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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.

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.

How do I register with the SEC as a funding portal? Answer: The SEC must adopt rules governing funding portals before permitting anyone to register with the SEC as a funding portal. These rules will address the form and process needed to register with the SEC as a funding portal.

The JOBS Act requires these intermediaries to, among other things: provide disclosures that the SEC determines appropriate by rule, including regarding the risks of the transaction and investor education materials  ensure that each investor: (1) reviews investor education materials; (2) positively affirms that the investor understands that the investor is risking the loss of the entire investment, and that the investor could bear such a loss; and (3) answers questions that demonstrate that the investor understands the level of risk generally applicable to investments in startups, emerging businesses, and small issuers and the risk of illiquidity;  take steps to protect the privacy of information collected from investors;  take such measures to reduce the risk of fraud with respect to such transactions, as established by the SEC, by rule, including obtaining a background and securities enforcement regulatory history check on each officer, director, and person holding more than 20 percent of the outstanding equity of every issuer whose securities are offered by such person;  make available to investors and the SEC, at least 21 days before any sale, any disclosures provided by the issuer;  ensure that all offering proceeds are only provided to the issuer when the aggregate capital raised from all investors is equal to or greater than a target offering amount, and allow all investors to cancel their commitments to invest;   make efforts to ensure that no investor in a 12-month period has purchased crowdfunded securities that, in the aggregate, from all issuers, exceed the investment limits set forth in section Title III of the JOBS Act; and any other requirements that the SEC determines are appropriate.

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.

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.

BlueKite, a Miami-based platform for cross-border bill payments, is today announcing $1.5 million in new funding, led by PeopleFund, which contributed $1.3 million of the total raise.

The process for receiving approval is not simple, so Florida has served as a battleground for dealing with the regulatory and legal issues surrounding the set up of these cross-border payments. In Florida, the service has only be up-and-running for three weeks so far, but has already processed around 1,000 payments, averaging around $18.00 each, or around $20,000 in total transactions.

But for now, the company is targeting mom-and-pop shop cash stores, including Save Mart, Cash First (Naples) Agente, Atlantida, TipTopCashing, and others in Tampa and Miami.

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.

This could be a better practice since it creates a separation of powers. Instead of blindly donating, you can see someone in your community or across the world is in need and set up a page in their name to collect funds for them. This allows those who are too busy to volunteer to feel more active in the donation process. They are able to see the effect of their funds and can even reach out to the person in need after they have donated. 

corporations like Boeing and Exelon have added $12 million in donations.

The High Line has reportedly spurred more than $2 billion in area investment. Though it cost the city $112 million, the park is expected to bring in an estimated $900 million in additional tax revenues over two decades.

already New York City’s second-most popular attraction, pulling in nearly 4.5 million visitors in 2012, and ranks among the most influential public works projects of the past half-century, altering our thinking about public space and urban revival.

In recent weeks, college students on dozens of campuses have demanded that university endowment funds rid themselves of coal, oil and gas stocks. The students see it as a tactic that could force climate change, barely discussed in the presidential campaign, back onto the national political agenda.

“Our students are already demanding action, and we must not ignore them.”

But at colleges with large endowments, many administrators are viewing the demand skeptically, saying it would undermine their goal of maximum returns in support of education.

But there is a new urge to behave as if life were some global high-school reunion at which everyone has taken some horrific tell-all drug.

But that would be to debase the word “information.”

What role are public-private partnerships going to have in funding development in cities? Is that just happy talk or is there reality to it? Hsu-Chen: It’s very real talk. And we’re getting smarter and better at it. Right now a lot of the incentives the city offers are around getting the right density at transit nodes. Kate and I worked together on a project just a couple years ago—Kate in the private sector, I in the public—to deliver a new state-of-the-art skyscraper right across the street from Pennsylvania Station.

In Europe you have a strong central government that can come in and work with the private sector to deliver something locally. Here it’s up to the municipalities to figure out how to use those public-private partnerships at the local level to deliver the types of benefits that Edith was talking about.

What role are public-private partnerships going to have in funding development in cities? Is that just happy talk or is there reality to it? Hsu-Chen: It’s very real talk. And we’re getting smarter and better at it. Right now a lot of the incentives the city offers are around getting the right density at transit nodes. Kate and I worked together on a project just a couple years ago—Kate in the private sector, I in the public—to deliver a new state-of-the-art skyscraper right across the street from Pennsylvania Station.

The world has become increasingly urban—more than 50 percent of the globe’s population now live in cities. How can we make them more sustainable, efficient, and prosperous?

We don’t have a strong central government. We have a federal system.

To date, however, the industry has yet todevelop standards to evaluate ESG datathat compare to its traditional evaluation o portolio perormance.

  5 Responsible Property Investment [RPI] is anemerging investment strategy and disciplineconcerned with integrating environmental,social, and governance [ESG] data intoinvestment decision-making

Real estate investment plays a undamentalrole in determining how society usesresources, how the built environmentshapes social lie, how economic activitycan be sustainable over time. As an assetclass, real estate oers especially tangibledemonstrations o the importance o ESGanalysis in creating value or investors andsociety alike. We believe that a robustmetrics system can help shape the marketto better create sustainable outcomes or allstakeholders

The rapid growth of SRI in recent years is the best evidence that sustainable and responsible investing yields competitive returns.

Over the past 20 years, the total dollars invested in SRI has grown exponentially, as has the number of institutional, professional, and individual investors involved in the field.

The bottom line is that more and more investors adopt and use SRI strategies not only because such investments allow a focus beyond the bottom line, but also because returns are comparable to those of more conventional investments.

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.

If you use appreciated property to fund the trust, you avoid capital gains tax liability on the transaction, the beneficiary’s income may be taxed at ordinary and capital gains rates, and some income may be tax-free.

the endowment may outperform other investment strategies over the long term