Funding

Video Makers, Restaurants Give to Social Enterprises When You Buy

Some ingenious and generous businesses have found creative ways to contribute to the work of social entrepreneurs and nonprofits when you choose to support their businesses. This one-for-you one-for-them approach to corporate social responsibility not only makes your purchases more fun, it makes them more community beneficial, too.

Halfsies Restaurants to Donate to Nonprofits, Social Enterprises to Fight Hunger

This concept should put a smile on your face. Halfsies, operating on the assumption that if we share, there will be enough to go around, has developed a fund-raising concept for nonprofits focused on hunger. Their scheme: Whenever you order half-sized meal (a “halfsie, otherwise known as a healthy portion), from one of their partner restaurants, that restaurant saves on food waste, and makes a donation to an organization fighting hunger.

They’ve got some great statistics in this video to back-up their concept:

• Most restaurant portion sizes are 2x to 4x larger than recommended by government health authorities.
• Nearly half of all the food produced in the US is thrown away, totaling close to 200 million pounds or $44 billion worth of food waste every single day.
• Food waste contributes to climate change by rotting in landfills where it produces methane, a greenhouse gas that’s 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
• 1 in 7 people or nearly 1 billion people go hungry every day.

Halfsies is starting a pilot project in Austin, Texas and hopes the concept will spread. If you’re a restaurant owner, why not check it out as a great addition to your socially responsible business?

Video Production Company Uses Buy One, Donate One Scheme

In another act of corporate generosity, a Belgium online video production company called Timbooktwo has pledged to make a free video for a charity for every paid video they produce. This is at the heart of their business model, not just a passing promotion.

Timbooktwo’s forte is report-style travel videos for the web, operating all over the world in any language, so making videos about some of the great social enterprises and charities working around the world is a natural fit for this company. Their theory is that when nonprofits and social entrepreneurs can show, in video, their projects, they’re able to raise more money to continue their work.

Entrepreneur Funding Options for Startup Enterprises

As our economy seems primed for recovery over the next two years, the best time for completing a heavy planning exercise for your “green business idea” is now. Timing is everything in business, and the present “lull” affords many aspiring entrepreneurs the opportunity to prepare in advance for the “impulse” wave that is sure to come shortly. Planning and preparation is key, but previous guidelines on how to find initial startup capital to get you past the critical early development stage have “morphed” into a moderately different profile.

Yes, the rules have changed dramatically over the past decade, and all for the betterment of “clean-tech” small businessmen. The “virtual” age has arrived, but one area that has become more challenging, however, is acquiring adequate financial funding, the primary reason that most startups fail early. The previous decade has literally “scrambled” the playing field. If you have substantial capital that you are willing to risk in your new pursuit, then you are well ahead of the game. If you are like most Americans that are under water on their home mortgages and struggling to find new sources of revenue, then the path to securing startup capital may prove more daunting than expected. Here is a list of potential funding sources, organized by increasing level of difficulty:

• “The 3-F’s” Friends, Family, and Fools: The people that already know and trust you offer the easiest path to obtaining early funding. This group includes any lines of credit or cash advance possibilities on existing family credit cards. Trying to sell friends on your concept is also a good training ground to prepare for the more difficult investor audiences.
• Vendors and Business Partners: These groups will naturally benefit from your success because you represent increased sales for them. Don’t be shy in asking for advances that will help you build inventory or for longer terms for paying bills. Everyone recognizes how slowly cash turns over these days. They, too, are waiting for new growth to fuel our economic recovery.
• Development Agencies or Incubators: Every state and major university has established one of these agencies or incubators in a region near you. Seek their support to gain access to their networks of financial and business support patrons. These groups can also assist in filing for grants, an “art form” that only the experienced hand can make work.
• Your Local Banker: Unless you have large deposits on account or an income level that will support new loan payments, your local banker will most likely shun any request on your part for a loan. Most banks have suffered heavy losses recently and credit rules are tight. If you do have home equity, they can help with an SBA loan application. They generally do not invest in the promise of an idea, but they do have broad networks of contacts that may be able to help you. Approach them with this intent in mind.
• Angel and Venture Capital Funds: This industry is still licking its wounds from years back, and most capital raised is used to shore up the poor performers in their existing portfolio. Each fund manager may see fifty or more potential “deals” in a month and may select only one a quarter for further study. They usually demand that you already have paying customers for your business solution. If you believe that you can compete at this level, then get prepared, but expect a four to six month timeline before any check is written.
• Online Funding Services: A number of online funding services and communities have sprung up to help entrepreneurs find funding outside their geographic area and existing networks. Some, like RaiseCapital.com, incorporate social networking features to help entrepreneurs connect with investors, others, like  Prosper involve peer to peer lending.  Others, like Small Business Loans Direct is provide merchant cash advances and small business loans.

When starting your new venture, be sure to leverage your local networks and seek small business loans directly from new “virtual” sources before approaching the more time-consuming and structured alternatives.

DOE Offers $102 Million Loan to Large Wind Project in Maine

Energy Secretary Chu Approves Loan Guarantee to Record Hill Wind Project

U.S. Energy Secretary Chu has announced the Department of Energy’s $102 million loan guarantee to Record Hill Wind, LLC has been approved. The loan, to be given in combination with an investment by the Yale University Endowment, will support the Record Hill wind project – a 50.6 megawatt wind power plant near the town of Roxbury, Maine. The new project will not only supply green energy to thousands of residents but will fund 200 construction jobs. “This innovative project creates jobs in Maine while boosting domestic wind generation in order to achieve the Administration’s goal of doubling clean energy produced in America by 2035,” said Secretary Chu. “Clean energy is a major driver of American competitiveness, and investments like these are essential to secure our position as global leader.” The Record Hill project will use 22 turbines and new transmission lines to connect with the local power utility. Innovative Turbine Load Control (TLC) technology will be used to install the turbines, which involves a system that will reduce wear on the turbines, preserve the lifetime of turbine components, as well as reduce operation and management costs.

John Doerr – “Green tech could be the largest economic opportunity of the 21st century”

Doerr Gives U.S. a ‘C’ for Alternative-Energy

By Ari Levy – Aug 4, 2011
Source Bloomburg

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-03/john-doerr-gives-u-s-a-c-for-alternative-energy-development.html

John Doerr, head of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers’s alternative-energy practice, said he would give the U.S. a C grade for development of green technology, which trails innovation in Internet and biotechnology.

His grade would have been a D or F without $20 billion in loan guarantees for clean-energy projects under President Barack Obama’s stimulus plan and collaborative work between the government and private sector, Doerr said yesterday at an event in Palo Alto, California. He and other members of the White House Council on Jobs and Competitiveness spoke on a panel about entrepreneurship.

“Thanks to this administration and the fundamental sciences, we’re in the game,” said Doerr, 60. “That stimulus was and is intended to be timely and temporary, and we have to develop in America the markets for this sustainable clean energy and the financial capability to cause it to grow.”

Kleiner Perkins, a venture firm based in Menlo Park, California, introduced the $500 million Green Growth Fund in 2008, two years after it started investing in alternative energy. Doerr’s clean-technology investments include Bloom Energy Corp., a fuel-cell company, and MiaSole Inc., a thin-film solar panel startup.

Obama’s 2009 stimulus bill provided tax breaks and other incentives to projects such as those focused on developing alternative sources of energy, modernizing the electricity grid and creating advanced batteries.

Still, the marketplace has been slow to emerge because of a lack of privately funded research and development, and the failure of the financial markets to support the industry, Doerr said in an interview after the event. The U.S. spends more money on potato chips than clean energy research and development, he said.
‘Huge Change’

There are some positive signs, Doerr said. Automakers last week agreed to double the fuel economy of the vehicles they sell in the U.S. to a fleetwide average of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. The proposal was negotiated with automakers including General Motors Co., Ford Motor Co. and Toyota Motor Corp.

“That is a huge change,” Doerr said.

Doerr was joined on stage yesterday by America Online Inc. co-founder Steve Case, Facebook Inc. Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, Netflix Inc. Chief Executive Officer Reed Hastings and the Obama administration’s technology chief, Aneesh Chopra. The event, at VMWare Inc.’s headquarters, was held to foster discussion among entrepreneurs about how the government and businesses can work together to encourage innovation and job creation.
Internet, Mobile, Social

For information technology innovation, including the Internet, mobile and social networking industries, the U.S. gets an A-plus, said Doerr, who was an early investor in Google Inc. (GOOG) and remains a board member at the Internet-search company. In biotechnology, the U.S. is falling behind other countries in drug and medical-testing development, though it still merits a B grade, he said.

Doerr, who joined Kleiner Perkins in 1980, also backed technology companies such as Intuit Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) He changed his focus and began investing in alternative energy in 2006.

“Green tech could be the largest economic opportunity of the 21st century,” Doerr said in February 2006.

To contact the reporter on this story: Ari Levy in San Francisco at alevy5@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Tom Giles at tgiles5@bloomberg.net

About Justin Ragusa

I am an Eco-Entrepreneur, author, and webmaster of PeoplePlanetProfitBlog.com I love living green and try to incorporate all I do in this industry. Let me know if you have any questions, I’ll show you how to make a rewarding and profitable career in the Energy Industry… just contact me.

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CalPERS Investments Up 20 Percent For Fiscal Year

The California Public Employees' Retirement System, known as CalPERS, has reported its best earnings in 14 years. CalPERS is the nation's largest public pension system and provides benefits to about 1.6 million state and local employees, retirees and their families.

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Twitter Sets Record During World Cup Final

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China’s Baidu Reaches A Deal, Cisco Confirms Layoffs

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Must All Colleges Show Their Graduates Found Work?

Now that the Education Department has released "Gainful Employment" rules for for-profit schools, some would like to see similar standards for non-profit colleges and universities. With student debt increasing, they say it would be useful for students to know what their job chances are.

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