Community Investing News

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 […]

When Guerrilla Development opened up crowdfunding for its latest project, a two-building mixed-use development called Jolene’s First Cousin, the team figured there would be strong demand. An earlier project, the Fair-Haired Dumbbell (they have a penchant for quirky names to go along with their iconoclastic buildings), raised $1.5 million from 121 investors in eight months, using Regulation A. […]

Impact Investing & ESG Demystifying Impact Investing for Newcomers – and the Rest of Us Three impact fund managers break it down during a live panel at Liquidnet’s New York office How to Invest With a Conscience (and Still Make Money) Jean Case, the chief executive of the Case Foundation, is a leader in impact […]

Investment crowdfunding is beginning to fulfill its promise of democratizing investment and access to capital. While women entrepreneurs are still outnumbered by men on most crowdfunding sites, their ranks are steadily growing. At Republic, a Regulation Crowdfunding portal that emphasizes women-owned ventures, 8 out of 13 businesses currently raising capital are women-owned. And on investibule, a platform […]

Since 2015, a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers has advocated for tax incentives for those who invest in low-income communities, recognizing that the benefits from the economic recovery have largely bypassed those communities. Their efforts were rewarded when their proposed opportunity zone program was included as Subchapter Z of the 2017 tax law overhaul that was […]

Microlender Grameen America is upping its game in impact investing. The U.S.-based microfinance organization marked its ten-year anniversary last month by announcing a new $11 million impact investing fund, the first in what it said will be a series of new funds. Called the Social Business Fund, it’s aimed at providing additional money to women entrepreneurs […]

Two years ago, Baltimore Community Foundation was working to build race equity into its selection process for investment managers when a question was raised. “We asked, ‘Why are we not considering local impact investing that could specifically address race equity and lack of access to capital for communities that have been shut out of wealth opportunities for […]

It’s time for a crowdfunding update. Regulation Crowdfunding closed out its second calendar year, and the folks at Crowdfund Capital Advisors (CCA) analyzed the data recently in a report for the S.E.C. While still in its infancy, the investment crowdfunding market is growing at a fast clip and represents a viable capital-raising alternative for small and mid-sized […]

ImpactUs launched last spring with a splash. Hatched out of the CDFI world and funded by heavyweights including the Ford and MacArthur foundations, the impact investment marketplace promised to bring new ease to connecting investors with vetted funds as well as direct investments in social enterprises. Its goal: $1 billion in transactions over five years. But less […]

Real estate has been one of the hottest areas of crowdfunding, although most of it is focused on wealthy “accredited” investors who put money into funds, known as REITs. (And let’s face it, accredited investors don’t lack investment options!) Just two platforms allow direct investing by unaccredited investors. One is Pittsburgh-based Small Change, which uses the […]

Tired of bootstrapping and ready to raise money to expand your business this year? Congratulations. That’s the first step toward achieving your dreams. Too many of us, especially women, constrain our business’ potential by scraping by on a tight budget or maxed out credit cards. But before you dive in, it pays to get really […]

An Interview with Joan Trant of TriLinc Global Q: Joan, do you see Impact Investing as a time-sensitive fad or a paradigm shift that is changing the way investment managers and investors allocate capital? A: The evidence is clear that impact investing – deploying capital to achieve market-rate returns alongside positive social, economic, and environmental progress – […]

CHICAGO, Oct. 30 /CSRwire/ – Bringing broad-based energy-efficiency, water conservation and renewable energy improvements to existing multifamily low-income housing is a daunting task. While state and utility incentives help in many cases, finding capital to pay the remaining costs has proven to be extremely difficult. Finding a solution to this challenge has been multi-year journey […]

TORONTO, October 19, 2017 /3BL Media/ – Companies are increasing their impact in community through program designs that reflect the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. Christine Foster, Tata Consultancy Services, will share her experience in strategizing through an SDG lens. She will be joined by colleagues from IBM, IMPACT2030, the Taproot Foundation, and Imagine Canada. This knowledge-sharing will occur November […]

“[T]his is a fundamentally pluralist vision, in which multiple forms of public, private, cooperative, and common ownership are structured at different scales and in different sectors to create the kind of future we want to see. The vision begins and ends with the challenge of community. If it does not meet the test of everyday […]

Great news! We’re excited to announce that Pacific Community Ventures has been awarded a 2017 CDFI Fund award, to support our programs delivering capital to small businesses across California that create good jobs for working people and build community wealth from the bottom up. In 2016, the small businesses in our lending program grew revenues by […]

At this week’s ComCap17 Conference in Monterey, CA, one of the sessions that I participated in dealt with the roles of financial, legal, and business professionals as it relates to community capital. Our panel was moderated by my old friend, Michael Shuman, and we were joined by other professionals providing technology (Amy Wan), platforms (Youngro […]

If you were vacationing in late August, you might have missed a notable milestone in the young annals of crowd investing: the IPO of Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, which raised $30 million in four weeks using Regulation A+. Not only is it one of the best known brands and social enterprises to date to […]

What do Alaska, Florida, Texas and Vermont have in common? They’re among the 34 states that have passed state-based crowdfunding laws. When it comes to crowdinvesting, most of the attention goes to the JOBS Act, the 2012 federal legislation that gave us Regulation Crowdfunding, Regulation A+ and other provisions that make it easier for small companies […]

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 […]