"I had a pleasant experience raising funding on the Common Owner platform for India Home. Since it was our first time using regulation crowdfunding there was a learning curve, but the Common Owner team went the extra mile to help us comfortably navigate the process.
They met with our board members and staff to explain everything, and were quick to respond to our emails. I have already recommended the Common Owner platform to other non-profit organizations.”
- Dr. Kalasapudi, Executive Director of India Home
Offering Highlights
- $652,250 raised in 2 months
- 27 investors
- 42% of funds were invested in a single week
The Client
India Home is a non-profit organization dedicated to addressing the needs of the Indian and larger South Asian senior immigrant community in New York City. Since being founded in 2007, India Home has served over 5,000 seniors with senior center programs such as culturally competent Halal and vegetarian meals, enriching programming including yoga, meditation, educational sessions, health and recreational sessions, creative aging activities, know-your-rights sessions, ESL classes and technology classes, and advocacy among others.
The Challenge
India Home was seeking funding for development costs for a first-of-its-kind adult assisted living facility with enriched housing for seniors. Having recently offered an investment opportunity to their accredited investor donors, they were looking to open up the same type of opportunity for all of their donor base including those who are not accredited investors. India Home needed a partner to help them easily accept investments online from their donor network of roughly 3,000 people, and connections to fund the project.
The Solution
After talking to multiple crowdfunding portals India Home decided to work with Common Owner because the platform supports non-profits, allows for a deal structure that worked for their project, supported the executive team to get buy-in from the board of directors, and provides hands-on support for investors who may not be tech-savvy.
As a registered funding portal, Common Owner guided India Home through the preparation and launch of the investment opportunity for their donors to invest in. After launch, Common Owner supported India Home during webinars, and by providing hands-on customer support to make the process as easy as possible for all investors. India Home and Common Owner worked together for a successful outcome in the following ways.
- Navigate SEC compliance and due diligence.
Beyond the background checks, Common Owner helped India Home apply for EDGAR codes to file the offering documents with the SEC. The main document you need to file for an Investment Crowdfunding offering is a Form C and associated disclosure documents. Common Owner provides a guided template for the Form C and disclosure documents. Other documentation including formation documents, organizational chart, promissory notes, record keeping practices, investor communication plan, and other required documents - some of which Common Owner has templates for and/or provides helpful feedback on to streamline the offering preparation process. - Prepare agreements and investment documents.
There is a lot of flexibility when structuring a Regulation crowdfunding (Reg CF) offering. India Home decided to structure their offering as a loan with an 8% annual interest rate. Common Owner provided templates for the Investment Agreement and Promissory Note document required to accept investments in accordance with this debt structure. - Offering page creation.
When creating a crowdfunding page there are a few key elements. You need to introduce yourself and your team, explain the project to investors in a concise and simple way, include financial information related to the business and project, and give them some reasons to invest. India Home did an excellent job at all of the above, as shown on their offering page here. - Get Board of Directors buy-in for crowdfunding.
Common Owner joined India Homes executives in speaking to their Board of Directors to ensure all stakeholders were informed and comfortable working with Common Owner through the heavily regulated process of raising funds using Investment Crowdfunding. The concerns of the board were mostly about the legalities of accepting investments from non-accredited investors through crowdfunding, and how accessible investing would be for investors who may not be good with computers. These concerns were extensively discussed and addressed with the Issuer and its Board of Directors. - Investment Updates.
India Home wanted to keep an eye on investments as they came in during the offering. Common Owner provides the capability to see investment details and the status of each in real time. This enabled India Home to know who to follow up with to drive further investment, at all times.
The Result:
India Home was able to achieve their goal of bringing in their donor-base and connections as investors to help fund the project. Within a couple months India Home exceeded their funding goal of $600,000 through the Common Owner platform by raising a total of $652,250!
If you need help funding your own project or business, apply here.