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Janine Shea

Q&A, Jay Lee, founder and CEO, Smallknot | JWT Intelligence - 0 views

www.jwtintelligence.com/...-jay-lee-founder-ceo-smallknot

shared by Janine Shea on 24 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • We think a lot of great real relationships are being built through the platform, something that we always hoped would happen, and now we’re actually seeing it happen.
    • Janine Shea
      Janine Shea on 24 Jan 13
       
      Social "community" benefits as a byproduct of the investing platform, rather than an explicit strategy in the business model 
  • You get to choose directly where your money goes.
  • I think other people are starting to have the same feeling that they want to have more autonomy about their community or about the businesses they support or just about most things.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • other local crowdfunding platforms, such as Lucky Ant
  • Our focus is really building a local ecosystem for finance
  • Structurally the platforms all look similar, the mechanics are often very similar, but our focus is really our mission
    • Janine Shea
      Janine Shea on 24 Jan 13
       
      Exactly! The transaction technology in and of itself is not distinct enough to serve as a sustainable competitive advantage. It must be in the mission
  • At its core the local movement is going to get a lot stronger
Janine Shea

Global Impact Investing Network - 0 views

www.thegiin.org/...index.html

GroundUp Validation Socially_Responsible_Investing Impact 3BL Financing Non-Profit

shared by Janine Shea on 29 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • 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.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Private equity funds
    • Janine Shea
      Janine Shea on 29 Nov 12
       
      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

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

www.greenbiz.com/...ngs-cleantech-investing-masses

GroundUp Validation Crowdfunding Crowdsourcing Clean_Energy SEC Socially_Responsible_Investing

shared by Janine Shea on 10 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • 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

Ed Norton's Crowdrise Brings Fundraising (And Fun) To The Masses | Co.Exist: World chan... - 0 views

www.fastcoexist.com/...draising-and-fun-to-the-masses

GroundUp Validation Crowdfunding Non-Profit Community-Level Competition

shared by Janine Shea on 10 Dec 12 - No Cached
    • Janine Shea
      Janine Shea on 10 Dec 12
       
      "GroundUp is a personal narrative platform where you anchor your local life." Envision a future where folks are as closely identified with their 'local community personas' as they are with their broader 'second lives' on Facebook and Twitter
  • There’s a new era of social networking that’s taking shape around charitable giving. Younger people are rapidly adopting these new tools, and learning to use them in more and more substantive ways, to go beyond mere socializing and make these tools extremely productive. We’re seeing the sphere of social networking mature in a way that’s very exciting. People who continue to dismiss these social platforms as "a waste of time" or "just social chatter" are missing the boat. This is how people interact with each other and get things done. They share their personal and professional lives online. It should be no different when it comes to their philanthropic lives. More and more, we’re seeing the Crowdrise community share their charitable efforts with their social networks, both as a way to highlight their own commitment to a cause and as a very efficient way to turn their friends and family into new supporters.
  • They say “time is money,” but time is also an irreplaceable and personal connection to a cause.
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  • that time binds you to the mission of an organization in a way money cannot.
  • I like to give my time because it feels good to connect personally with a cause. If you’re someone who is fortunate enough to be able to commit both time and money to a cause you care about, well that’s double the happiness.
  • I realized there needed to be a way for people, including myself, to give and fundraise money for causes in an easy and fun way.
  • I think generosity can take many forms … financial, effort, emotional … but at its core it’s rooted in the realization that you get a good feeling from seeing happiness bloom in someone else
  • healthy environment
  • All the young people I see using Crowdrise every day, putting their creativity and effort into making a positive impact on the world. 
  • United Airlines committed to match every dollar up to $100,000
  • ountless Crowdrise users have started their own campaigns to support relief efforts in affected communities.
  • hat tends to be through peer-to-peer fundraising, and Crowdrise enables people to get the word out quickly to their networks and raise as much money as possible in a short period of time.
  • It’s a platform to allow anyone to fundraise for a cause, and it does it with a laid-back and funny attitude that undermines the self-seriousness of a lot of philanthropy.
  • I think people like our voice because it’s authentic. We believe giving should be easy and fun. People like engaging with something that is real, not some generic text.
  • Crowdrise is based on an idea of "sponsored volunteerism."
  • cultivated a new generation of young activists who manage not to take themselves too seriously in the process.
  • Why does the Crowdrise brand of irreverence and humor work?
  • We’ve found the more off the wall the incentives, the higher the engagement
  • there’s truth to our saying
  • “If you don’t give, no one will like you.”
  • You have called Crowdrise a “personal narrative platform where you anchor your activist life." Do you envision a future where folks are as closely identified with their "giving back personas" as they are with their “second lives” on Facebook and Twitter?
Janine Shea

About The Reinvestment Fund - 1 views

www.trfund.com/index.html

GroundUp 3BL Socially_Responsible_Investing

shared by Janine Shea on 05 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • 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.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • 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.
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