Anne Field | December 13, 2016
Social entrepreneurship and venture capital are often an uneasy fit. The emphasis on fast growth and outsize returns can push founder to stray from their mission. Now, a new venture fund is marrying social impact and Millennial values with early stage investing—and redefining the term sheet in the process. The fund, Aera VC, is a […]
Amy Cortese | October 13, 2016
Music venues, affordable housing, fire trucks and public parks. These are some of the first public works that will be funded on Neighborly, a new funding platform that combines crowdfunding and municipal finance. San Francisco-based Neighborly began its life as a civic crowdfunding platform, but two years ago shifted its focus to the multi-trillion dollar […]
Amy Cortese | September 23, 2016
When starting a new venture, entrepreneurs have long been told to reach out to their friends and family for their initial seed capital. And in the crowdfunding age, early support from a close social network can make or break a fundraising campaign. Yet the concept of friends & family funding can be baffling to entrepreneurs […]
Anne Field | July 11, 2016
Chicago has more than its fair share of urban woes. Cook County, a county of more than 5.2 million of which Chicago is the county seat, has a poverty rate of 17%. It is plagued by violence and crime. And the county suffered the biggest population decline last year of any county in the U.S. […]
Becky McCray | June 3, 2016
Starting a business in a small town or rural place isn’t easy. Financing can be a major roadblock. In some small towns, local banks may not support unproven business owners. In other towns, the formerly-local banks are now owned by out-of-town conglomerates with far-away loan approval committees. In still other rural places, there simply aren’t […]
Amy Cortese | March 31, 2016
Since its founding in 2005, Etsy has helped lead a revival in crafts and DIY culture, providing an alternative to soulless, mass manufactured goods. When the company, a B Corp., went public in 2015, it used some of the proceeds to endow a separate foundation, Etsy.org, to further its mission of “re-imagining commerce.” As the […]
Anne Field | March 3, 2016
Democrats and Republicans don’t seem to agree on much in this fractious campaign season. The exception may be Social Impact Bonds (SIBs), an innovative new financing model that is being welcomed with a warm bipartisan embrace. Also known as pay for success, SIBs are a new mechanism for financing initiatives aimed at addressing social ills, […]
Michael Sauvante | February 15, 2016
Take a look at this Presidential signing statement: “This new law will facilitate the financing of small businesses by providing needed reform of the Federal securities laws. Small businesses are essential to economic growth and to innovation. No effort is more difficult for small businesses or more crucial to their success than raising investment capital. This […]
Anne Field | February 8, 2016
In 2012, Alok Appadurai and Jade Beall, co-owners of a yoga and arts studio in Tucson, Arizona, began designing and selling t-shirts and donating a portion of each sale to local nonprofits that feed the hungry. Little did they know where that simple idea would take them. As they learned more about the fashion industry, […]
Amy Cortese | January 9, 2016
Michael H. Shuman is an economist, attorney, author, entrepreneur, and one of the world’s leading experts on community economics. (He is not, however, a famous rock drummer). His eighth book, (we think, we’ve lost count) The Local Economy Solution: How Innovative Self-Financing “Pollinator” Enterprises Can Grow Jobs and Prosperity, takes on the economic development profession […]
