Community Investing News

Many businesses raising money under Title III of the JOBS Act are setting “target amounts” as low as $10,000. I understand the motivation, but I’d urge issuers and the platforms to think twice. Background In Title III Crowdfunding (also known as “Regulation Crowdfunding” or “Regulation CF” or simply “Reg CF”), the business (known as the […]

It’s been a head-spinning year. But amid the chaos, a lot of good progress was made in the community capital field.  Here are some of the top stories of 2018: 1. Coops Rising The United Nations designated 2012 the International Year of Cooperatives, but we would argue 2018 was the year that cooperatives really began to […]

Impact Investing & ESG How Green Wall Street Can Weather 2019 The New Year promises serious challenges for the rapidly growing number of socially conscious investors. Sustainable Investment in Asia: Ready to Take Off Broader adoption of ESG investing is now accelerating in Asia. In particular, we’re seeing a greater push by leading institutions or […]

From his perch as founder of Fledge, a network of social impact accelerators, Luni Libes has claimed the role of industry provocateur, critiquing the prevailing Silicon Valley model of investment and agitating for more aligned funding models. In particular, he’s an advocate for revenue-based funding, whether via loans or redeemable equity, where startups buy back their […]

Impact Investing & ESG Demand for ESG Investing is Knocking at Your Door…or Should Be Panelists at the InvestmentNews Women Adviser Summit discuss the opportunity of engaging clients and prospects on environmental, social and governance issues. World’s Largest Pension Fund Cites Improved ESG Adoption by Corporates Within Asia, equity portfolio from India showed the most […]

Milk Money, a Vermont-only crowd investing portal, has been acquired, signaling a new phase for the platform—and perhaps the intrastate crowdfunding market as well. The two-year old intrastate crowdfunding platform’s new owner is the Vermont Innovation Commons, a regional innovation hub in Burlington combining a startup accelerator, co-working space and residential units under one roof. The […]

Most startups fund their earliest days with money from friends and family, as well as angel investors. But what if your friends and family are not wealthy—and, in fact, are more on the struggling side of the equation? That’s the stark reality for many entrepreneurs, especially those from diverse backgrounds. The average white household has […]

In this age of wealth inequality, runaway development and gentrification, it’s easy for communities to feel powerless in the face of rapid change. Lynn Smith founded Buy The Block, a real estate crowdfunding portal and the first portal that is African American-owned, to help change that dynamic. Smith (pictured above) has invested in real estate since […]

Impact Investing & ESG Why Foundations Should Step Up their Game in Impact Investing There’s a growing number of people in the world of social entrepreneurship focused on not just building impact-oriented companies, but on creating a more fundamental systemic change. Impact Investment: Private Equity Puts Its Money Where Its Mouth Hasn’t Been Impact investing […]

TriLinc celebrates 5 years of its impact investing strategy: Private Debt Plus®. The post TriLinc Celebrates 5 Years of Impact Investing appeared first on TriLinc.

Women are creating more businesses than their male counterparts, and African American and Latina women are driving that trend. However, women, especially non-white women, still lag in  revenue and job creation. Those are some of the top line findings from the 2018 State of Women-Owned Businesses Report, an annual report commissioned by American Express and prepared […]

Impact Investing & ESG To Invest for Impact, We Need to Start by Agreeing What ‘Impact’ Means  Michele Giddens, partner at Bridges Fund Management, explains how the Impact Management Project is the first sector-wide effort to produce a commonly-recognized convention for analyzing and talking about impact. State of the Small & Growing Business Sector- 2017 […]

Bonny Moellenbrock, LOCUS’ advisor, shares insights on how Community Development Loan Funds (CDLFs) can be used for impact investing. This spring, the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN) and investment firm Symbiotics released The Financial Performance of Impact Investing Through Private Debt, the latest in a series of reports benchmarking impact investing opportunities in different asset […]

Impact Investing & ESG The Rise of ESG & Sustainable Governance in Blockchain A changing of the guard is taking place right now, as the Baby Boomer generation moves into retirement and Millennials form a growing proportion of total capital investments. The Rise of B Corps Highlights the Emergence of a New Way of Doing […]

Investment crowdfunding may finally get the fixes that advocates have long called for. On Wednesday, a sweeping collection of bipartisan bills known collectively as the JOBS Act 3.0 passed the House of Representatives with broad support. The package now moves to the Senate. Sponsored by House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) and Ranking […]

Ms. Jessie Ball’s fortunes changed in 1920. It was during this year that Jessie, having returned to her childhood home in the Northern Neck of Virginia, reconnected with a long-time friend, Mr. Alfred I. duPont – of the distinguished duPont Family. Shortly thereafter, the two wed, and Jessie adopted the name that would become associated […]

Impact Investing & ESG 5 Things About Sustainable Investing in the First Half of 2018 Five key takeaways from sustainable investing in the first half of 2018. Legendary Investor’s Embrace of Sustainable Investing is New, but the Movement Isn’t Earlier this month, hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones made headlines across the financial press with […]

Long before the JOBS Act and state-specific laws legalized investment crowdfunding, there was the direct public offering, or DPO, a sort of do-it-yourself IPO. Kassandra Mayhew of Cutting Edge Capital recently talked to Real Pickles cofounder Addie Rose Holland (pictured at left) about how a DPO helped the Greenfield, MA company transition to a worker-owned cooperative and preserve its […]

Having trouble keeping up with the latest developments in the world of impact investing? Allow us to help. We dove into the weeds of four of the field’s most notable recent studies, extracting the most interesting findings for you. Some of the key themes involve the mainstreaming of impact investing, the vital role that women […]

Impact Investing & ESG Money Managers are Flocking to a $23 Trillion Investing Strategy that Morgan Stanley Says is Ready to Take Off Environmental, social, and governance investing — also known as ESG — has exploded in popularity, with roughly $23 trillion being invested with at least a partial ESG mandate. Investors are Right to […]

Impact Investing & ESG Can Impact Investing Avoid the Failures of Microfinance? The impact investment industry is growing rapidly. In 2010, J.P Morgan projected up to $1T in investment would be deployed this decade — which would make impact investing twice the size of official development aid to the world’s less develop countries. Getting Asia […]

Crowdfunding success is often measured by the number of campaigns meeting their funding targets and the dollars raised. But what about the investor side of the equation? It’s still very early, and there are no industry-wide performance metrics that measure investor returns. But there are inklings. Some investment crowdfunding portals have lately taken to reporting […]

Two years ago today, Regulation Crowdfunding went into effect with a promise to transform the investment landscape for entrepreneurs as well as investors. So how’s it working out? In the first two years, 910 businesses have used the Regulation Crowdfunding exemption (aka Title III of the JOBS Act) which allows them to raise up to […]

Impact Investing & ESG How Socially Responsible Investing Can Help You Avoid Catastrophic Drops within Your Portfolio Martin Kremenstein, head of retirement and ETF solutions at Nuveen, explains how ESG metrics serve as an indicator of quality and can be used as a risk management tool. ESG Reins in Volatility after Rough Start Critics of […]

Across the United States, LOCUS estimates that $9 trillion will transfer from one generation to the next by 2029. When you dig into the numbers, it’s clear that communities – rural and urban, wealthy and poor – have assets. The challenge for community philanthropy is how to turn that wealth into what a community really […]

It was concern for Hawaii’s environment, economy and farming system that inspired Brett Jacobson to launch Hawaiian Ola, a maker of healthy beverages, in 2012. Jacobson, a farmer who previously ran a biofuel company, wanted to start a business that could help Hawaii’s struggling farmers—the average farmer in makes about $15,000 a year, according to the […]

Impact investors are increasingly gravitating to place-based investing. The latest example: a new impact investing fund in Canada that will focus on loans to social and environmental enterprises in Southwestern Ontario. The VERGE Breakthrough Fund, as it is called, also underscores the willingness of impact investors to experiment with new approaches. The fund was created by VERGE […]

By Travis Green Solutions Consultant, LOCUS Impact Investing The staff of the Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation(AAACF) has taken to calling their foundation “a community impact engine” where the whole staff – finance, administration, development, program – works in service of impact. “It’s a virtuous cycle… create impact, build endowment, create more impact, build more […]

The Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN) released its Roadmap for the Future of Impact Investing: Reshaping Financial Markets. Commenced at the ten-year anniversary of the coining of the term impact investing, the Roadmap assesses industry progress to date, presents a vision for the financial markets, and outlines 18 specific actions needed to exponentially enhance the […]