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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.
  • ...30 more annotations...
  • “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
  • “As an asset class, the default rates on solar leases and power purchase agreements are extremely low,”
  • If I want, I can reinvest the earned interest and repaid principal in other Mosaic projects with the click of a button.
  • 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.
  • 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
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • , the company aims to scale its offerings, including geographically, to get millions of Americans involved with funding clean-energy projects.
  • 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

'Crowdfunding' Rules Are Unlikely to Meet Deadline - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-write-crowdfunding-rules.html

GroundUp Crowdfunding SEC Regulation JOBS

shared by Janine Shea on 29 Dec 12 - No Cached
    • Janine Shea
      Janine Shea on 29 Dec 12
       
      Deposits huh...?
  • Under Title III, companies wishing to sell stock to the public will have to provide information to investors and the S.E.C., including financial disclosures that grow more extensive as the size of the offerings increases. They will be allowed to sell stock only through an intermediary: either a broker-dealer or a specialized crowdfunding Web site, or portal. The intermediaries will have to take steps to ensure that small investors are protected, even from themselves. The law limits how much a person can invest in crowdfunding in a year, depending on income and net worth.
  • protection measures could, if fully adopted, make crowdfunding prohibitively expensive.
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  • The industry is likewise taking aim at a requirement that issuers raising more than $500,000 provide investors with audited financial statements.
  • intermediaries
  • The crowdfunding provision, Title III of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act, creates an exception to the general rule that before a company can sell its stock to the public, it must register with the S.E.C., a process of disclosure requiring elaborate and expensive assistance from lawyers, accountants and investment bankers that most small companies cannot afford. Instead, businesses seeking less than $1 million will be able to raise capital online from small investors in a streamlined process.
  • And with the departure of the S.E.C. chairwoman, Mary L. Schapiro, and three of her top deputies — including two who manage the offices writing the regulations — some in the nascent equity crowdfunding industry worry that it could be 2014 before their line of business becomes legal.
  • deposits on a product.)
Janine Shea

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

www.sec.gov/...wdfundingintermediariesfaq.htm

GroundUp FINRA SEC Regulation Funding_Portals Crowdfunding Legal

shared by Janine Shea on 05 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • 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

Opinions differ on the future of sustainable investing | GreenBiz.com - 0 views

www.greenbiz.com/...r-future-sustainable-investing

GroundUp Validation Socially_Responsible_Investing 3BL Financing Marketing

shared by Janine Shea on 29 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • 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." 
Janine Shea

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

www.greenmoneyjournal.com/...al-fund-designed-to-help-banks

GroundUp Validation Socially_Responsible_Investing 3BL Financing Local Banks Debt

shared by Janine Shea on 29 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • 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

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

www.scribd.com/...g-a-High-Performance-Portfolio

GroundUp Validation Responsible_Property_Investing Socially_Responsible_Investing Sustainability Metrics

shared by Janine Shea on 29 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • 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

2013: What's In Store For Crowdfunding And Angel Investors - Forbes - 0 views

www.forbes.com/...owdfunding-and-angel-investors

GroundUp Crowdfunding Regulation SEC

shared by Janine Shea on 02 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • evolve into best practices and common leadership – this will accelerate the crowdfunding phenomena towards the $1 trillion market we predict it to be by 2020.  The investor democratization and customer communication involvement crowdfunding allows will trigger widespread corporate implementation by Q4, 2013.
  • mainly angels at this point – are in for the long haul
  • and not necessarily for a return on capital.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Symbid confirms that their investors want to live vicariously through the efforts and innovation of the issuers.  Their Angel investors frequently roll over their investments.  The investor communication tool allows for investors to easily be updated and even vote on board members and larger decisions with the founders.
  • “In Europe, there will be increasing fusion between crowdfunding and angel networks. The notion that they are two entirely distinct concepts is an artificial one, and we will begin seeing more and more investors using both online (crowdfunding platforms) and offline (angel networks) methods to make their investments.”
  • However, US Angel networks will embrace crowdfunding more when
  • prediction
  • crowdfunding for equity becomes legal in the US in 2014.
  • er dealers that will emerge in 2013 as crowdfunding for equity is delayed. 
  • The exception will be the new brok
  • Leading crowdfunding for equity players like Chance Barnett at CrowdFunder and Candace Klein at SoMoLend are getting licensed as brokers and will start engaging leading angel networks in the US.  SecondMarket’s partnership with Angelist is a recent direction how the landscape is changing.  Angelist had $12 million plus in transaction by angels into start ups in December 2012.
  • The new angel network ‘upstart’ FundingPost
  • While content is king, distribution is king kong
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