Crowdfunding or the act of raising investment dollars locally within a community can be traced in North Carolina to the early 20th century and potentially even earlier. Many of our community’s most iconic buildings were developed with financing provided by local residents. In early 1921, a committee … Read more

Crowdfunding, a method of raising money over the Internet, usually in modest increments from large numbers of individuals, has been around for almost 20 years. Informed cultural critics (and now, readers of this blog) often point to British neo-prog rock band Marillion’s 1997 email plea to fans for … Read more

Earlier posts on this blog have explored the idea of crowdfunding and its legal implications, growing popularity as a source of capital, and use in supporting local businesses. As these posts explained, crowdfunding is the concept of online fundraising from a pool of many different donors or investo … Read more

A previous CED blog post analyzed securities law as it relates to crowdfunding, in which businesses use mass marketing and web-based platforms to raise investment capital from many investors in small amounts, with each investor becoming a share owner in the business. Another post described a differe … Read more

Securities laws rarely provide the introductory hook writers dream about, but they do represent a substantial challenge that many real estate developers must address. Over the last two years, the United States Congress and North Carolina State House each proposed crowdfunding legislation that lessen … Read more

This is the fifth in a series of blog posts on tools available to local governments to assist small businesses. Previous posts have covered revolving loan funds (parts I and II), loan loss reserves (III) and capital sources for loan funds (IV). The fifth topic in this series is crowdfunding. The his … Read more