Opportunity Zones are a great "opportunity" for impact investors to deploy new capital into low income communities spurring economic development. While most of the attention has been focused on real estate transactions, I am most interested in using the Opportunity Zone mechanism to invest in businesses that start, growth, and expand into Opportunity Zones. For instance, an angel investor could make an equity investment in a start up business located in an opportunity zone. Perhaps the business is a spin off from a university, or operates in an accelerator or shared workspace, or has leased space in a warehouse. By investing equity, the business can employee more people, buy more services, and offer great products to their customers. Today, angel investors are doing this already. But may deals that angels evaluate are "on the bubble" -- they are attractive but not overwhelmingly so. The Opportunity Fund provisions put the thumb on the scale to do the deal rather than pass on it. How?
Here is a recently published primer from LISC on how to make Opportunity Fund investments http://www.lisc.org/opportunity-zones/community-partners-playbook/ #OpportunityZones #ImpactInvesting
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