February 21, 2017

Dear IWEC Colleagues;

As we begin the roll out of our 2017 strategies and fall conference planning, I felt it was important for me to update you on the financial status of the IWEC Foundation.

IWEC had a very successful launch last year with Nancy Ploeger taking over as Executive Director March 1st.  We improved our communications, upgraded our website and held a terrific conference last fall.  In addition, our board of directors set our IWEC goals to support successful women-owned businesses globally based on 4 pillars:  market intelligence – education – connections – visibility.  We are basing our 2017 strategies on these goals which you will hear more about shortly.

Thanks to our generous contributions from some of past awardees and partners towards support of IWEC’s infrastructure, we raised $86,216 in 2016 IWEC Donations 2016 by country.  We thank all of you who have contributed and especially want to thank: our founder and Vice President, Adela Subirana for taking the lead in asking all of the past awardees from Spain to contribute to IWEC; IWEC’s Vice Chair, Carmen Castillo, SDI International, for her Platinum Partnership and Nadine Cino, TygaBox Technologies who has provided office space for our Executive Director and given IWEC an impressive mid-town address.  These contributions enabled us to get through 2016 on a very tight budget.

And of course, many thanks to CaixaBank for supporting our 2016 Conference in Brussels where we honored 42 women from 21 countries.

For 2017, we need to raise close to $130,000 in order to meet our budget IWECOperBud2017.  This is a minimal amount we need to support IWEC’s infrastructure with only one employee, our Executive Director.

I am asking you to please consider how you can support IWEC this year in maintaining our office, following through on our objectives and strategies and in hosting our 10th Anniversary Conference on the campus of Microsoft in Redmond Washington later this year.  It is imperative that we raise funds through personal donations and corporate contributions to keep IWEC a vital and growing organizations.

Please contact me personally to give me your thoughts and ideas about this important year ahead for IWEC.

Kind regards,

Ruth A Davis

Chairwoman