attend our ten-week summer institute. As much as we’d like to, we can’t take credit for getting the word out to so many applicants. Instead, all the recognition goes to our partners, organizations and individuals around the world that are trusted hubs for young social entrepreneurs (i.e. places social entrepreneurs already go to). These organizations, including Ashoka Changemakers, SocialEdge, and Change.org, helped us to market to their networks by tweeting, blogging, and emailing on our behalf. In total, our 28 partners spread information about our applications to well over 100,000 people. Targeting individuals with vast networks, organizations like the ones we mentioned above, local websites, meet-up groups, communities and blogs where the people you want to attract already go will lay the foundation for your viral call to arms!

3) Give Them the Tools to Market For You. To make it easy for our partners to spread the word about our applications, we did all the hard work for them. We sent them short blurbs they could email their networks word-for-word, 120-character tweets they could post on their accounts, materials (e.g. our logo, video, and diagrams) they could use to blog, and banners they could embed in their websites. By simplifying outreach for our partners, we also opened the door for their networks to spread the word. In fact, 42% of our applicants heard about us from organizations and people we’d never directly contacted (further evidence for Kickstarter’s observation that friends of friends provide the most support). The easier your message is to spread, the more it will.

4) Create a Sense of Urgency. According to John Kotter, author of the aptly titled A Sense of Urgency, any effort to create change is doomed without getting people to see and feel a need for change. Why should people sponsor you to attend the Unreasonable Institute? Because if you are one of the first 25 Finalists to raise $6,500 you receive rigorous entrepreneurial skill training, seed capital, mentorship from 50 seasoned entrepreneurs and investors, legal advice, prototype consulting, web development, a global support network, and the chance to pitch your venture to over 200 investors and philanthropists. No big deal. Oh, and you only have 50 days to edge out the competition!  Including specific goals and deadlines for action also incentivizes your supporters to move quickly (e.g. “Help us reach our goal of raising $500 by Friday by being one of 10 donors to give us $50!”).

5) Make the Ask. According to Dan Zarrella’s blog post 5 Steps to Going Viral on Twitter, the tweets that are most often re-tweeted (shared by other twitter users with their networks) include a request to be retweeted. Similarly, your contacts are more likely to help if you make a request of them that is (1) easily actionable and (2) “sticky.” (1) An actionable request includes specifics. For example, instead of asking people to spread the word about Unreasonable Institute applications, we asked them to get one person they know to apply. (2) In order for people to act, they have to remember your request. According to the book Made to Stick by Dan and Chip Heath, making your request memorable, or “sticky,” is best done through a Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional Story (SUCCESs). Check out our blog post on the subject for more details on how to nail these six principles.

So What? Catalyzing collective action is a vital skill for any successful entrepreneur, Unreasonable Institute Finalist or not. These five key strategies enabled us at the Unreasonable Institute to find our amazing 42 Finalists! We hope you find them useful as well! We’d love to hear other suggestions for rallying support in the comments section below!

One Actionable Request - Go back to the top of this blog post and retweet it. Not only do we advise you on what to do to mobilize hundreds of people, we also offer an example of what not to do. Never ever write a blog post this long. Do, however, communicate its core message in 140 characters or less by retweeting it!

Oh, and always say “Thank You”…thank you!