Having just attended the Social Capital Markets Conference in San Francisco (SOCAP), I was surprised at the lack of conversation about retail investment. ‘Retail investment’ means open to anyone, the individual on the street. It’s sometimes referred to as ‘crowd-investing’, ‘peer-to-peer lending’ or in Australia has been referred to as ‘crowd-sourced equity funding’ (where ‘equity’ means debt or equity).

The majority of social purpose organisations needing funding require smaller or riskier deals than impact investment bodies are offering, and the retail investor has the potential to address this gap. Continue reading →