One of the things I’ve been most interested in supporting is more local direct investment opportunities… especially ones that are open to non-Accredited investors.
Cooperative Capital has an approach
to make it work (however they were blocked by the state of Michigan…).
The challenges they’ve come up against and the ways regulators have thwarted their efforts highlights how our current regulatory regime around capital is designed around screening out bad actors (and is racist in that it continues to perpetuate (& exacerbate) racial wealth inequality). We need a new (state and federal) regulatory regime to unleash community capital.
Cooperative Capital describes themselves as “a cooperative private equity fund that empowers citizens to pool their money to make promising investments within their community.”
Kwaku Osei, in his founding role, has been at the frontlines of this movement. Here is a 90 second video overview of what they originally set out to do: https://youtu.be/oek6riTVdnY
Cooperative Capital is formally re-launching http://www.cooperativecap.com – they will be having a virtual “party” today at 630-730p EST if you’re able to join! https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIpd-usqDoiGdVQlJ9yLdnAATchjEsWKicQ
1 min intro from Kwaku:
For more on the broader movement, here’s the National Coalition for Community Capital (NC3): https://comcapcoalition.org/