2025 Impact Report:

58,000+ Women Stepped Forward for Change

Connection + Clarity = A Powerful Path to Leadership

What can I possibly do that matters?

In 2025, when women felt overwhelmed, scared, and unsure where to start, She Should Run had an answer. We didn’t offer platitudes. We offered a path.

More than 58,000 women took their first step toward public leadership with us this year. They did it in one of the most destabilizing moments in recent history, when fear was high, clarity was low, and the cost of public service felt heavier than ever.

We met them in that uncertainty and helped them move from isolation to action, from doubt to leadership.

What We Did

Listening to Women First

Before we built anything, we asked.
January 2025: Community Survey
Thousands of women told us the truth. They were overwhelmed. Scared. Unsure where to start. But they cared deeply. They just needed clarity and connection.

77% of women said they would get involved in local government if they were given simple, engaging actions and clear, approachable steps.

March 2025: Focus Groups
The message was consistent: Inspiration and education aren’t enough. Give us guidance on what to actually do that will matter. Women wanted to take meaningful action where they lived. They just didn’t know what that actually looked like.

These insights became our blueprint.

She Will Fight

The Experiment That Worked
April 30, 2025: She Will Fight Launch
We tested a simple idea in a chaotic moment: Could small, local civic actions help women rebuild their confidence and sense of agency?

The answer was a resounding yes.

The Results

  • Nearly 18,500 women joined within weeks. This is the largest civic activation we’ve seen since 2017
  • Weekly, simple local actions helped women build real civic muscle
  • Women said they finally felt part of something instead of being alone in their concern

One woman captured it perfectly at our June Impact Hour gathering:
“I didn’t realize how much I needed a group of women like this.”

What We Discovered

The beta revealed three distinct participant groups, each essential to the ecosystem.

Drivers: women willing to take the first step now and open to running someday
Doers: women who support, organize, and make leadership possible
Amplifiers: women who amplify, share, and bring visibility

The a-ha moment: Supporting the women who are ready to lead activates everyone. All of these women are seeking connection. All of them feel underrepresented in their communities. If we empowered the leaders, we’d be empowering them all. This insight became the foundation for our big move forward.

The Local Leader Lab

Where Potential Becomes Power
September 4, 2025: Applications opened
October 1, 2025: Inaugural cohort launched
The Local Leader Lab is a brand-new, 12-week, part-time virtual program that gives women a real on-ramp into civic leadership. We designed it for the women who sit in the often-invisible developing stage of the leadership pipeline. They care. They show up. They want to make things better.

But they consistently need two things to become unstuck and take their first steps forward: A structure, and a community. The Lab provides both.

We teach women how to build their power. We set them up to start immediately, with micro-projects that help them learn “in the field” and make change that they can see right away.

And most powerful of all: We help them connect, compare, become inspired, and find motivation with women in their part of the country. Every idea got sharper, every project got more doable, every leader became more purposeful when they came together to share their vision.

Inside the first Local Leader Lab

  • 40+ women across the mid-Atlantic
  • Every participant is taking meaningful civic action right now
  • 100% would recommend the Lab
  • Women report major gains in confidence, clarity, and community

What fires her up:
addressing youth violence

“Now I’ve taken the first step. The first step of getting myself immersed in the problem or in the issue by speaking with those who are the front lines of the issue, working on the issue every day.”

What fires her up:
increasing awareness for D.C. statehood

“Being part of the Local Leader Lab has really helped me break big issues down into small, digestible pieces, and learn to take strength and build power from small wins. And I think that’s the kind of energy that we need to keep on moving towards that ultimate big goal.”

What fires her up:
increasing engagement with community boards

“I think a lot of the time, people want to do something, but they don’t have the tools to do it, and this has provided me with the tools to make meaningful action. I now truly believe that I can do something about an issue that I’ve been thinking about for a while.”

The Lab is proving that when you activate women who are willing to step up for their communities, change follows quickly.

What 2025 Showed Us

The Hard Truths of 2025

We can’t talk about this year’s wins without naming what we were up against.

Paralysis. Exhaustion. Fear.

Women told us directly: “I care, but I’m scared.”

Political violence, disinformation, and rising extremism shaped their decisions. The assassination of Minnesota Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband was a breaking point. Women across the country began asking whether public service was worth the risk.

We met that fear head-on. We didn’t minimize it. We honored it. And then we helped women find their way forward anyway.

A Bright Spot in 2025

Even in this destabilizing moment, women won key races across the country.

“It changes everything when you see a woman in the highest office,” says Erin Loos Cutraro, CEO at She Should Run. “Dreams just got a lot bigger for countless number of women and girls across this country.”

Tools That Moved Women From Thinking to Doing

The She Should Run Resource Center is the only national virtual resource hub designed specifically for women at the pre-candidacy stage. In 2025, we released new civic resources that helped women take immediate action. Examples:

These tools reached tens of thousands of women. They gave them real steps they could take today, not someday.

2025 By the Numbers

The fastest expansion of early-stage women’s leadership we’ve seen in years:

  • 58,000+ women took first steps toward leadership
  • 18,500 women joined She Will Fight
  • 40+ women entered the Local Leader Lab and immediately started leading
  • 12 new civic tools launched
  • 100% Lab activation rate—every participant is taking meaningful civic action
  • Tens of thousands reached through Resource Center content

What We Learned

Women don’t need to be convinced to care. They need a place to begin.

Leadership grows through action, not inspiration.

Sustained early-stage engagement is the most fragile part of the pipeline, and the most important.

Community strengthens resolve.

Nimbleness isn’t a tactic. It’s a requirement.

Small actions build power. Power builds possibility. Possibility builds leaders.

What You Made Possible

Your support fueled every single one of these breakthroughs.

Because of you, thousands of women found clarity in a chaotic year. Nearly 18,500 women tested civic action for the first time. Forty women entered the Lab and immediately started leading in their communities.

You allowed us to stay nimble, responsive, and human at a time when women needed exactly that.

The women who will lead the next decade are already here. They’re in the Lab. They’re in She Will Fight. They’re accessing our Resource Center and taking their first steps.

They’re stepping forward because you made room for them.

Looking Ahead

What’s at Stake in 2026

Next year isn’t just another election cycle. It’s a test of whether women stay engaged or just hope someone else does.

The early pipeline remains fragile. Women are still asking where they fit and whether their voices matter.

We know the truth: They matter now more than ever.

In 2026, We Will:

  • Scale the Local Leader Lab to reach hundreds of emerging leaders whose projects will serve hundreds of thousands in their communities.
  • Evolve the Resource Center into an even more powerful engine for women’s leadership, with content that meets women exactly where they are, accessibility that breaks down barriers, and tools that make finding the right next step effortless (we’re building something that will change how women access leadership resources, and we can’t wait to share it!)
  • Strengthen the bridge from action now to future candidacy—getting an essential part of the pipeline off the sidelines and into their communities, where leadership actually begins.

The door is open. The path is clear. And with your continued support, we’ll keep it that way.

The Stories Being Written Right Now

We’re entering a make-or-break election year. So much is on the line for our democracy, for our future, for the communities we call home.

The women in our community are writing the stories that will matter most. They’re the grounded, connected, values-driven leaders this moment demands. They’re focused on the local work that steadies communities when everything else feels unstable.

These are the stories they will one day tell about what they did when everything felt impossible.

We’re honored to be part of them.

And we’re grateful you’re part of ours.