Whether birds, fish or people - collective swarming behavior can be observed everywhere in nature.

The idea of ​​“crowdfunding” or “crowd investing”, ie the collective financing of private investors, has existed in the financial sector since 2009. In that year, the American start-up ProFunder founded the first crowdinvesting platform.

However, in addition to the music albums or brewery start-ups that originally benefited from the additional source of capital, platforms that specialize in the financing of sustainable start-ups or projects were added early on.

Antonia Mannweiler

Editor in business.

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The idea behind it: private investors come together on the platform and can invest smaller or larger amounts of money between 100 and 10,000 euros in the construction of solar systems or particularly climate-friendly start-ups.

support.

In return, however, the investors receive - in contrast to crowdfunding, which is more of a donation character - a financial return in the form of regular interest payments.

When the project is finished, the investors get back all the capital invested.

The industry service Crowdfunding.de currently lists 18 crowd investing platforms that have specialized in the topics of energy, the environment and social issues. The Frankfurt company Bettervest is one of those from the very beginning. Since 2012, 16 million euros have flowed into more than 100 projects via the platform. Many sustainable funds are “greenwashing”, says Marilyn Heib, head and co-founder of Bettervest. In contrast to this, with crowd investing you are very close to the projects and know immediately where the money is going. Replacing a diesel generator with a solar system means that everyone immediately understands what is going on, says the renewable energy engineer. As a rule, the website gives investors an overview of ongoing and completed projects with information about the duration,Interest and the company.

Projects in Ghana

Bettervest supports all projects that save CO2 and comply with ethical guidelines - a solar roof on a slaughterhouse, for example, is out of the question, says Heib.

Other sustainability goals would also be included in the assessment.

The financing phase for the development of several photovoltaic, solar and LED energy saving projects in Ghana is currently running on the platform.

The project aims to avoid 11,610 tonnes of CO2 annually and create 45 new jobs.

The development and construction cost a total of 1.8 million euros; around 600,000 euros have been collected so far.

The duration of the project is five years.

Investors receive an annual interest rate of 6 percent for their investment.

The majority of the projects are in East Africa, says Heib.

One is already established there.

Crowdinvesting offers private investors various opportunities to participate financially in sustainable projects. They either acquire shares in the company and become co-owners, or they participate through a subordinated loan. As a rule, the second variant is used so that investors become creditors. However, the risk of such subordinated loans lies in a possible bankruptcy of the borrower. Then the demands of the crowd investors would be served last. In the worst case, investors face a total loss. Such investments are hardly suitable as old-age security.

One tries to keep such risks as low as possible, says Jonas Klose from the sustainability platform Wiwin, which also offers crowd investments.

The platform focuses on German real estate or solar projects.

But money is also collected on the platform for environmentally friendly or social start-ups like Lemonaid.

At Wiwin, the minimum investment varies depending on the project.

The smallest investment sum for an environmentally friendly real estate investment in Rostock's old town is around 500 euros, whereas it is only half that for financing a storage heat pump.

The interest is sometimes 4 percent, sometimes 5 percent.