Jackie Logan, President, Raise Green

Jackie Logan, interim CEO of Raise Green, talked to Invest: about the opportunities brought by the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund within the Inflation Reduction Act for the company to raise private capital to match public funds in the climate space. She also highlighted how crowdfunding investors have an interest in not only climate projects but also in the local dimension of those projects. 

What are the most important contributions of Raise Green to the climate sector?

Raise Green is focused on accelerating the clean energy transition in a way that democratizes access to both capital and investment. Until 2016, 9 out of 10 Americans could not access a lot of the wealth-building opportunities of the private markets. Nevertheless, when Regulation Crowdfunding (Reg CF) came around in that year, it opened that up.

Similarly, on the capital raising side, small businesses that want to expand usually go to the local community bank. With the new regulations, those businesses can do a securities offering online under Reg CF and work with a funding portal such as Raise Green to do it. We are registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and a member of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FinRa) to do just that. 

Our platform is fully online and open for the local community, or for that matter, just about anyone 18 years and older to invest from as little as $100 into a project or company that speaks to them. Raise Green has raised close to $10 million for small to medium-sized businesses across the United States through our platform. Additionally, over half of the capital that has been raised on our platform to date has been for women-led or BIPOC-led organizations. We do not specifically go after that community, but our doors are open and folks from all walks of life are doing interesting things that this non-traditional source of financing is capturing Moreover, Raise Green believes that we need more people involved in climate and to get more money directly going into that sector.

What are some of the most important trends that Raise Green has identified in terms of climate investments?

Our investors are interested in climate as well as in investing locally. Being able to think locally and show what is happening in the local environment attracts tremendous interest from the public. Community is the name of the game as that is where we live, work, and play. Certain components of the government climate initiatives are really oriented towards community, and  job creation. We still need to work as a global community as we are all connected, but bringing back the health and well-being of our local communities is incredibly important.

How is Raise Green working to help local organizations gain access to federal funds for climate?

The Inflation Reduction Act was implemented to jumpstart all kinds of activities in the climate space. Raise Green has worked with a lot of the organizations that were applying for a segment of that money through the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which totals $27 billion. Those funds are awarded to nonprofit organizations, tribal communities and municipalities as seed money for community financing arms to finance solar and wind projects, energy efficiency, and EV infrastructure at the local level.

For that money to be spent or lent out, much of it must be matched with private capital. Raise Green has worked with various organizations applying to receive this seed capital from the Greenhouse Reduction Fund. We are excited to be involved with folks who are going to receive this money. That money will be lent and granted across local communities, including those in Massachusetts and Connecticut.

Raise Green is working on specific products to plug into this capital so that we can help bring in private capital to support those projects. There is a focus on bringing in local communities to benefit from, open access to, and invest in what is happening around them. We are ready to build out our platform to support those products over the next six months, which will be a big tailwind for projects and jobs locally. Between 40% and 80% of that money will be pushed into lower income and disadvantaged communities, which is exciting for Raise Green. We believe that the only way to win is by bringing everybody up together. 

What is the strategy of Raise Green to support organizations in their crowdfunding campaigns?

The fundamental idea behind crowdfunding is that you can make it possible for your fans and local community to come in and support what you are doing. We focus on empowering the organization looking to raise capital to reach out to their community and let them know what is happening. It is absolutely critical, and Raise Green has the tools that can help organizations in that process. 

We always encourage our issuers to start early, build their email list, and get the word out because bringing people to the platform is ultimately what makes a campaign successful. Developing email lists is a key step for a crowdfunding campaign. Aside from email campaigns, doing social media and holding events are key to getting the word out about what an organization is doing. The ultimate goal is to bring people to those projects’ offering page on Raised Green so that they can see all the materials of the offering and easily invest in it. 

We focus on working with the organization that is raising capital to get them and their community excited about what they are doing. Additionally, we provide all issuers with the same opportunity when we put an offering on our platform. We also email our investor base, do a couple of posts on social media, and invite everybody to come and listen if we have an Investor Day. 

Where do you see the renewable energy sector going in the next five to 10 years?

That sector is going to continue to grow. One thing is clear – energy demand is likely to grow substantially – and a multi node approach to filling gaps will be needed. The expectation is that there will be continual development around the renewable energies that work, improving efficiency, waste, power and so on.. While we hope that up and coming technologies will break through in terms of scalability, we are firm believers that solar will play a significant role globally.  We think that an increasing amount of manufacturing will be right here in the USA. And that batteries are the next “solar” in that this decade will see signficant reduction in costs, like we did for solar in the last decade, and improvements in its technology. 

I hope that there will be some breakthroughs in nuclear energy. That clean energy has potential for incredible scale. We need to hit this from all angles to accomplish net zero at some point. Moreover, in terms of the carbon capture and reduction space, carbon credits will be a great source to push forward on projects challenging to get done.

What are the top priorities of Raise Green for the next two to three years?

We are focused on how Raise Green can leverage our impact-investing base and their interest to support climate. Those investors are interested in local, and we are interested in continuing to grow the platform and add additional projects that interest investors. Moreover, we are also focused on providing our specialized platform for climate technology where we collaborate with accelerators so they can have a financing partner ready to take their offering and do a community round on Raise Green.

The lion share of our efforts are planned around partnering with folks such as the awardees of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, to bring in that private capital and open it up to community ownership. Raise Green is, at the moment, still a small company, so channel partners are important to us.