Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Possible Funding Scheme for Building Rentals & New Cohousing

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On Oct 3, 2013, at 2:52 PM, Jerry McIntire <jerry.mcintire [at] gmail.com> 
wrote:

> Sharon, even $5000 would be a meaningful loan for our group. 

One of the things you might investigate is crowdsourcing. A local coffee shop 
got hit with a $15,000 unexpected installation fee from the electric company 
just as they were set to open. They turned to crowdsourcing and had the money 
in a month. They gave very nice coffee thermoses for a $25 donation and went up 
from there.

I understand that this is a repayable loan but an investor needs to do due 
diligence. Either someone who forms an investigation team and recommends the 
investment or someone who has that skill themselves. I think the rate of 
success has gone up in recent years for cohousing but the failure rate is high. 
I'm not qualified to make that judgement

I invested $2,000 in a local restaurant so we could get a nice restaurant in 
our neighborhood. I trusted them because their food was great and their 
restaurant  a  couple of miles away was well done. I lost the whole thing 
because I didn't investigate their professional help --of which they had none. 
They were trying to do the renovations of the space themselves. And the job was 
too large for them. And the building had too many problems.

So investment in anything has to have someone who knows investments and can 
investigate and recommend. 

Or you need a developer who knows what they are doing and can put up the money 
up front because they will be in charge and responsible for ensuring that the  
project is successful and they will get their money back.

Sharon
----
Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org