The Give2Invest tool, or G2I will, I believe create for a non profit with an existing donor base newly energized donors with a continuing series of reasons to engage with their organization more deeply. It can also do the same for a congregation or even a Sunday School class.
Non profits are its near term, easy applicability, early adopter group, I am imagining. Non profits instantly see what this mashup created by Eagle Market Streets, a strong and established Community Development Corporation, and Impact Assets a $3 billion plus donor advised fund platform can do for them. Some of them are coming to our Act Local class Wednesday, March 20, to hear about it.
The other initial pilot user is a community healer and counselor and peace maker who supports her work in the community by selling herbal mixtures related to her healing modalities. She represents the other group we are focusing on; people working in racial and economic justice and people who need capital to expand their herbal healing businesses. She is the archetypal user who has enough social capital to do a Gofundme campaign for the sheds and greenhouse she needs, two capital expenditures needed are $11,500, and other is $20,000.
Biomedicinals are a huge part of the Western North Carolina economy and Warren Wilson College has a new propagation method that could make the whole industry better for the planet if it becomes a standard. We are going to experiment with the tool there; Eagle has hired a domain expert to figure out the opportunity in that sector.
Perhaps most importantly, Eagle has also hired a woman to do market research with the two segments of the market, or early adopter groups we see: the non profits and the herbal healers. She will listen to what’s working and tell that non profit or herbal practitioner what someone else in her last meeting has figured out what to do with the Give2Invest Tool.
So, after all that, what is G2I? Well first it is bringing economic innovation to groups who are usually the last to get the good new stuff, and the Eagle IA mashup makes it low cost enough that experimentation should be relatively low risk, and available to the non profits who really need an economic boost.
Ok the facts: Impact Assets made it possible for people to set up their own mini philanthropic investment fund, for only $250, letting them give to invest in non profits with a project or capital expenditure that could pay back a zero interest patient capital loan, over time.
But Impact Assets, being so big, can’t process a philanthropic investment under $25,000. Eagle gets the money out the door to do its good work for only $5,000. Because the new platform lets them give to invest and the gift comes back once the zero interest loan is repaid, and the infrastructure that makes the non profit’s work better operating, we think this will be a great and new user experience for donors.
Unlike regular givers who hear that their money did good, in the reporting from the non profit, these donor will feel their money did good because it did its job and came back to be given again, most of it. We think they will feel more powerful. We think they will want more.
Doing more of this is better for the world.
Eagle’s innovation was to step up to IA and say, we can make the payment out the door be as low as $5,000, much more in line with what many local justice focused non profits could pay. And the gofundme alternative giver will also feel better and be more inclined to provide friends and family funding. G2I is like go fund me, but we think givers will like this experience more. It makes them a much more powerful giver. Stephanie Swepson Twitty, of Eagle and I think they will feel good and wants to do more of the kind of giving that feels like that.
That’s what I was imagining as I brought these two groups together to consider this mashup. The market researcher we have hired will be able to figure out whether my hunch is right or not, or how it needs to be changed to reliably give justice focused non profits and herb producers in our economic bioregion more engaged supporters who feel good about it and want to do more of it.
ActLocalAVL 
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