Slow Money makes first investments

An investment vehicle that takes a page from the Slow Food movement and asks investors to content themselves with slower and lower returns may sound like a bad idea on paper, but several key members of the Investors' Circle network, including Investors' Circle CEO Woody Tasch, Adina CEO and Odwalla founder Greg Steltenpohl, and RSF Social Ventures CEO Don Shaffer, are convinced by it. The network's Slow Money fund has been (perhaps unsurprisingly) slow in getting off the ground, but Tasch recently announced the kick-off of its first real fund-raising in May at the Investors' Circle spring conference in San Francisco.

"We are officially a 501(c)3 with the intention of developing a fund for investing in local food systems," Tasch told the audience. "And if all goes well, we'll be in the market with a $100 million fund by 2009."

Slow Money has already made its first investment, in Vermont-based High Mowing Seeds, which supplies seeds to 75 percent of the organic farmers in the country, according to founder and CEO Tom Stearns. High Mowing Seeds raised $800,000 in convertible debt, including $100,000 from Slow Money. Investors will earn 6 percent interest on their money over the next five years, paid in a balloon payment in the fifth year, at which point they can opt to leave their money in and let it grow or term out the debt at ten years, according to Stearns. High Mowing Seeds currently sells to 15,000 U.S. farmers and gardeners, with sales currently totaling $1 million and Stearns projects $3 million in sales over the next two years.

"Between when we got here and World War II, we never really had time to settle on this land before the Industrial Revolution, so capital markets are really skewed to favor complex, short-term investments rather than transparent, long-term investments, but things are changing," Don Shaffer, CEO of RSF Social Ventures, told Sustainable Industries. "People are looking beyond screened mutual funds at other ways to align their values with investment. There is a market for people who want to invest in communities."

Still, Slow Money may need to fine tune its message if it expects to get even progressive investors involved. "It's important not to distance yourself from the venture capital community when making less traditional investments," Penelope Douglas, managing director of Pacific Community Management and a partner with Pacific Community Ventures, said at a recent Slow Money round table discussion. Tasch had presented Slow Money investments as those that could guarantee a 5 to 10 percent return and that require investors to leave money in rather than seek an exit strategy.

"It's better to just do it," Douglas said. "Just make the investments the way you see fit and by doing that demonstrate how your approach can succeed. Get to it and don't worry about putting concepts together."