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Invest as little as $25, or as much as you want, in clean-energy projects. Earn a princely 6.38 percent interest annually for the next five years. Make the world a better place.

Mosaic, based in Oakland, Calif., has figured out how to crowdsource solar projects in a way that seems to be a win-win for everyone. For each project, it seeks investors — smaller fries, like you and me — to fund a given project, promising a respectable rate of return. As loans get repaid, investors can roll the proceeds back into new projects, or take the money and run. Think of it as Kickstarter for clean energy.

He dropped out of Yale in 2002 to help build a youth movement for climate solutions.

Impact investments are investments made into companies, organizations, and funds with the intention to generate measurable social and environmental impact alongside a financial return.

A rapidly growing supply of capital is seeking placement in impact investments across geographies, sectors, and asset classes, with a wide range of return expectations.

This investment interest is sparking the emergence of a new industry that operates in the largely uncharted area between philanthropy and a singular focus on profit-maximization.

In this new initiative, Ceres and the Tellus Institute will partner on the Global Initiative for Sustainability Ratings (GISR) to seize an urgent opportunity to create a non-commercial, generally accepted sustainability ratings standard that meets the highest standards of technical excellence, independence and transparency.

The last decade has witnessed the rise of sustainability as a defining element of responsible business strategy and performance. In fact, companies like Nike, GE, Unilever, Novo Nordisk, Natura and dozens of others recognize sustainability as integral to their global competitiveness and long-term prosperity.

One need look no further than the BP oil spill, the collapse and taxpayer bailout of the US auto industry, and the Massey Energy mine explosion to understand why financial markets must develop better ways to assess sustainability performance.

TheFunded.com and the Founder Institute founder Adeo Ressi tells us that the Convertible Equity vehicle provides a fast, cheap and flexible way for angel investors to invest money in a startup, that converts to equity at the time of a future round. The point, he says, is to avoid time-consuming valuation negotiations and allowing a variable amount of capital to be raised.

Basically, Convertible Equity removes the repayment at maturity and interest provisions of Convertible Debt. Additionally, Convertible Equity is “equity” that may have a lower capital gains tax benefit for investors, since it is likely classified as “qualified small business stock”.

The two most common laments from impact investing devotees were the enormous difficulty of generating positive impact at the necessary scale, and the related fear that there simply weren’t enough investable projects to absorb the level of capital potentially interested in investing in them.

Look at index after index, and you see SRI funds that consistently outperform their non-responsible counterparts. It's easy to understand why, if you consider companies incorporating sustainable and socially responsible practices are generally also innovative and forward-thinking in other areas -- which tends to lead to better returns.

Cliff Feigenbaum, publisher of Green Money, believes that SRI is gaining wider market acceptance, but still remains niche. As he told me, it's migrated from values-based personal investors to become part of much larger institutional portfolios, but only a minute part of these portfolios. It would appear institutional investors include SRI funds to tick off a box for trustees and shareholders.

Far from being a faddish niche, SRI is now very much part of the investing world, with more than $3 trillion in assets under professional management in the U.S. alone, according to the 2010 Report on Socially Responsible Investing Trends in the United States from U.S. SIF, the Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investing. SRI hinges on use of ESG (environmental, social, governance) analysis, shareholder advocacy, and "community investment" strategies.

That $3 trillion in publicly traded securities in the U.S. represents a more than 13 percent increase in assets under management between 2007 and 2010. Over the same period, the broader universe of professionally managed assets grew by less than 1 percent. So, here is the $3-trillion question: Why has the SRI space enjoyed such robust growth, during a period of global economic slowdown?

First, socially conscious investors have benefited from an expansion of quantity and improvement in quality of investment products and services designed to make money and make a difference.

In an article titled "Relevance Achieved" in the fall 2012 issue of Green Money Journal, Amy Domini of Domini Social Investments commends sustainable investors for their successful campaign to pressure corporations into issuing sustainability reports. What was a rare occurrence 30 years ago is now practiced by more than 80 percent of companies, she writes.    As a result, regulators are now more willing to mandate that companies report on issues such as greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and asset managers are increasingly considering environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) factors in their investment analysis. And academics are reporting more and more examples of outperformance by leading sustainable firms.  "As society sees the full cost of traditional business behavior," Domini concluded, "SRI (socially responsible investing) will be embraced as the single most important lever towards building a better world than the planet has ever seen." 

Contrasting the growth capitalism still dominant today with sustainable capitalism, Joe Keefe of Pax World writes, "The sustainable investment community's role is vital because the fundamental struggle is between a long-term perspective that fully integrates ESG factors into economic and investment decisions and our current paradigm which is increasingly organized around short-term trading gains as the primary driver of capital investment and economic growth regardless of consequences/externalities." 

The CRA was created in 1977 and mandates that banks make credit and capital available to low- and moderate-income communities.

Launched in 1999, the Fund’s CRA Shares are designed specifically for banks looking to receive positive consideration on the investment test portion of their CRA exam. Once a bank makes an investment in the CRA Shares, the Advisor confirms its targeted assessment area(s) and begins seeking CRA-qualified investments in those counties. From a financial standpoint, each bank owns a pro-rata share of the Fund whereby the risks and returns are diversified among all the shareholders. The Fund invests primarily in government-related subsectors of the bond market that support community development such as agency-backed securities and taxable municipal bonds.

The CRA Qualified Investment Fund CRA Shares has provided solid performance throughout its history.

Every Mosaic project is carefully vetted and structured to minimize risk while maximizing benefits to investors and to the planet.

Mosaic aims to open up this historic opportunity to everyone by democratizing the way energy is produced and financed.

You shouldn't have to choose between making money and making a difference. We created Mosaic to give people a secure place to invest directly in things that are real and create lasting value.

how do you keep the IP? First of all, this only works when you’re developing IP that is not in one of the sponsoring company’s lines of business.

In the case of adding to their product mix, licensing and royalty deals can be made to keep the IP in your company. You may even offer to pay back the development costs as you grow your company. However, if you’re building something that the sponsor will use in operations, it’s unlikely they want to be out there selling it, so act under the assumption that they don’t want to own the IP. It’s all in the contract, so get a good lawyer. NEVER do this part yourself.

TRF is a national leader in the financing of neighborhood revitalization

socially responsible community investment group that today works across the mid-Atlantic region.

Our Mission TRF builds wealth and opportunity for low-wealth people and places through the promotion of socially and environmentally responsible development.

That big issue caused Mr. Caldbeck to leave his job to start CircleUp, a company that aims to connect up-and-coming consumer products companies with investors.

crowdfunding is a way for capital-starved entrepreneurs to receive financing that neither big investors nor lenders are willing or able to provide. To others, it represents a potential minefield that could help bad businesses get off the ground before they eventually fail, and in some cases could even ensnare unsophisticated investors in outright fraud.

SoMoLend, which lends money to small, Main Street-type businesses that typically wouldn’t interest private investors.