A pension fund, also known as a superannuation fund in some countries, is any program, fund, or scheme which provides retirement income.
Dame Vivienne Isabel Westwood was a British fashion designer and businesswoman, largely responsible for bringing modern punk and new wave fashions into the mainstream. In 2022, Sky Arts ranked her the 4th most influential artist in Britain of the last 50 years.
The Community Security Trust (CST) is a British charity whose purpose is to provide safety, security, and advice to the Jewish community in the UK. It provides advice, training, representation and research.
Sellaband was a music website that allowed artists to raise the money from their fans and the SellaBand community in order to record a professional album. Sellaband used the mechanisms of crowdfunding and was to be seen as a Direct-to-Fan/fan-funded music platform utilising a Threshold Pledge System / Provision Point Mechanism. It was set up by Johan Vosmeijer, Pim Betist, and Dagmar Heijmans in August 2006. Its offices used to be located in Amsterdam, Netherlands, but it was originally incorporated in Bocholt, Germany.
Impact investing refers to investments "made into companies, organizations, and funds with the intention to generate a measurable, beneficial social or environmental impact alongside a financial return". At its core, impact investing is about an alignment of an investor's beliefs and values with the allocation of capital to address social and/or environmental issues.
Kickstarter is an American public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative projects to life". As of February 2023, Kickstarter has received US$7 billion in pledges from 21.7 million backers to fund 233,626 projects, such as films, music, stage shows, comics, journalism, video games, board games, technology, publishing, and food-related projects.
PledgeMusic was an online direct-to-fan music platform, launched in August 2009. It was started to facilitate musicians looking to pre-sell, market, and distribute projects; such as recordings and concerts. It bore similarities to other artist payment platforms as ArtistShare, Kickstarter, Indiegogo, Patreon, RocketHub and Sellaband.
Loudsauce was a San Francisco based crowd funding platform for sponsoring ads for social change founded in 2009. Donors choose the level of funding they want to support and their desired medium, such as TV ads or billboards. Their mission is to “transform the medium of advertising from one that primarily drives consumption to one of civic participation.” A recent project on Loudsauce was the creation of a 30-second TV spot in support of Occupy Wall Street.
Seedrs is an online equity crowdfunding company, headquartered in East London's Tech City, founded in 2009 and launched by Jeff Lynn and Carlos Silva in 2012. Since 2022 it has been a subsidiary of American crowdfunding company Republic.
Crowdcube is a British investment crowdfunding platform, established by Darren Westlake and Luke Lang in 2011.
Companisto is an international equity-based crowdfunding website. It was founded by the lawyers David Rhotert and Tamo Zwinge in June 2012, in Berlin. Companisto allows investors to invest in startups. In return, they become shareholders and are entitled to a share of any profits, as well as potentially benefiting from an exit. Companisto has over 150.000 investors from 92 countries. It is Germany's largest network for investments in start-ups and growth companies.
Assetz Capital is a British company which makes property-secured loans to businesses. It was established in 2012 as a peer-to-peer or "marketplace" lender which allowed private and institutional investors to lend money directly to small businesses (SMEs) and property developers. In December 2022 it became solely funded by institutional capital for new lending.
Tilt.com, Inc. was a crowdfunding company founded in 2012 that allowed for groups and communities to collect, fundraise, or pool money online. James Beshara and Khaled Hussein launched the platform under the name Crowdtilt out of Y Combinator.
Angels Den is the Europe's first and largest online investment platform that connects businesses with angel investors. It was founded in 2008 and is authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
Return on Change (RoC) is an equity crowdfunding platform that connects investors with innovative and socially conscious startups. Return on Change works with startups that operate in five sectors, each of which touches on sustainability in some way: cleantech, edtech, life sciences, social enterprises, and technology. An online equity crowdsourcing platform, RoC helps socially conscious ventures raise capital.
Equity crowdfunding is the online offering of private company securities to a group of people for investment and therefore it is a part of the capital markets. Because equity crowdfunding involves investment into a commercial enterprise, it is often subject to securities and financial regulation. Equity crowdfunding is also referred to as crowdinvesting, investment crowdfunding, or crowd equity.
Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and alternative finance. In 2015, over US$34 billion was raised worldwide by crowdfunding.
Goteo is a crowdfunding site which focuses on projects which, apart from giving individual rewards, also generate a collective return through promoting the commons, open source code and/or free knowledge. It allows contributions in the form of monetary donations or in the form of tasks collaborating with the projects. The platform started in 2011, and is run by the Barcelona-based non-profit Goteo Foundation. According to its site statistics, as of 2023, it has raised $17 million, with a rate of project success of 83%, and a community of 185.000 users. It claims it was the first free/open source crowdfunding platform, and it tags itself as "the open source crowdfunding platform".
