Empowering Women Through Microfinance
At Lift Her Up Foundation, we believe that empowering women to start and grow small businesses can transform families and communities. This mission is achieved through four pillars: Matching Loans, Achievable Loan Amounts, Low Interest Rates, Financial Literacy Workshops.
We invite you to join us in this mission of supporting women-owned businesses across the developing world.
When you lift up a woman you lift up her whole community.
Local Partnerships
We partner with locally run nonprofits that provide skills and vocational training to disadvantaged women in their communities.
These organizations manage the loan program and business coaching on the ground.
Matching Loans
Our small loans are structured to be a partnership investment with the savings a women accumulates herself.
This inspires each women’s ownership and commitment to her business and her wise use of the loan for the greatest impact.
Low Interest Rates
Our compassionate 3% flat interest is intended to be affordable for the women. The interest earned is given to the local nonprofit to support their on-going work.
Average loan amounts of $100-$500 are feasible for women to repay with a portion of their profits.
Financial Literacy
In parallel with the micro loan, the women attend mandatory financial literacy workshops.
This ensures that women have the knowledge to run profitable businesses and manage their loans. These financial skills yield lifelong benefits.
This blend of feasible financial access, business training, and community partnership creates the conditions for women to create personal stability through entrepreneurship. Our high loan repayment and small business success rates highlight the model’s effectiveness. But the ultimate goal is women utilizing new resources to properly educate and care for their children and themselves, ending intergenerational cycles of poverty. When women rise, families and communities rise as well.
Make a Life-Changing Gift
Your generosity helps provide microloans, business training, and financial education to disadvantaged women across the developing world.
With as little as $200, you can fund a microloan to support a woman
in starting or expanding a small business in her community.
Larger donations allow us to serve more women annually through our trusted local partners.
100% of your donation goes directly to fund our programs on the ground. Our low overhead means your money is invested fully into empowering women out of poverty.
You can designate your gift to a specific country or region if you wish. We can also match you with an individual women to follow her journey to financial independence. Recurring monthly donations provide us with consistent funding to plan our impact and support our partner organizations.
Every dollar makes a difference!
Here are some examples of what your gift can provide:
Provides a start-up loan for a women to purchase her first materials for business.
Provides a microloan for a woman to launch a small business such as hair dressing
Provides a microloan for a woman to expand her second hand clothes shop
Funds microloans for multiple women to start or expand her business
Thank you for supporting our mission to uplift women worldwide through financial inclusion.
Your generosity fuels dignity, stability, and prosperity for women, their children, and communities!
Our History
Our nonprofit was founded by Sarah Lilly who struggled to find organizations offering affordable microloans to women in developing countries. Motivated by firsthand experiences abroad, our founder started this organization to provide low interest, no collateral loans to fill this critical gap. Our high loan repayment rates demonstrate our effective model.
Our Approach
We collaborate exclusively with personally vetted local nonprofit partners already serving their communities. They are providing vocational and skills training that is relevant to their economies and meet the women where they are at from an educational standpoint. If the local organizations are not already providing financial literacy courses then Lift Her Up Foundation assists in creating a curriculum that is appropriate for the women they serve.
Our average loans is between $100 and $500 USD with the intention of the loan being paid back within 6 months. This is a management time period for the women entrepreneurs.
Our top priority is each woman’s long-term self-sufficiency, enabling her to lift herself and her family out of generational poverty.
How the program works
We empower disadvantaged women to lift themselves out of poverty by providing access to affordable microloans, business training, and financial education.
Our microfinance program is built on collaboration with vetted local nonprofit partners who identify disadvantaged women in their communities that would benefit from financial independence. These women participate in financial literacy and business planning workshops administered by our partners to strengthen or develop new skills. The women are taught methods to save a portion of the total loan value they wish to apply for, typically 25% – 50%. Our organization then provides a microloan to be a partner in their endeavor to launch or expand a small business. Loans are structured to be paid back in 6 months to feel manageable to the women. During this time the women receive ongoing mentoring from the local partners. After repaying their loan, participants can reapply for larger or subsequent loans as their businesses grow. Throughout the process we ensure repayments are achievable, providing grace periods if needed, as the priority is each woman’s long-term success leading to self-sufficiency. Our partners are critical in fostering trusted relationships and cultural awareness.