Looking for capital for your private or non-profit business? Look to SCcrowdfund.com

Our announcement last week that SCcrowdfund.com is now open for applications from entrepreneurs and businesses looking for capital to start or grow their business received good media coverage.  The portal enables small businesses and non-profits to put their business projects on either a donation crowdfunding or private placement investment platform and seek funding from South Carolinians.

Tyler Ryan had me on WACH-TV’s morning news, WCIV-TV in Charleston ran a story on their website and PJ Ranhawa did a very nice segment on WIS-TV Friday evening. 

This is your opportunity to put your business project in front of the public and ask for donations or investments.  Go to SCcrowdfund.com and spread the word that we can grow our own local economies.

WIS-TV
October 18, 2013

Crowdfunding becomes newest way to secure business capital

Oct 18, 2013

By PJ Randhawa
  

Watch the video.

The Internet, boredom, and a credit card can be a bad and costly combination for some, but what if there was a way you could walk away from your computer with more than just a blanket with sleeves?

How about an equity share of a legitimate business in your community?

The biggest barrier to starting a small business often comes down to having capital, either in the form of investors or just cold hard cash. That's why now, small business advocates are using technology to help connect investors with opportunity.

Wade Sellers had a dream, but he just needed $4,200 to get it out of his head and onto film.

"We must've done something right because we met our goal and about 10 percent and we were able to make the film," said Sellers.

Sellers did it with help of dozens of online donors who had a little faith in his project.

"They're people who are looking to have a serious stake in something new," said Sellers.

Frank Knapp from South Carolina's Small Business Chamber of Commerce boils it all down to risk vs. reward.

"Everything has risk, of course," said Knapp. "With risk, you get high returns."

That same crowdfunding model is now moving away from the arts and being geared to small businesses with the upcoming launch of the small business investment portal.

"Anyone will be go onto a portal that will have a list of businesses that are seeking investors and anyone can go on literally and say, 'I want to invest in that business," said Knapp.

Investors can purchase an equity share of any sized business from coffee shops to high tech ventures or they can choose to simply donate towards a business project.

"Investors like this who might know your reputation or your product might be more apt to invest for a percentage of the share," said Scott Linaberry from Curtis Hanger Partners.

For Linaberry, who's aiming to raise $4 million to renovate an historic hanger, finding funding from like-minded partners is not just a way to increase his own bottom line.

"When it's narrowed down by projects in your region, and you want to see Richland County or the Midlands grow, here's your opportunity to put your money where your mouth is," said Linaberry.

The small business investment portal will officially open for business before the end of the year. But they are accepting applications from entrepreneurs who are trying to grow or start a business through crowdfunding.

Small businesses interested in using the crowdfunding model through the SC Small Business Investment Portal can visit SCCrowdFund.com

WCIV-TV
October 16, 2013

New website is like Kickstarter for SC businesses

COLUMBIA, S.C. (WCIV) – A new website is helping small businesses in South Carolina raise capital through crowdfunding and investments.

The South Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday began taking applications for its two new web portals.

"There is a growing demand for small business loans that our financial institutions cannot meet for one reason or another," said Frank Knapp Jr., the president and CEO of the South Carolina SBCC. "Our new portal will provide the marketplace for these small businesses to seek donations and investments for their business projects."

The site, SCcrowdfund.com, is designed to help local businesses take off and build capital without waiting on an economic upswing. Instead, business owners can solicit people for donations or investments through the website.

Anyone will be able to make a donation to the businesses that join the site. However, only people with high incomes will be able to invest in companies. Those investments will be handled through a private portal.

Details on what qualifies as a high income can be found on the website.

SCcrowdfund.com will allow people to fund local businesses through three methods: donation crowdfunding, which is essentially gathering donations from the public for a project; private placement investments, in which accredited high income people can contribute for a share of equity in the business; and security crowdfunding, which when approved by the Security and Exchange Commission will allow people to invest in exchange for small shares.

To find out more about SCcrowdfund.com and apply, click here.

Read more

New online portal opens for SC small businesses to access capital

SCcrowdfund.com

South Carolina entrepreneurs and small business owners looking for capital to start or grow a business have a new opportunity.  The South Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce begins taking business applications today for its new donation crowdfunding and private placement investment portal found at SCcrowdfund.com.

“There is a growing demand for small business loans that our financial institutions cannot meet for one reason or another,” said Frank Knapp Jr., president & CEO of the South Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce (SCSBCC).  “Our new portal will provide the marketplace for these small businesses to seek donations and investments for their business projects.” 

The portal, SCcrowdfund.com, is based on the theme that South Carolinians should,  “Invest in a New Economy”.  This effort is a partnership with the American Sustainable Business Council, New York-based Mission Markets and Bendigo Securities, LLC.

“We don’t have to wait for the national economy to take off.  We can grow our own local economies by donating to and investing in our local businesses.  This portal, SCcrowdfund.com, will make this easier,” said Knapp.

While anyone will be able to donate to a compelling small business project when the portal is open to the public in approximately 30 days, only those with high incomes will be able to invest through the private placement portal.  The qualifying criteria for “accredited” investors can be found at SCcrowdfund.com.

Businesses wanting to place their projects on the portal for either donations or investments should go to SCcrowdund.com. 

65 Percent Isn't Enough And Job Creation Is Suffocating

The South Carolina Small Business Chamber is making steady progress on setting up a donation and investment crowdfunding portal to give small businesses and entrepreneurs another means to access capital.  To find out more click here.

Below is an excerpt from an opinion editorial in Forbes by Ty Kiisel that addresses the issue of capital access.

Unfortunately, partially because of the way the SBA defines small businesses, traditional small business lending has moved upstream since 2008 and is catering to the bigger businesses on the small business continuum. The average 7(a) loan amount in 2012 was far more than what those Main Street business owners are looking for to grow their businesses and create jobs.

We recently pulled a sampling of about 44,000 borrowers who visited our platform during the first six months of 2013 and 59 percent of those business owners were looking for small business loan amounts of $50,000 or less—39 percent were seeking loan amounts of less than $25,000.

As credit tightened following the financial meltdown and the community banks and other traditional lenders small business owners would have turned to 10 years ago collectively turned them away, access to the inexpensive capital small businesses rely on to grow and hire employees dried up—leaving the nation’s biggest employer [small business] out in the cold.

Read more

Austerity Day

US News & World Report
February 28, 2013

Sequestration is the Wrong Kind of Certainty for Small Business

Limiting job creators' access to capital at this critical point in the life of our nation's economy is a profoundly bad idea.

By Beth Solomon

Beth Solomon is the president and CEO of the National Association of Development Companies, the trade association of Certified Development Companies.

You've heard the S-word. In Washington, this week, it is "sequester"—the threat of sweeping, indiscriminate federal budget cuts that could furlough federal employees, airport workers, and first responders, and impact the national defense and medical research. But what about the sequester's impact on the engine of the U.S. economy: small business? Drastic uncertainty for small business owners and reductions in available capital could put a jackboot on the neck of the U.S. economy, just as it struggles for momentum.

According to the Office of Management and Budget, the sequester could mean a reduction of nearly $1 billion in small business loans. In addition, loan processors could be furloughed, which would mean even more delays to ongoing small business lending. The long-term damage to small businesses could be acute.

With over 12 million people unemployed, small business is critical to accelerating the economic recovery and creating the jobs America needs. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, small businesses have created about two out of every three jobs gained over the past 35 months and have added jobs in every quarter since early 2010.

But since the recession began, U.S. commercial banks' small business loan portfolios are down 17 percent. And loans under $100,000 have declined even more steeply, over 19 percent. During that same period, the Small Business Administration supported over $100 billion in new lending to over 218,000 small businesses. In better times considered the lender of last resort, the Small Business Administration, for many small businesses, has become the only option. The agency's loans have become a lifeline for the franchise industry and other segments that weathered the recession better than most.

In 2012, nearly 10,000 businesses—many of whom couldn't find adequate financing from banks, accessed over $6 billion through Small Business Administration's 504 loans, financing real estate, construction, and equipment.

For Warner Bodies, a manufacturer of utility truck cabs, fire and rescue trucks in Noblesville, Ind., access to capital came the form of a Small Business Administration 504 loan which allowed them to get game-changing rates on a loan for expanding their plant and purchasing more equipment. This created 15 jobs. In the midst of a recession, this company not only retained all of their employees, they hired more.

In Michigan, Fiber By-Products, a wood fiber recycling company, accessed the agency's 504 financing to purchase 43,500 additional square feet of workspace, creating 28 new jobs as a result.

There are countless stories like these about real jobs in communities all across the country, created because these growing small businesses could access the capital and economic certainty they need to invest in their business, from property, equipment to the most important resource of all: people.

This kind of public-private partnership that the Small Business Administration's loan programs represent are precisely the kind of smart government initiatives that we need.

The reality is that business growth is not a switch that policymakers in Washington or business leaders anywhere can turn on or off, and any economic progress takes multiple business cycles of learning to navigate regulations, securing funding, and laying out a strategic plan. To delay loans for the growing small businesses, or worse, eliminate them altogether, would cripple our economy. For many of these small businesses, they may not get a second chance at growth.

Limiting job creators' access to capital at this critical point in the life of our nation's economy is a profoundly bad idea. We are depending on our small businesses to grow and put our communities back to work. They are depending on Small Business Administration loans to finance their physical growth: real estate and machinery. And we are all depending on our elected leaders to put aside their risky, partisan gamesmanship and come together to pass legislation and enact policy in a bipartisan, responsible way that reflects our national needs and priorities.

I've often heard that uncertainty is bad for business, but the Washington gridlock and its latest symptom, sequestration, is the wrong kind of certainty.

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2013/02/28/sequestration-negatively-impacts-small-business-and-job-creation?utm_source=March+1%2C+2013+CRM&utm_campaign=082412+AM&utm_medium=email

 

Access to capital through crowdfunding

This week I’m off to DC to join David Levine, co-founder and director of the American Sustainable Business Council, in a media tour for the ASBC (I serve as vice-chair of the organization).  We will be doing a few other things including have discussions with the Americans for Financial Reform and hopefully some Congressional staff on the issue of crowdfunding.

I first mentioned crowdfunding as a potential tool for small businesses and entrepreneurs to have access to capital way back on November 17, 2010.  At that time only a few organizations, including the ASBC and the SC Small Business Chamber of Commerce (SCSBCC), were aggressively supporting changing SEC regulations to allow crowdfunding and we thought it was a long shot.  My have things changed.

First President Obama announced his support and instructed the SEC to seriously consider it.  Then the House overwhelmingly passed a version of crowdfunding.   Then bills were introduced in the Senate.  The House just recently passed more legislation including crowdfunding again and this week there may be action in the Senate.

But with all this relatively rapid action there is the distinct possibility that the original crowdfunding concept to really help small business will be lost as Congress and special interest groups expand the concept well beyond the initial idea.  The ASBC and SCSBCC will be working in DC this week to protect our small business interests.

The ASBC has posted on their website (also below) a good overview of how crowdfunding can help small business.  I’ll keep you informed of actions on the Hill.

Crowdfunding: Accessing Capital for Small Business

Given the challenges small businesses and entrepreneurs face in raising capital to help them grow and compete, the crowdfunding concept is a viable solution. Crowdfunding, especially in the context of community-based financing of local projects, has the potential when done correctly to be a very useful tool in opening up access to capital for business. Crowdfunding simply put is raising investment funding in small increments from a large number of people often through Internet marketing.

Current Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rules make this type of small dollar investments cost prohibitive due to registration and reporting requirements at both the state and federal level. Since 2010, ASBC has been one of the earliest supporters of crowdfunding as a vehicle for small business to gain access to capital. ASBC has worked on Capitol Hill to insure that the interests of locally-owned small businesses and entrepreneurs are properly served in the development of crowdfunding legislation.

Legislation is moving through Congress that would create a Crowdfunding exemption to the SEC regulations. The House passed the McHenry bill, the Entrepreneur Access to Capital Act (HR. 2930), with an overwhelming bipartisan majority. In the Senate, two bills are pending: Democratizing Access to Capital Act (S.1791) by Sen. Scott Brown (MA) and the CROWDFUND Act (S.1970) by Sen. Jeff Merkley (OR). We applaud the work of both senators.

It is vitally important for any crowdfunding legislation to allow small businesses to pursue maximum investments of $100 or slightly higher from individuals with an aggregate cap on total capital raised in the range of $100,000. Low individual investor limits combined with aggregate caps promote community-based economic support for local businesses while keeping potential investor losses and fraud risks relatively low; these limits allow relatively light SEC oversight.

We understand the argument for making intermediaries optional, since many small business owners and investors are not tech-savvy and may not be comfortable investing via an unfamiliar third-party platform. However, further work is needed to ensure sufficient investor protections without requiring an intermediary. We support strong and enforceable investor protections that won’t unnecessarily restrict the flow of capital within local communities and to local projects.

Because individual state laws on investments pose an obstacle to crowdfunding, the federal law should override state regulations.

For more information, or to get involved in the working group that manages this campaign, please contact us.

OPINION POLL: Small Business Owners Say Access to Credit a Problem; Support Current Proposals to Boost Economy

January 26, 2012

Opinion polling released today shows 90 percent of small business owners believe access to credit is a problem and that loans are harder to get now than four years ago; majority support key provisions in president’s American Jobs Act

Washington DC, Jan. 26, 2012 – Opinion polling released today shows 90 percent of small business owners see the availability of credit as a problem for small business, and they strongly support increasing the lending authority of community banks and credit unions. Small business owners also support current proposals being debated in Congress that aim to boost the economy and create jobs.

Small business lending has become such an issue that 90 percent of small employers support community banks and credit unions being able to lend more to small businesses, and 82 percent support more stringent credit card regulations, such as clearer identification of terms and interest rate caps, according to the poll released by the American Sustainable Business Council, Main Street Alliance and Small Business Majority. Additionally, 61 percent say it’s harder now than it was four years ago to get a loan.

The poll also asked respondents about proposals in the president’s American Jobs Act. The vast majority, or 69 percent of small business owners support committing $50 billion to new and existing infrastructure projects that would generate jobs—such as making improvements to road, bridge and water systems. Another 59 percent favor creating a nationwide wireless network and improving the accessibility of high-speed wireless services. Read the report here.

“Loans that will help small businesses grow and create jobs are harder and harder to come by,” said John Arensmeyer, founder and CEO of Small Business Majority. “With banks’ lending portfolios shrinking and small businesses’ dependence on credit cards growing, lawmakers need to look for smart ways to revamp the credit landscape.”

“Small businesses create 65 percent of the net new private sector jobs in America,” said David Brodwin, co-founder and board member of ASBC. “Our deregulated, damaged banking system isn’t providing the credit they need, and they are calling for change.”

“Small business owners want action from Congress to boost the economy,” said Kelly Conklin, owner of Foley-Waite Associates in Bloomfield, New Jersey and a leader with the Main Street Alliance. “Invest in infrastructure to build the foundation for business success. Take serious steps to deal with the mortgage crisis and restore consumer purchasing power. Put teachers and firefighters back on the job serving our communities and boosting local economies. That’s what small businesses need.”

Additional findings in the report include:

• 52 percent of those surveyed have turned to credit cards to finance their business
• 6 in 10 small business owners support making loans more accessible by reducing collateral requirements

·         77 percent support creating incentives for community banks to lend more

• By a 2:1 margin, small businesses support increasing credit unions’ lending cap from 12.25 percent to 27.5 percent
• 73 percent of small employers believe their business has been hurt to some degree by the drop in consumer demand resulting from the housing and mortgage crisis
• 57% of respondents agree reducing the principal on underwater mortgages to the current market value would boost consumer spending, helping small businesses regain their vigor through increased profits.

For more information on these poll findings, visit:
http://www.asbcouncil.org/poll_access_to_credit.html

http://mainstreetalliance.org/5500/poll-credit-economy/

http://www.smallbusinessmajority.org/small-business-research/downloads/012612_Access_to_Credit_Poll_Report.pdf

Poll results represent findings from an Internet survey of 500 small business owners nationwide, commissioned by the American Sustainable Business Council, Main Street Alliance and Small Business Majority and conducted by Lake Research Partners. The survey was conducted between December 8, 2011 and January 4, 2012. It has a margin of error of +/- 4.4%.

The American Sustainable Business Council is a network of business organizations representing over 100,000 companies and 200,000 business leaders. ASBC advocates for public policies that meet the realities of the 21st century global economy including strategic investments in workforce and infrastructure; standards and safeguards that promote innovation, prevent abuse and protect critical resources; and a new sustainable economic model that fosters a growing, economically-secure middle class. http://www.asbcouncil.org/

The Main Street Alliance is a national network of state-based small business coalitions. MSA creates opportunities for small business owners to speak for themselves on issues that impact their businesses and local economies. www.mainstreetalliance.org

Small Business Majority is a national nonpartisan small business advocacy organization, founded and run by small business owners, and focused on solving the biggest problems facing America’s 28 million small businesses. We conduct extensive opinion and economic research and work with small business owners, policy experts and elected officials nationwide to bring small business voices to the public policy table. www.smallbusinessmajority.org

With the spread of high-tech devices, telecom expecting explosive growth

The Washington Post
December 23, 2011

 

By Matt Bauer

 

"While we are focused on internal industry concerns such as telecom consolidation and collusion and those that would dismantle net neutrality, our top concern as a company in 2012 is helping to lead the charge and get much more support to small, independently owned businesses across America. We see this as the largest return on investment for the government, investors and consumers. This is also where our national economic focus needs to lie in the short and medium term." 
Read more

Matt Bauer is president and co-founder of Reston-based BetterWorld Telecom, the leading sustainable business to business voice and data carrier in the U.S.