DOVE® Chocolate Launches #DOVEInstaGrants Program To Help Female Small Business Owners Fuel Their Entrepreneurial Dreams

NEWARK, N.J., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Mars Wrigley's DOVE^® Chocolate is unveiling the #DOVEInstaGrants program, which helps to support budding and established female small business owners. The brand is calling on all women who mean business to pitch new ideas and established small business concepts for a chance to win one of three $10,000 grants to further fuel their entrepreneurial dreams. Female business entrepreneurs will be considered for DOVE Chocolate "InstaGrants" by sharing a :30 second business "pitch" video in-feed on Instagram with #DOVEInstaGrants #Contest @DoveChocolate in the caption, or by visiting InstaGrants.DoveChocolate.com beginning today through Friday, November 19, 2021. The site also includes details on how to enter and how to craft a winning pitch.

The program is inspired by DOVE Chocolate's long-term partnership with CARE, an international humanitarian agency. The partnership was built on the mutual desire to empower women in West African cocoa-growing communities to build their own small businesses and define their financial voice. 

Here in the U.S., women are often kept out of financial conversations, which can impact their financial confidence as they age.¹ Despite these commonalities in experiences with money, U.S. women lack financial community in which they can seek inspiration, advice and counsel from women like them.²

"As part of a company that actively supports women, as seen through Mars' Full Potential Platform, and as a long-term partner of CARE, #DOVEInstaGrants embodies our mission to help support and elevate women in business," said Leslie Philipsen, Brand Director, DOVE Chocolate. "The goal of #DOVEInstaGrants is to offer women a sense of community and support with a platform to express their smart business ideas – whether they're just getting started or are more established. Mars Chocolate has seen remarkable progress through our work with CARE in West Africa, and we're excited to help ignite creativity and conversation here in the U.S. by helping women build their financial confidence."

To help raise awareness for the #DOVEInstaGrants program, DOVE Chocolate has partnered with female money experts Tori Dunlap (@Herfirst100k) and Carmen Perez (@makerealcents), who help women build financial equity and confidence through their social channels. Tori and Carmen are encouraging their followers to enter for a chance to win a $10,000 grant by sharing their idea or more established business concept in a short video of 30 seconds or less. They will also join DOVE Brand Director Leslie Philipsen in judging the entries and selecting the finalists, with an eye to concepts that showcase innovation, sustainability and female-first ideas.

#DOVEInstaGrants is the latest program from Mars Wrigley to create better moments and more smiles for consumers across the U.S. For more information or to enter, visit InstaGrants.DoveChocolate.com or visit DOVE Chocolate on Instagram. For more information about DOVE Chocolate, visit www.DoveChocolate.com, or visit the brand on Facebook, Twitter and TikTok.

About DOVE^® Chocolate
Pleasure infuses life with passion, inspiration and purpose and DOVE^® Chocolate is on a mission to empower women to "choose pleasure" every day and live life fully with no regrets. DOVE^® Chocolate embraces the spirit of choosing pleasure by crafting chocolate that unlocks pleasure from the very first silky-smooth bite. Starting with only the best cacao beans, Mars Wrigley takes great care to maintain the highest standards of quality when crafting DOVE^® Chocolate. For more information about DOVE^® Chocolate, visit www.dovechocolate.com, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

About Mars, Incorporated
For more than a century, Mars, Incorporated has been driven by the belief that the world we want tomorrow starts with how we do business today. This idea is at the center of who we have always been as a global, family-owned business. Today, Mars is transforming, innovating and evolving in ways that affirm our commitment to making a positive impact on the world around us.

Across our diverse and expanding portfolio of confectionery, food, and petcare products and services, we employ 125,000 dedicated Associates who are all moving in the same direction: forward. With $40 billion in annual sales, we produce some of the world's best-loved brands including DOVE®, EXTRA®, M&M's®, MILKY WAY®, SNICKERS®, TWIX®, ORBIT®, PEDIGREE®, ROYAL CANIN®, SKITTLES®, BEN'S ORIGINAL™, WHISKAS®, COCOAVIA®, and 5™; and take care of half of the world's pets through our nutrition, health and services businesses, including AniCura, Banfield Pet Hospitals™, BluePearl®, Linnaeus, and VCA™.

We know we can only be truly successful if our partners and the communities in which we operate prosper as well. The Mars Five Principles – Quality, Responsibility, Mutuality, Efficiency and Freedom – inspire our Associates to take action every day to help create a world tomorrow in which the planet, its people and pets can thrive. The Mars Compass, inspired by the Economics of Mutuality, is used to measure the company's progress in service of its purpose; The world we want tomorrow starts with how we do business today.

For more information about Mars, please visit mars.com. Join us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and YouTube.

¹ 61% of Millennial women leave financial decisions up to the men in their life (UBS, 2020), 60% of women say they've never negotiated their salary and have quit their job instead (NBC News, 2020)
² 79% of U.S. women report feeling weighed down over money concerns, compared to 67% last fall (NBC News, 2021), 58% of U.S. women say they do not currently have another woman in their life to talk about finances with (Stash, 2021)

SOURCE Mars Wrigley