Webinar: Local Investment Clubs: A Replicable Example from Slow Money Maine

Organize your own local investment club!
Part of BALLE's Accelerating Community Capital Series Find out what is working on the ground across North America to connect regional investors with regional businesses.
How to use this webinar series


Join with others from your area for the each Accelerating Community Capital webinar.

Hear firsthand about the best models working right now that you can replicate where you live.

Ask the presenters the questions you need to build local investing in your area.

Space is limited; register now!

Series participants will learn about innovative strategies to:

• Connect local businesses with local lenders, investors and donors,

• Earn a "living rate of return" while supporting the local economy, and

• Create jobs by strengthening family farms, local manufacturing,
and independent business.

Webinar pricing

Register now for this webinar and others in our series. Discounts available when you register for all of the remaining webinars!

• General public: $25 per webinar

• Series partners: including business members of BALLE networks; investors with RSF, Investors' Circle and Portfolio 21; members of Slow Money or AEO: $15 per webinar

• Staff and board of BALLE networks: Free!

Thanks to our ACC Series Partners


RSF Social Finance

Slow Money

Association for Enterprise Opportunity (AEO)

Portfolio 21 Investments
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This month's webinar:
Local Investment Clubs: A Replicable Example from Slow Money Maine

Webinar Speakers:
Eleanor Kinney and Christopher Hallweaver, founders of the No Small Potatoes Investment Club, an initiative of Slow Money Maine

Date and Time:Slow Money Maine
Tuesday, September 6 at 10am PT
(11am MT / 12pm CT / 1pm ET)

About the topic:
The No Small Potatoes Investment Club is a group pooling funds and making micro-loans to farmers and food businesses in Maine since the fall of 2010. The club provides working capital in the form of low-interest loans, and meets three times a year to evaluate loan applications.

Initially, the club made individual self-directed loans, but since April of this year has been pooling funds and making loans as a group. Loans thus far have ranged from $2,000 to $15,000, with $5,000 as the investment commitment to join the club. Learn about some of the club's loan recipients:

* Heiwa Tofu in Camden
* Lalibela Farm in Dresden
* Thirty Acre Farm in Whitefield

Though this investment club is focused on micro-loans to food producers, the model is replicable in many other living economy sectors by BALLE networks, Slow Money chapters, and a wide range of formal or informal networks of community investors.

The model will also be featured at the 3rd Annual Slow Money National Gathering in San Francisco, October 12-14, 2011.
About the speakers

Eleanor Kinney Eleanor Kinney is a Founder and Vice-President of the No Small Potatoes Investment Club. She is on the Slow Money Maine steering committee and is an investor in several food businesses around the state. Eleanor serves on the board of Maine Farmland Trust and is a member of the Environmental Funders Network, a group of foundations and philanthropists making grants to Maine nonprofits.

Christopher Hallweaver Christopher Hallweaver is also a founder of the No Small Potatoes Investment Club and serves as its treasurer. By trade, Chris is a software entrepreneur who in the 1980s founded a software and system integration company. Chris has turned his attention to improving our local food systems with an ultimate goal of figuring out how Maine can feed Maine. He is opening his newest venture, Northern Girl, an organic vegetable processing center.
Accelerating Community Capital Webinar Series
For the first time, a growing number of investors are considering local options. With a new generation of local investment institutions and supportive public policies, literally trillions of dollars could move from Wall Street to Main Street, creating millions of new jobs and helping to build vibrant local economies.

What are the most promising new models to connect your local businesses with local lenders, investors, and donors? How can you earn “a living rate of return” while supporting your favorite businesses support local food, renewable energy, and independent retailers? What are the potential benefits for investing in your home, your own energy efficiency, and your family?

This webinar series will review pioneering efforts around the country with respect to local banking, credit unions, slow-money investing, cooperatives, self-directed IRAs, local investing clubs, and local stock exchanges.

Who should participate? Investors, bankers, businesspeople, community developers interested in creating new, community-based sources of debt or equity capital to support local living economies. We especially encourage groups—formal or informal—that include all these interest parties from one area to build a coordinated effort to accelerate community capital locally.