Community Investing News

I was recently at Women and the Environment, an amazing conference in Santa Barbara hosted by Pacific Standard Magazine and the awesome folks at LoaCom. I was fortunate to attend, speak, and  hear about the great work being done, and the great work still to do, on environmental and social justice issues, much of which […]

One of the bugbears of investment crowdfunding is the fact that the laws do not allow special purpose vehicles—legal structures that allow investors to be pooled into a single entity, which streamlines investor communications and management. You also cannot crowdfund an investment fund. That said, there are exceptions to every rule. Real estate crowdfunding platforms […]

The California Bay Area has a well-developed impact investing ecosystem. But trace any one initiative, and chances are it will lead back to Kristin Hull. A Bay Area native and former educator, Hull drew on her insights from education, grad school and the family investment business to become an influential voice and leader in the […]

Impact investors often complain they can’t find enough viable social enterprises to invest in. And entrepreneurs bemoan a lack of available funding. A recently introduced online impact investing marketplace hopes to address that problem. ImpactUs, a Washington, D.C.-based platform, aims to provide a place where investors can find out about, research and connect with funds, […]

The mortgage crisis might seem like a distant memory, but in some ways, American families are more vulnerable than ever. More than 83,000 new families are impacted by foreclosure every month. Nationwide, one in every 200 homes goes into foreclosure. Jorge Newbery is out to change that. His company, American Homeowner Preservation (AHP), buys distressed mortgages […]

How will impact investing fare in the Trump administration? I’m not the first, and undoubtedly won’t be the last, to write about this. Erika Karp at Cornerstone Capital wrote a letter to her investors after the 2016 election and Stephanie Cohn Rupp and Ron Albahary penned a thoughtful and tactical piece last December on the […]

With a sale last week of two bonds to Swedish insurance company Folksam, the World Bank passed the $10 billion mark for its issues of green bonds [paywall]. The bank, which launched the first green bonds in 2008, is now the world’s third largest green bond issuer after European Investment Bank and German development bank […]

Impact investing is about using markets and money for social good. Impact investing is built on the belief that private capital can play a powerful role in solving the massive global challenges of our day, and that capital markets should work for good as well as profit. This vision is realized through investments made into […]

Women entrepreneurs are at a disadvantage when it comes to raising capital for their businesses. They’re turned down more often than men and, when they do raise money, they raise smaller sums. (It’s a good thing they know how to do more with less). That’s starting to change, as new funding options that bypass the […]

PARIS, France, February 21, 2017 (Maximpact.com News) – Nineteen global banks and investors, worth a total of US$6.6 trillion in assets, have agreed on a set of standards for financing sustainable development framed as the first-ever Principles for Positive Impact Finance. On the last Monday in January, the set of four unpublished Positive Impact Principles […]

There has been a lot of controversy lately surrounding Title III platforms that has been giving crowdfunding a bad name. To offer some clarity, it is helpful to understand the difference between crowdfunding, the JOBS Act, and Direct Public Offerings. The Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act, was initially signed into law on April 5, […]

Impact investing is expanding, and that is creating new opportunities for social enterprises, including Benefit Corporations, women-led firms and community-based ventures. Those are some of the implications of a recent study conducted by the Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment (US SIF) Foundation. “There are encouraging signs for social entrepreneurs,” says Meg Voorhes, director of research for […]

For ten years Pacific Community Ventures has worked with the Northwest Area Foundation (NWAF) and the Annie E. Casey Foundation (AECF) to annually evaluate the social performance of Invest Northwest, a place-based mission-related private equity fund. Invest Northwest was created in 2004 with the twin objectives of generating market-rate financial returns and social returns aligned […]

It wasn’t quite the fireworks that some had hoped for, but Regulation Crowdfunding closed the year with a respectable showing.  In 2016, 186 companies launched Reg CF campaigns, attracting $19 million in capital commitments, according to year-end data compiled by Crowdfund Capital Advisors (CCA). Investor interest and investment have increased steadily since the law went […]

Year-end predictions are always a dicey game, and that’s especially true as we close out a tumultuous year that turned conventional wisdom (and decorum) on its head. But there’s one thing we can say with a modicum of assurance: crowdfinance will continue to pick up steam in 2017, especially in a deregulatory environment. At Locavesting, […]

Community capital is about empowerment of communities. It is a set of strategies that allows ventures to raise capital from their ideal investors within their own community, allows anyone of virtually any economic class to invest in their community, and allows communities to build wealth though a cycle of investment, growth, profit, and reinvestment. Community […]

On October 26, 2017, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued new rules designed to make capital-raising for small businesses easier. The two exemptions the SEC has updated, the intrastate offering exemption and Rule 504, are the two most commonly used strategies for companies doing direct public offerings to raise capital from their own […]

Timothy Ogden, contributing editor to Alliance, today published his paper ‘The Case for Social Investment in Microcredit’ with the NYU Development Research Institute. It examines the recent research into microcredit impact, and based on this, goes on to argue for continued investment in microfinance. Ogden writes, ‘social investors flocked to the sector, not just because there […]

I was on a panel earlier this year at the ComCap conference in Portland, discussing how my colleagues and I manage to do what other financial advisors seem incapable, unwilling, or downright frightened to do. Audience members recounted tales of bringing this taboo investment subject up to their financial advisors, only to be rebuked, scolded, […]

Indiegogo threw its hat into the investment crowdfunding ring on Tuesday, ending months of suspense. The company, which pioneered the rewards-based crowdfunding market in 2008, immediately became the 800-pound gorilla in the fledgling market. To date, more than $1 billion has been raised from 9 million backers for rewards-based campaigns on the site. Now, in […]

The SEC yesterday issued final rules that increase the aggregate amount of money that may be offered and sold for Direct Public Offerings using the federal exemption from $1 million to $5 million. In conjunction with those rules, the SEC also introduced additional investor protections with rules designed to disqualify “bad actors. Highlights of the Amendments to Rule […]