High legal fees present a huge obstacle to any entrepreneur attempting to raise capital the U.S.  In the Summer 2009 edition of Yes! Magazine, Michael Shuman of BALLE notes it can cost $50,000 to $100,000 or more in legal fees to prepare  legally compliant securities offering documents for raising seed and early round capital.

SOLUTION #2

EcoSector helps reduce and even eliminate these fees in several ways:

1. High legal fees can often result from an entrepreneur paying a securities lawyer to do non-legal work such as strategic planning, earnings projections, and drafting legally compliant business plans. This happens when an entrepreneur retains a securities attorney before their basic business documentation and capital strategy are in place. EcoSector helps green entrepreneurs seeking capital get properly prepared for their securities attorney, eliminating unnecessary legal fees.

2. Different securities attorneys can charge widely varying fees for identical work products. Most securities attorneys prefer working with huge clients who can pay huge fees and shy away from first round entrepreneurs.  Over several years, EcoSector has developed relationships with securities attorneys who prefer to work with early stage companies, and who have clear, fixed price fee structures.  By choosing the correct attorney, it is possible for an entrepreneur to complete the work Shuman mentions for $5000 to $15,000. EcoSector’s attorney associates can also help entrepreneur raise these fees in a legally compliant way, effectively bringing the out-of-pocket cost to the entrepreneur to zero for a signficant capital raise.

3. EcoSector Industry Association members can help green entrepreneurs defray legal costs by making additional gifts to qualified green entrepreneurs in increments of as little as $1.00.  Learn more about becoming an EIA member…

Michale Shuman of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies wrote in this month’s Yes! Magazine that while local businesses generate 50% of all economic activity, “local businesses receive none of our pension savings.  Nor do they receive any investment capital from mutual, venture, or hedge funds.  The result is that all of us, even stalwart advocates of community development, overinvest in the Fortune 500 companies we distrust and underinvest in the local businesses we know are essential for local vitality.  This situation represents a colossal market failure.”

SOLUTION #1

The EcoSector Portal is actually a carefully designed tool for solving the problem Shuman writes about by helping local investors find and invest in green businesses near where they live. The Portal can be used by community leaders now for free to help them organize and revitalize entire local economies.

If you like this reason, please join the EcoSector Industry Association today with your membership gift of $1 or whatever you like.

Why is it crucial to transform the financial sector? After lobbying Congress for the environment from 1990 to 2000, I concluded that financial sector decisions are even more important than political ones in shaping how people treat our ecosystems.  After all, even if destruction is “legal”, most of it won’t happen without business financing. And, even if the harm is “illegal”, the finance sector provides the money businesses use to either fight government  regulations in court or lobby to “legalize”  harmful activities.

I believe we environmentalists have an urgent need to come together and take true leadership roles in the finance sector if we want to accomplish long lasting eco-solutions. This means adding a whole new set of options beyond today’s “socially responsible” investment funds which totally exclude early-stage investing – the very lifeline between where we are now and the true ecologically-sustainable economy of the future.

Today, I’m kicking off a 10-day campaign to gain 100 new founding members for the EcoSector Industry Association. Several people have already become  paying members. These early members helped crash-test EcoSector’s unique recurring micro-gift system.  Now the technology is functioning beautifully, and it’s time to go to the next level!

Based on the membership gifts so far, 100 new members will make EcoSector nearly self-sustaining, and enable us to carry out vital strategies to reach a national audience with this message.

Each day for the next ten days, I’m going to give one good reason for you and your friends to join the EcoSector Industry Association for $1 or whatever amount you like. I’ll note one major systemic problem a day, and describe how EcoSector solves it. At the end of ten days, I’ll let everyone know the results.