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Stories from the Raise: A Crowdfunding Showcase

Raising funds for your project, business, or launch is an exciting way to gather community support and bring in funds needed for your work. Crowdfunding allows everyone to support projects they love – promoting good work and democratizing investment for the 99%.

A few weeks ago we hosted a Crowdfunding Showcase to share some of the stories from local companies and organizations that have raised funds (or are currently raising funds) for their projects. There were brief presentations from the participating organizations, a panel discussion, and a time for Q&A.

Here are some takeaways from the presenters and their projects:

It takes a village, says Jim Murphy of Honolulu Habitat for Humanity.

Habitat for Humanity is a nonprofit housing developer committed to improving communities by increasing homeownership opportunities. They work with families and communities to build and repair homes and provides a zero interest mortgage. In addition, they work with the communities they serve to provide volunteer opportunities supporting the mission’s work. Their goal is to build 40 single family homes in the next 5 years. They have tried crowdfunding unsuccessfully in the past, and are looking forward to more strategic campaigns in the future. Jim said some of his crowdfunding efforts were ‘cautionary tales.’

Keep momentum going through the whole campaign. Plan ahead.

Mia Moore, is a local student that was just accepted into the Interlochen Arts Academy starting Fall 2019. This prestigious school has high tuition costs, and she’s raising funds on Go Fund Me to cover her school fees. She is currently at ~$4300 of her $28,000 goal.

Crowdfunding builds community, not just funds.

James Koshiba is volunteer co-founder of Hui Aloha and the Aloha Lives Here Campaign, which has been created to give Puuhonua O Waianae a permanent home. The campaign combines crowdfunding, major donors, and in-kind contributions to enable POW to acquire land and add permanent structures to what is already a model village community. Funding will also allow the village to test innovative technologies in housing, water, waste management, and agriculture. It will also enable the village to continue their outreach to other houseless communities, and provide lessons in modern-day village-building across Hawaii and beyond.

Innovate, but you don’t always have to reinvent the wheel.

David Aquino, is Blue Planet Foundation’s Creative Director, and has helped to grow their unique energy efficiency loan program called WeEfficiency. The program raises funds from the community for non-profits or schools to cover energy efficiency upgrades. These upgrades can be costly at the offset, but energy savings can be huge. With the money they save, they can pay back their donors and do more good work for their communities.

Don’t be afraid to get started.

Sarah “Mili” Milianta-Laffin is a 7th grade teacher at the STEM Lab at Ilima Intermediate in Ewa Beach, Campbell/Kapolei Complex. Prior to teaching in Ewa Beach, she taught for 11 years in Houston, Texas. Sarah is a DonorsChoose Ambassador, personally earning over $15,000 in supplies for her students from DonorsChoose since 2007. She talked about how amazing the program is, and how it makes it easy for her to fund the things she needs to make her classroom a great place for her students and student groups.

Give back to your supporters.

We also heard from Nam Vu, co-founder of Impact Hub and ‘chief geeky officer.’ Nam talked about our experience with Wefunder, and why we chose this program for our investment campaign. Nam says that, “We chose Wefunder because it aligns with our community building focus and enables our community to invest in our success was well as benefit from our success.”

Thanks to all of those that presented at the event!

A Message from our Cofounder, Nam Vu, about our Wefunder Campaign

Those who know me closely know that I have a deep seated desire to help people that came out of my search for the meaning in life during my contemplative days in high school. I’ve always looked for ways to leave this world better than I found it and have been involved in various service activities. After a while, adulthood set in and service took a back seat to creating a comfortable life with the goal of one day having enough comfort to be able to dedicate service as a full time endeavor.

Then came Impact Hub Honolulu. Being a part of Impact Hub Honolulu has provided me with the opportunity to be of service and at the same time build a sustainable and thriving business. It is that dream that I think many of us have but didn’t think could be possible. At Impact Hub we can do well while doing good. It is possible.

We want to spread this message far and wide and help everyone do well while doing good. We recognize that it is much more difficult to think about and act on your intentions to do good in the world when you are struggling with rent and bills. Our approach is to help everyone to do well so that we can all do good and change the world.

By providing a place where our members can focus on their work and leaving the facilities needs to us, by providing mentorship and learning opportunities to grow their practice, by providing opportunities to join us in doing good, we hope to enable our members to make their own social impact; to democratize the work of social impact and put in in the hands of everyone to do their small share.

To help us spread this message, our plan is to build a network of 11 Impact Hubs across Hawaii to create a network of social entrepreneurs in Hawaii who join the over 15,000 social entrepreneurs that are already in the Impact Hub network, the largest network of social entrepreneurs in the world.

Today we publicly launch our Wefunder campaign to raise funds for our expansion plans. This is an investment NOT a donation. You will receive your money back through a revenue share plus a return. There is an early bird special for the first $125,000 invested.

We chose Wefunder because it aligns with our community building focus and enables our community to invest in our success was well as benefit from our success.

Please take a look and share widely. Together we can make change.

 

An Opportunity to Invest in Impact Hub HNL

The Impact Hub team is so excited to announce the launch our crowdsourced debt investment campaign! You can see our campaign LIVE on WeFunder right now.

This campaign will allow anyone and everyone to invest into the coworking and community space that they love. The funds will primarily be used for our rapid expansion plans: we are growing beyond our Kaka’ako location to new locations on Oahu and eventually, to the neighbor islands – with a goal of 11 new Impact Hubs in the coming years. To get us started, we’ve just signed a lease on a new location in Hawaii Kai, with a tentative opening date of December 2019!

What’s Crowdsourced Investing?

Crowdsourced investing is a unique type of investment opportunity that allows non-accredited investors (ie: those without millions in their bank accounts) to invest in companies and teams that they love and want to help scale up.

Impact Hub Honolulu is running this type of campaign because it gives us a great opportunity to continue to build our network (in Hawaii and beyond) with a foundation of people and organizations that fully believe in our vision for a more interconnected Hawaii.

This type of crowdfunding allows investors to support us with any amount (our minimum is a $100 investment), and receive a return on the investment as we grow. Invested funds go right into the expansion of our network, helping to benefit our growing network and support our #StartupParadise.

Why are We Raising Funds?

We’ve had a busy few years. We started as the ProtoHub in 2014, and then we needed to expand beyond those walls. We were incubated at Sultan Ventures while we waited for our dream location at 1050 Queen Street – which is where we’re based currently. We opened our doors at this location in August of 2017 and have been moving along smoothly since then: we reached our membership goals a full quarter ahead of schedule, and we see a clear need to continue expansion and solidify our place as the leading coworking, community space and managed office provider in Hawaii.

As our Founding team wrote on our WeFunder page, “A diversified and collaborative future economy for Hawaii will provide more opportunities for success. We are helping to build this new world where we see everyone do well while doing good. Together, we can make Hawaii and the world a better place.”

How you Can Help Support Impact Hub HNL?

We have had many awesome community partnerships to help get us where we are today: the State of Hawaii gave us a generous Grant-in-Aid to help us get started in our current location, and the support we received over the years from our multiple Impact Partners has been invaluable to our success within the Hawaii innovation ecosystem.

Hosting a crowdfunding campaign allows our members, friends, and family to help support us, too. If investing isn’t in your budget at the moment, we’d be grateful for Facebook shares, likes, and tweets to friends and followers that would be interested in seeing us grow. Thank you for being a part of this with us!

Investment Crowdfunding: Democratizing Investment for the 99%

Crowdfunding is a type of financial support that allows curious or excited individuals to pledge money to companies, people, or products that spark interest. And that interest is BROAD: the world of crowdfunding is incredibly diverse and has garnered some very interesting spinoffs, like equity and debt crowdfunding.

Crowdfunding became really popular about a decade ago: Indiegogo launched in 2007 and the other large platform, Kickstarter, launched in 2009. In the decade or so since, there has been a constant flow of campaigns and projects supporting projects both big and small. Some of the most successful campaigns have brought in hundreds millions of dollars, everything from cryptocurrencies, consumer technology, food, smart home items, and games.

Indiegogo and Kickstarter are the two most popular examples of rewards-based crowdfunding. In this type of crowdfunding, consumers will give funds in exchange for a reward, usually the product or service that’s being funding. This allows savvy consumers to give direct support to companies and products that have great promise, and ensures that they are early adopters of cool technology.

In 2017, Impact Hub HNL launched its first crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo to raise scholarship funds for local groups and organizations who needed financial support. In the campaign the community contributed over $10,000, and we able to provide scholarships for 35 memberships, events, and programs, proving that crowdfunding can be a powerful tool for increasing equity.


Another type of fundraising is donation-based crowdfunding, which doesn’t ask for a return product or service. This includes sites like GoFundMe and Crowdrise, which often people use to raise money for themselves and their friends in need.

One of the biggest changes to the crowdfunding world came in 2015 with new rules that updated the Obama-era JOBS Act. This new ruling created exceptions to US securities and investment laws to allow anyone – not just accredited investors (ie: those with $1million net worth) – to become investors: thus, the creation of equity crowdfunding.

Equity crowdfunding allows ‘investors’ to give money to a company in exchange for shares, even if it’s just a small percentage. This created a huge shift in the investment world, and continues to democratize investment for the other 99%. Some examples of equity crowdfunding sites include SeedInvest, WeFunder, CircleUp, and StartEngine.

Another shift was the creation of Debt Crowdfunding (also known as peer-to-peer lending, or P2P lending). This model allows non-accredited investors to support individuals or businesses with direct financing. Examples of these sites include Prosper and LendingClub. These sites offer people a funding route that is not tied to banks, and gives investors an opportunity to support people and projects and earn money in return for their investment.

One of the most exciting things about both equity and debt crowdfunding is that they generate real results for both the investor and company. Debt crowdfunding can bring in returns of about 7%, which is on par with traditional investments. Equity crowdfunding can get startups off the ground with significant capital without the hassle of investors taking over the day-to-day of the company, it can be a great way to build a base of supporters, and offers a range of other benefits.

Of course, with any venture of this sort, it’s good to ensure that the company or product you are investing in (or supporting) has a good track record, is poised for successful delivery of product, or has good projections for return on investment. Any equity crowdfunding platform requires due diligence for the companies to be hosted on site, but it’s always good to do your own research before using your money. WeFunder explains that, “Startups either win big or go bankrupt. You could lose all your money. Consider them more like socially-good lottery tickets.”

Beyond just getting a cool, early-adopter product or receiving a good return on investment, crowdfunding is really a way to vote with your dollars for the world that you wish you see. This democratization of investment is key to building a world beyond traditional investment structures – most of which exclude women, people of color, lower income and otherwise marginal investors.

Voting with your dollars, whether for a product, service, or investment, allows you to expand your social impact and support businesses that align with your core values, which is has the potential for huge social, financial, and economic impact – something we can definitely support!

 

Humans of Impact Hub HNL: Hawaiʻi Women in Filmmaking

hawaii women in filmmaking

You can support creative endeavors for young women and girls by supporting Hawaiʻi Women in Filmmaking’s Summer Programs crowdfunding campaign!

Hawaiʻi Women in Filmmaking (HWF) is a dynamic team of women that creates opportunities for creative expression and skill-building in film for young women and girls. Their work is focused on amplifying the voices of women, sharing their stories, and providing an opportunity to express their own unique identities through the powerful medium of film. We are so happy to have this passionate team based at Impact Hub HNL!

HWF is made up of Executive Director Vera Zambonelli, Daní Ortiz Padilla as Development & Community Relations, and Valerie Narte, their Filmmaker in Residence.

As a non-profit, ensuring funding for their projects is one of Vera’s primary – and most challenging – tasks. Their current crowdfunding campaign is called Amplify Their Voices.

This crowdfunding campaign is a way to raise funds to support HWF 2018 Summer Programs for Young Women – Making Media that Matters and Reel Camps for Girls. About 90% of the campaign funds will go to scholarships for deserving young women; “Registration fees should never be a barrier for entry for any girls for either of our summer programs,” Vera says.

Making Media that Matters is a filmmaking program where young women develop the technical and critical-thinking skills needed to create both narrative and documentary films. Each session explores and examines social justice issues that impact the lives and communities of these young women.

Reel Camps for Girls is an intensive basic filmmaking and animation programming intended to introduce technical filmmaking skills to produce a short film. The participants are organized in production crews and work together to create films that interrupt gender stereotypes and change the way women view themselves, each other and our future.

HWF is also really clear about their goal: they want to create a safe and creative space for girls and young women to learn valuable technical skills and the tools needed to tell their stories. Film industry statistics regarding women’s involvement in the filmmaking and creative process are pretty dire, and HWF works to redress that inequity. HWF believes that more female involvement in the creative process behind-the-scene affects what we see in front of the screen. Moreover, HWF offers production services for other nonprofits and local businesses and hires HWF graduates. The young women are always paid for their work, and HWF has a policy of never asking the girls to volunteer their time – this allows them to gain marketable skills and earn income, ensuring that even at a young age, they understand the value of their work, time, and brilliance!

These filmmaking programs for young women have been underway for seven years and many former attendees have gone on to become mentors, and mentors to become teachers leading to a virtuous cycle of creative peer-to-peer mentoring.

The crowdfunding campaign culminates on Saturday, May 26 with a Movie Trivia Benefit Night. Register for the event here, learn more about Hawaiʻi Women in Filmmaking here, and if you feel inspired, you can donate to their campaign here.