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Janine Shea

How Mosaic brings cleantech investing to the masses | GreenBiz.com - 0 views

  • 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.
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  • “30 under 30” in energy by Forbes.
  • Their company started slowly, garnering interest-free investments from individuals to fund solar installations on five community projects. They range from homes on a Navajo reservation in Arizona to the Asian Resource Center in Oakland. All are smallish installations
  • I invested $100 in the Asian Resource Center installation in 2011, in equal parts to support the fledgling company as well as a social-service organization in my hometown
  • Those first projects were funded using a zero-interest investment model similar to Kiva, where investors get their principal back over time but no interest. This allowed Mosaic to avoid federal regulation and to go to market, learn the business, get feedback, and show traction for the idea. At the same time, it launched into the process of registering with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the federal agency that governs investment firms.
  • More recently, the company started raising money for projects in which it would pay interest. It can do this while waiting for SEC approval thanks to something called Regulation D, which exempts from regulatory oversight the offer and sale of up to $1 million of securities in a 12-month period.
  • A small group of investors was invited to put in as little as $25 and have been promised a return of 6.38 percent over five years.
  • The project is projected to save the youth center more than $160,000 through reduced electricity costs.
  • I invested $200 in this project as part of Mosaic’s private “beta” investment round
  • nlike investing in CDs, there are risks in Mosaic’s projects. The solar-installation customer could default on its monthly payments. The solar anels or installation could be faulty, tying the project up with repairs, negotiations, or worse.
  • If I want, I can reinvest the earned interest and repaid principal in other Mosaic projects with the click of a button.
  • “As an asset class, the default rates on solar leases and power purchase agreements are extremely low,”
  • There are a lot of unknowns: the number of people willing to invest sums, small or large, in energy projects offered by a start-up with a very short track record; the cost of attracting and servicing these investors; the number of available investment-quality energy projects; the actual performance of those projects during the life of the investments;
  • Together with a $2 million grant from the Department of Energy
  • , the company aims to scale its offerings, including geographically, to get millions of Americans involved with funding clean-energy projects.
  • It’s a bold idea: Raise money from the masses in order to bring solar to the masses, providing value to everyone along the way.
  • Having proved the concept, Parish and Rosen are now ready to kick things into high gear, throwing open the doors to all qualified investors.
  • “The economics of solar have begun to make sense in more places, and online investing and peer-to-peer finance are becoming widespread. Those are the two big forces that we’re a part of.”
  • I asked him why no one had done this before. “It’s a really difficult set of skills and competencies that you need to pull together on one team to make this business model work,” he explained. “You need the securities law expertise. You need the solar project finance expertise. You need the technology expertise to build the online investment platform, and you need the marketing expertise to get people to invest in the projects.”
  • For each project, Mosaic provides the underwriting and due diligence. “If we like it and it meets our investment committee’s criteria, we make a loan offer to the project developer or the project owner, and negotiate a loan to them.” Mosaic takes a servicing fee (the difference between the interest rate charged the developer and the rate pays investors) and an origination fee of between 3 and 5 percent of the loan, which the developer pays. Mosaic doesn’t do the installation itself — it contracts that out.
  • Clearly, not yet a pathway to riches. What’s needed is volume.
  • “Our goal is to be doing billions of dollars of investments a year in clean-energy projects,
  • “We have already had a lot of developers coming to us," he says. "We’re interested in offering high-quality, clean-energy projects for people to invest in.
  • We believe clean energy is good in and of itself and is a great asset class for investment. So we’re looking at all kinds of projects.”
  • It’s not just solar. Parish and Rosen are looking at a broader category of projects to finance — what they call clean-energy infrastructure. That includes other forms energy as well as energy-efficiency projects and electric-vehicle infrastructure.
  • All told, 51 investors ponied up $40,000 for the 106-panel installation; the whole project got funded in just six days. I’ve already received my first interest payment.
  • However it plays out, it’s a compelling and potentially disruptive business model. Allowing smaller investors to participate in clean-energy investments is an exciting possibility. And the relatively predictable returns of solar
  • can make these investments a safer bet than many traditional Wall Street investment vehicles.
  • And not for just small guys. Imagine if larger mission-driven investors, including pension funds and university endowments, started pouring money into Mosaic. The expanding investment pools could rapidly accelerate the growth of renewable energy and efficiency projects in the marketplace.
  • “I think a lot of people are just excited about the model,” says Parish, “and have been wanting to find a place that they can feel good about investing, that they can also generate pretty good yield from. And that’s what we’re trying to do.”
  • Parish makes a point: Some of this is an exercise in feel-good investing. But that’s nontrivial: How many of your investments do you feel good about? Even some of the so-called socially responsible funds hold stocks of fossil-fuel companies and other corporate nasties in their portfolios. If the nascent trend of disinvestment in fossil-fuel companies takes off among climate-minded investors, where will they next put their money? If Parish and Rosen have their way, there will be a new generation of cleaner investment alternatives to be found — perhaps, like me, right in your own community.
Janine Shea

Mutual Fund Designed to Help Banks Meet Their Community Reinvestment Act Investment Exa... - 0 views

  • 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.
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  • “The Fund allows banks the opportunity to invest in a vehicle that targets community development capital to their local markets,” said Barbara VanScoy, senior portfolio manager at Community Capital Management. “Many of these markets may be areas that banks have difficulty in reaching. We also work closely with bank examiners and our bank shareholders to ensure that the Fund’s investments are compliant with the regulations and respond to changing community development needs.”
Janine Shea

Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act: Frequently Asked Questions About Crowdfunding Inte... - 0 views

  • 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.
Janine Shea

The Most Overlooked b2b Funding: Customer Funded Development | Tech Wildcatters - 0 views

    • Janine Shea
       
      How effective has the Urban Investment Group been since active?  Good business flow? Meeting target returns, objectives?  How do they currently source their investments - are they satisfied with these solutions?
  • 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.
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  • Who is your decision maker? Who is your champion?
  • Is this a product they could sell or is it for operations?
    • Janine Shea
       
      Operations
  • In CFD, more so that any type of sale, you are not selling a product. Because nothing is built yet (or at least finished), you’re selling your ability to solve a problem for a group of individuals. Those individuals are probably looking at that problem a lot differently than you are, and through the lens of many conflicting or ambiguous goals. Rather than speculate and depend on your own understanding of the problem, you have to get into their heads. In short, you have to ask AND listen. They will tell you. But you will miss it if you’re not open to it. In the words of one of the world’s great innovators, Steve Jobs, you have to go in with a Beginner’s Mind.
  • The easiest way to get a customer to pay for development is to know that they’re facing some major change or challenge, and they have no other choice but to find a solution.
Janine Shea

Global Impact Investing Network - 0 views

  • 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.
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  • Private equity funds
    • Janine Shea
       
      HUGE! The exact market inefficiency I've been saying (poor matching of capital supply to investment opportunities) is the considerable roadblock preventing the proliferation of sustainable development
  • Prominent family offices are actively seeking investment partnerships that can help them source, vet, and execute impact investment deals in sectors ranging from sustainable agriculture to healthcare to urban infrastructure.Private foundations are seeking to partner with investment banks and development finance institutions to make impact investments in areas related to their social missions.
  • Despite this momentum, the weakness of market mechanisms (such as rating agencies, market clearinghouses, syndication facilities, investment consultants) creates debilitating inefficiency that hampers investment. The nascent industry remains beset by inefficiencies and distortions that currently limit its impact and threaten its future trajectory: Investors are largely unable to work together effectively given a general confusion of terminology. This limits investors' ability to share knowledge and co-invest, which perpetuates inefficiency and fragmentation in the field. The absence of basic market infrastructure, like standards for measuring and benchmarking performance, constrains impact and capital flows.
  • Clients of leading private banks and pension funds are calling on their investment managers to offer impact investment options.
  • The combination of these factors - barriers to information flows and collaboration, a lack of infrastructure, and an underdeveloped ecosystem of intermediaries and services providers - threatens the evolution of the impact investing industry and, ultimately, its ability to realize its potential for social and environmental impact
Janine Shea

Sustainable & Responsible Mutual Fund Charts - 1 views

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    Financial Performance ESG Screening Criteria used by fund - awesome
ccfath

BlueKite Raises $1.5 Million To Help U.S. Immigrants Pay Bills Abroad - 0 views

  • 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.
Janine Shea

How Marketing Has Failed Socially Responsible Investing | GreenBiz.com - 0 views

  • 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.
Janine Shea

How Crowdfunding Aids Hurricane Sandy Relief | Solar Mosaic | Invest in Solar Projects ... - 0 views

  • 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. 
Janine Shea

A Chicago Park Learns from New York's High Line - Next City - 0 views

  • corporations like Boeing and Exelon have added $12 million in donations.
    • Janine Shea
       
      CORPORATE 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.
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  • Funded by a $467,000 grant from New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the Trust for Public Land
  • Parks are suddenly big business.
  • d Friends of the High Line,
  • reliance on non-municipal funding
  • property values along the park doubled within two years.
  • Since the city rezoned the area in 2005 to encourage development, nearly 30 new building projects have accounted for more than $2 billion in private investment, adding some 12,000 jobs, 2,500 residential units, 1,000 hotel rooms and nearly half a million square feet of new office and gallery space
  • Aping the High Line, then, is not merely about sustainable reuse or new park construction. It’s about sparking investment and increasing a city’s ability to attract new residents.
  • “Cities have really become aware that they are competing with each other for the businesses and well-educated mobile citizens that make cities work,”
  • choose green, walkable cities with great neighborhoods, great parks, good cultural institutions. I think the reason cities are investing in these opportunities is that they are really trying to position themselves to attract these people.”
Janine Shea

To Fight Climate Change, College Students Take Aim at the Endowment Portfolio - NYTimes... - 0 views

  • 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.
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  • At Harvard, which holds the largest endowment in the country at $31 billion, the student body recently voted to ask the school to do so. With roughly half the undergraduates voting, 72 percent of them supported the demand.
  • Mr. McKibben’s goal is to make owning the stocks of these companies disreputable, in the way that owning tobacco stocks has become disreputable in many quarters.
Janine Shea

Thanks for Not Sharing - NYTimes.com - 0 views

    • Janine Shea
       
      Social pressure compels greater use!
    • Janine Shea
       
      Or avoidance...let's test what's more common
  • 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.”
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  • oversharing and status anxiety, the two great scourges of the modern world.
  • being anxious that our status might be falling or — the horror, the horror! — disintegrating
  • Number of Twitter followers shrinking or not growing as fast as your friends’? Status anxiety attack begins. No e-mails or texts received in the past 78 minutes? Status anxiety attack accelerates. Got unfriended or discover by chance on LinkedIn that your 29-year-old college roommate is now running an agribusiness fund out of St. Louis that has assets of $47 billion and owns half of Madagascar? Status meltdown kicks in. The only antidote, the only means to push that status up again, it seems, is to keep sharing more and more.
Janine Shea

How the Experts Would Fix Cities (part 2) - 0 views

  • 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.
    • Janine Shea
       
      Facilitate public-private partnerships at the LOCAL LEVEL
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  • At a time when some technologists talk about telecommuting, what makes you so sure that cities will continue to grow at the kind of pace that we’re talking about? Hoornweg: Well, people want to be with other people. Entrepreneurs want to be with other entrepreneurs. The idea that they could live anywhere is very much available to them. But they’re not choosing to.Ascher: It’s not just on a neighborhood level. It’s also on a business level. You want to interact with your business counterparts face to face. The physicality of a city is still so important.
Janine Shea

How the Experts Would Fix Cities (part 1) - Businessweek - 0 views

  • 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.
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  • 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.
    • Janine Shea
       
      Work with cities and investors to facilitate public-private partnerships at the LOCAL LEVEL
  • At a time when some technologists talk about telecommuting, what makes you so sure that cities will continue to grow at the kind of pace that we’re talking about? Hoornweg: Well, people want to be with other people. Entrepreneurs want to be with other entrepreneurs. The idea that they could live anywhere is very much available to them. But they’re not choosing to.Ascher: It’s not just on a neighborhood level. It’s also on a business level. You want to interact with your business counterparts face to face. The physicality of a city is still so important.
  • Generally, cities are very good at talking to each other. Mayors talk to mayors. City officials talk to city officials. The lessons that are starting to really take root are that there’s safety in numbers.
  • We’ve also gravitated toward the idea that economic development is really the result of creating a city where people want to live. It’s the attraction of human capital. If you can attract highly educated people from other parts of the country and keep your own best and brightest, chances are the job creators are going to be successful. And people no longer chase jobs. Jobs chase people.
    • Janine Shea
       
      Corroborates Richard Florida's research - Rise of the Creative Class
  • What kind of people are going to live in these cities that will be growing so quickly the next couple decades? Will retirees want to be in them? Families? Or will they have to flee because they won’t be able to afford them? Hoornweg: All of the above. With good city management, a city is attractive to everybody. There are really interesting studies coming out of the Santa Fe institution that basically say that if there were no externalities for traffic or whatever, the human population would like to live in one city, because we really like being with each other.
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    Corroborates 'Rise of the Creative Class'!   Public-private partnerships at the LOCAL level
Janine Shea

Metrics for Responsible Property Investing: Developing and Maintaining a High Performan... - 0 views

  • 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
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  •   6 Institutional real estate is in the midst o a major downturn
  • growing awareness among investorsthat environmental and social analysis canenhance their ability to assess building andportolio perormance over the long term.
  • Energyuseingreenbuildingis29to50 percent less than non-green counterparts. •Greenbuildingsuseanestimated40 percent less water. •Carbondioxideemissionsingreen buildings are reduced by 33 to 39percent. •Solidwasteattributabletogreenbuildings is reduced by 70 percent
  • In practice, these issues havebeen treated as vital by many investors – RPIoers a means to bring them together into acoherent ramework
  • SmartGrowth
  • SocialEquityandCommunity Development
  • UrbanRevitalization
  • size o the US commercial real estate marketat $5 trillion, with approximately $2.5 trillionin assets owned by institutional investors.
  • EnergyConservation
  • EnvironmentalProtection
  • WorkerWell-Being
  • HealthandSafety
  • LocalCitizenship
  • CorporateCitizenship
  • Figure 2: “Market standard” fund performance characteristics
  • The increased global and 2.2  Impacts o Sustainability on Institutional Real Estate Table 1: Sustainability Impacts on Real Estate social awareness about sustainability ingeneral has sharply impacted institutional realestate in several interrelated ways,
  • Global Reporting Initiativeand Principles or Responsible Investing
  • Ideally, a unied approach could also be takento visualizing, analyzing, and managing thedata obtained or individual metrics, buildingupon the action items mentioned aboveto create a dashboard or monitoring andimproving portolio perormance in the contexto RPI and investor and stakeholder interests.
  • The eld o RPI lacks a powerul, standardizedset o portolio-level metrics which isrecognized and used by investors andmanagers across the real estate industry,thereby dening and giving credibility to thepractice o RPI
  • CBRE Standardso Sustainability
  • we have developed a seto 26 quantitative metrics that can helpinvestors to nd, create and articulate valuethrough improving the economic, social, andenvironmental prole o their investments.
  • Thesemetrics were selected or their ability to allowreal estate proessionals to better addressrisks and identiy opportunities or long-termvalue creation.
  • Table 2: Proposed RPI Metrics
  • Measuring the walkscore or a property isa simple as putting in the address into thewalkscore calculator (www.walkscore.com)
  • the premiums suggesthigher rents, occupancy and general marketdemand or walkable properties.
  • By trackingthe ability o properties to create jobs andprovide services or underserved areas,investors can lower risks associated withregulation and community opposition as wellas setting an example o social sustainability
  • Buildings – even green buildings – oten lacka close connection to their surrounding areaand community. Developing CommunityEngagement plans on a site-by-site basisallows projects to be sensitive to the needso the citizens and areas in which they areconstructed
  • ensures that negative impacts and publicopposition to projects will be minimized.
  • These plans should also include provisionsor the public use o private space, which haswell-documented success in San Franciscoand other cities. Across a portolio, investingin projects that positively contribute to thecommunity in which they are anchoredcreates a positive image, minimizes, risk, andimproves social sustainability
  • Table 3: Portfolio Characterization
  • Several categories contain RPI metricswhich investment managers could directlytie to value either through their indication o decreased operating expenses or indirectlyaid in obtaining higher rents, lower vacancy orselling the property at a higher price. Othercategories do not link directly to asset value,rather allow the investor to property determinethe correct ESG measures which must bein place in order to achieve maximum RPIbenets
  • Prudent portolio managers will look toenter into portolio wide contracts orcommissioning, eciency, renewables, andother measures to improve perormance,and use RPI metrics to track the value o improvements portolio wide
  • Environmental metrics are perceived as havingmore direct links to value, however socialmetrics are seen as helpul in characterizingprogress on advancing the social agenda o the und, while maintaining nancial returns
  • Environmental metrics are more malleablethan social metrics—in other words, mostenvironmental metrics can be improved overtime across the portolio, whereas socialmetrics are oten determined at the point o acquisition, and remain static (walkability, CBDproperties, etc.)
  • To ensure ease o collection and interpretationo the additional data, systems should be putinto place to ensure the metrics are trackedat each property and easily aggregated to theportolio level.
  • Portolio managers, property managers,and stakeholders will be able to engage ina dialogue regarding value created acrossthe triple bottom line through responsibleinvestment practices
  • The scope o RPI is broad. It includes, orexample, “deep green” projects that ocuson poor communities or environmentallyragile areas, energy ecient buildings thatoer clear nancial advantages throughreduced operating costs, aordable housingprojects that draw upon local tax credits,and now carbon reduction projects thathedge risk and result in renewable energycerticates.
  • There are many useul sotware tools on themarket- rom EnergyStar Portolio Manager(mentioned previously) to proprietary systemssuch as Tririga (www.tririga.com). Tririgacombines portolio management tools withportal views or property managers, andacilities management unctionality. Thishelps to integrate goals and establishcommon metrics rom asset to asset
  • In a changing and volatileinvestment environment, there is a uniqueand urgent need to better understandthe benets o making a commitment toresponsible property investing. The potentialor improvements at the portolio level isgreat, with benets accruing to investors,the industry, and society as a whole, and thepotential or these considerations to improvethe industry as a whole is even greater.
  • •Long-termvaluecreationthrough increases in assessed value o property •Greatlyreducedoperatingcostsbydriving environmental metrics •Minimizationofriskinseveralkeyareas during acquisition •Improvedpublicimageandinvestor condence •Improvedrelationshipbetweeninvestors and asset managers •Increasedvisibilityandtransparency•Demonstrationofvaluesinpractice
  •   26  The benets o committing to RPI arepotentially signicant, but a lack o uniormmetrics which can be adopted industry-wide has hindered the potential impact o RPI on the real estate sector.
Janine Shea

US SIF: Research & Tools for Individuals, Professionals, and Institutional Investors - 0 views

  • 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.
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  • Ample evidence of the competitiveness of SRI is also found in the increasing investment in SRI by state pension funds, university endowments, and foundations. These fiduciaries are obligated by law to seek competitive returns for the portfolios they manage.
Janine Shea

About The Reinvestment Fund - 1 views

  • 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.
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  • we have pioneered innovative analytical tools and formed strategic partnerships that bring together investors, developers and entrepreneurs, enabling us to deliver capital precisely where it will do the most good.
Janine Shea

Charitable remainder trusts | The University of Chicago Campaign: Inquiry and Impact - 0 views

  • 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.
    • Janine Shea
       
      When is the beneficiary's income taxed at ordinary and capital gains rates VS. tax-free??!
  • the endowment may outperform other investment strategies over the long term
    • Janine Shea
       
      WHY OUTPERFORM??
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