Once you’ve maxed out your IRA and employer sponsored plans and you’re already saving a decent amount in a taxable brokerage account, consider adding a few percent of a nontraditional investment. They can be fun and may offer returns that are uncorrelated with or larger than the stock market’s returns, but they often have hidden systematic risks. Be careful out there!
Nontraditional Investments on AndHigherStill.com
Accredited investors only!
As of 2017-06, CrowdSun is only open to accredited investors. According to the website, only 11 campaigns totally $2.2MM have been funded by this platform.
According to PV Tech, like Mosaic (which had received over $5.6 million from more than 2,500 investors by November 2013), Crowdsun.com claims to offer careful project review and interest on investments at a higher rate than currently offered by banks. (Projected annual rates of return for solar crowdfund investors typically run between about 4.5% and 10%.)
“Both companies have so far limited their business to solar investment in US projects. Sunfunder, which is not approved by the US Securities and Exchange Commission, funds solar projects outside the US. Sunfunder can accept investments all over the world, but cannot return interest.”
SunFunder has closed its crowdfunding operations as of 2017-06. Investments, in $25k increments, are currently only available for accredited investors.
Official Pages
News
We first wrote about Mosaic in the summer of 2012, when the startup had just raised $2.5 million for what it was calling a “Kickstarter for solar”–a solar installation crowdfunding platform. The Kickstarter moniker didn’t really make sense at the time, when over 400 investors on the platform had raised over $350,000 to finance a series of rooftop solar installations in California, with the promise of getting paid back without interest in up to eight years. It was more like a Kiva for solar. Now that’s changed.
Mosaic, formerly called Solar Mosaic, today said that it is taking money from individuals for three projects in California at affordable housing buildings, promising returns of about 4.5 percent over nine years. The company says its service is available in New York state as well and intends to spread to more states and countries in the future. It’s already funded six installations in California as it developed its business model.
Monday was a good day for Mosaic, a startup that created a crowdfunding platform for solar projects. After two hard years of setting up the business, which involved getting regulatory approvals, the company opened projects for investment by the public in New York and California.
I was therefore somewhat disappointed to see little in the way of new projects for the past few months (with the exception of a large 487 kW project at the New Jersey Wildwoods Convention Center which was open to accredited investors only). A large part of this delay in new projects has to do with securities rules that have long limited crowd-funding. This week, though, Mosaic announced that securities regulators in California recently approved it to offer $100 Million worth of solar investments to residents of that state. Mosaic jumped out of the gates immediately after this approval, with a 114 kW, $157,750 solar project on the Ronald McDonald House in San Diego. The investment offered a 4.5% return to investors over a 117 month term, and it was fully subscribed by 171 investors within 6 hours. Clearly, there is more money waiting for additional projects.
Oakland startup Mosaic recently said it will offer homeowners a way to get rooftop solar panels for no money down and pay off the costs over 20 years. The cash will come from small investors pooling their money online, who will earn interest on the loan.
Solar Bonds are designed to offer interest rates higher than typical savings accounts, CDs, money market funds and other comparable investments. And we charge no investment fees when you invest direct, so you keep what you earn.
$1000 increments
The corporate debt in question is an innovative new product from SolarCity known as Solar Bonds. Solar Bonds allow an investor—be it an individual or an organization—to generate a rate of return from the solar power systems SolarCity is installing across the country. At its most basic, the investor lends SolarCity money, SolarCity uses the money to install an array on a household, the household pays SolarCity for the array, and the investor gets paid back, with interest.
The Solar Bonds program, which SolarCity launched in 2014, is a close cousin of the other solar crowdfunding platforms that have blossomed in recent years. One of the many offshoots of the rise of the so-called “sharing economy,” these platforms allow the average household to chip in a few dollars toward a renewable energy project. There is Mosaic, which has a portfolio comprised of commercial and residential projects in the United States; Sunfunder, which focuses on off-grid markets in developing countries; and CollectiveSun, which finances arrays for nonprofits that struggle to meet traditional underwriting criteria.
This platform appears to have only funded a few projects.
We are neither an investment advisor nor a broker. Rather, we are an independent funding portal that provides information to investors about the opportunities posted on our site. While our fees are based on the size of an offering, we do not get compensated for finding investors or selling securities. Our compensation is largely dependent on the successful funding of the opportunities presented on our site.
As a crowd funding company we seek to democratize finance be allowing anyone to have an impact and invest, however, there are still some limitations. Investors on our platform must be at least 18 years old. Additionally, due to financial regulations, we currently cannot accept investments from the United States. We are, however, working on this and hope to be open to US investments in the future.
Very Dutch