GIRLS’BIZ celebrated 20 years of molding the next generation of Madison’s entrepreneurs and philanthropists with their graduation ceremony last night at the Concourse Hotel in downtown Madison.
“It’s really wonderful to see how the girls blossom through the program,” GIRLS’BIZ Program Director Sally Hestad tells Madison365. “They go from being very shy and not wanting to talk to people to being able to explain their products and to explain their programs. They learn so much about how business works and gain some real insights.”
GIRLS’BIZ is a Madison-area community program that empowers middle school girls to start and run their own business and spend the profits from that business on a group trip and a contribution to charity.
“We started the program in 1995 and I was part of the task force of Wisconsin Women Entrepreneurs who developed a program to empower girls in grades 6, 7, and 8,” Hestad remembers. “At that time, we thought that girls were disadvantaged in the classroom. We wanted to empower girls. It’s really been a very successful program.”
This year’s GIRLS’BIZ 2016 cohort of 13 girls chose the name of the T.R.E.E. Company which stands for Tenacious Reliable Exquisite Entrepreneurs. GIRLS’BIZ members were presented certificates for their year of work and then they presented checks from the money they earned made out to M.S. Society and Alzheimer’s Association.
“We also presented a check to the Fitchburg Tree Committee and we will be planting a tree because when your name is the T.R.E.E. Company, that’s a really good thing to do,” Helstad smiles. “We will be doing that on May 7th at their Arbor Earth Day Celebration at Swan Creek Park in Fitchburg.”
The leftover money will be used for the girls to play some laser tag and then each of the girls will get a little cash for themselves. And that will close the books on T.R.E.E. Company and GIRLS’BIZ will start anew with a new company in September with new girls.
Every year, the girls come into the group usually very inexperienced with business. After figuring out a company name, they work with a logo designer to come up with a company logo.
“Once we have the name and logo, we branch off the list of possible products and we take that list – which becomes a product survey – to the first meeting of Wisconsin Women Entrepreneurs in fall,” Hestad says. “We have the women in our sponsoring group tell us which items they would like to buy.”
Chocolate is very popular, Hestad says, along with coffee.
“We did really well this year. The girls learned how to set their prices,” Hestad says. “They learned about wholesale and retail and the concept of keystoning, a method of marking merchandise for resell to an amount that is double the wholesale price and seeing if that price will work for a retail price.”
During the school year, the girls met on Tuesdays from 6:30-8 p.m. at Keller-Williams. The girls also took field trips to women-owned businesses, learned to interview a business owner, brainstormed product ideas, took a product survey, made a business plan, took orders, produced and sold their product, and kept track of revenues and expenses. They determined their profit in the end and decided how much to give to the charity that they chose.
The girls also met women in business in the Madison community and increased their skills in planning, speaking and sales — all while having fun with their friends. “We had our own booth at the Women’s Expo for the whole weekend,” Hestad says. “We also did an event with the WWE at the Radisson Twist, a fundraiser for Second Harvest Food Bank.”
The GIRLS’BIZ program is sponsored by Wisconsin Women Entrepreneurs and for many years they were partners with the Girls Scouts of Blackhawk Council. In the past 3 years, they started their own 501c3 non-profit Foundation for Wisconsin Women Entrepreneurs so they could expand and have more GIRLS’BIZ groups.
“We want to give more girls the opportunity to participate,” Hestad says. “Girls usually find out about us through word of mouth. Any girl who’s in Madison who can make it to the meetings is welcome to come. There’s no particular school. We have girls from all over.
“It’s been very gratifying to see all of the knowledge and wisdom that they’ve gained about learning what money can do for others and then getting to share the money that they’ve earned with the charities they choose,” she adds. “The get a little bit for themselves at the end, too … which is nice.”
