Mission Statement

Guest Post: Ecosystem Marketplace

2011-06-30T12:21:00.003-04:00

At $3 Billion Per Annum, Biodiversity Markets Dwarf the Voluntary Carbon Market

The biodiversity market posted at least $3 billion in transactions last year, showing steady growth, according to a new report out from Ecosystem Marketplace. The “2011 Update: State of Biodiversity Markets” tracks biodiversity offsets and other compensation mechanisms globally, taking a look at new activity since last year’s benchmark report, “State of Biodiversity Markets.” The new report finds between $2.4 and $4 billion worth of transactions. Actual market volume is likely much higher, since price data is unavailable for about 80 percent of transactions, according to Ecosystem Marketplace.

Most of the action is happening through ‘mitigation banks,’ which generate credits from ecological restoration projects that can be purchased by any party looking to offset their environmental damage, either voluntarily or to comply with the law. (Regulated offsets take place within a ‘mitigation hierarchy’ framework; offsets can only be purchases if all other options – avoidance and minimization – can be exhausted.)

Done right, compensatory mitigation delivers a net environmental benefit: the restored natural habitat is both larger than the area damaged and better integrated into the regional ecosystem. About 70 percent of species banks are private operations that seek to earn a profit; others are run by government or non-profit organizations.

The US wetland and stream mitigation banking industry still dominates, accounting for between $2 and $3.6 billion of payments tracked in 2010. But Australian biodiversity markets are growing fast, and a new European Commission goal of a “no net loss” strategy for biodiversity on the continent by 2015 promises to be a shot in the arm for the EU offset market.

Business’ use of biodiversity offsets to address environmental impacts in their supply chains was another emerging trend noted in the report. GreenPalm’s sustainably produced palm oil certification, for example, allows producers sourcing palm oil to ensure a biodiversity-neutral footprint by purchasing certificates equal to the volume used. Kellogg Company recently announced that it will begin purchasing GreenPalm certificates to cover 100% of its palm oil use. Meanwhile, Earthmind’s Green Development Initiative is developing a common biodiversity unit (measured in terms of certified land management) that would allow companies to compensate for global supply chain impacts.

Use of compensation mechanisms like these can have huge impact in developing countries, where many of the world’s biodiversity ‘hotspots’ are found and where biodiversity loss continues apace. The gap between rich and poor countries was a major finding in the “2011 Update: State of Biodiversity Markets” report. This is perhaps unsurprising – biodiversity markets have relatively high institutional capacity requirements. But on the other hand, market tools can bring in biodiversity finance when government coffers and traditional conservation approaches are coming up short, as they certainly are these days.

This issue – Can biodiversity markets be made to work in developing countries? How do they compare to traditional foreign aid or conservation financing? What are their limits – is the topic of an upcoming webinar Mission Markets is hosting with Ecosystem Marketplace on Monday July 11th at 10 am EDT (2 pm GDT). We encourage you to attend, learn more about the new “State of Biodiversity Markets” report, and discuss these questions with our panelists, who include Ecosystem Marketplace’s Becca Madsen, Kaavya Varma of the GIST Advisory, Jaime Cavelier of The Global Environmental Facility (GEF), and Andrew Bovarnick of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). Click here to register.

Download the “2011 Update: State of Biodiversity Markets” report.

Ecosystem Marketplace, a project of the non-profit organization Forest Trends, is a leading source of information on environmental markets and payments for ecosystem services. Our publicly available information sources include annual reports, quantitative market tracking, weekly articles, daily news, and newsletters designed for different payments for environmental services stakeholders. We believe that by providing solid and trustworthy information on prices, regulation, science, and other market-relevant issues, we can help payments for ecosystem services and incentives for reducing pollution become a fundamental part of our economic and environmental systems, helping make the priceless valuable.

Guest Post: Mick Minard, REEF Reports

2011-06-24T10:19:00.002-04:00

Visual Journalism and the Growth of Social Capital Markets

At the intersection of private enterprise and social service delivery, a new generation of social entrepreneurs are launching viable ventures to address our most pressing social challenges across an array of geographies and sectors. A new investment class is rising to meet their needs, and there is a groundswell of interest across the globe to invest capital for both social and environmental impact in addition to a financial return.

As these worlds intertwine, relying on common bonds of urgency and purpose, this nascent relationship between social enterprise, impact investors and communities worldwide will require a communications strategy that captures and reports the entire spectrum of meaning and metrics to inform investment decisions, attract capital, satisfy stakeholders and influence policy.

At the end of 2010, I started to design a visual communications strategy that would capture and convey the real wealth and higher purpose of the impact investing sector: the creation of an enabling environment for people to enjoy long, healthy and creative lives. I explored the role of social sector capacity-building, strategic communications and documentary photography (i.e., my profession) in the creation, growth and sustainability of social capital markets (estimated at around US$400 billion to US$1 trillion.) With the explosion of digital and social media, I wondered whether the transformative power of visual journalism could be a new business strategy for this emerging social movement and new asset class. Would I create new visibility and legitimacy for social enterprise and impact investing, drive awareness of issues and adoption of innovations, through a mobile, photojournalistic platform? If so, it would need to achieve the following:

Inspire collective action and coordinated innovation, encourage alliances, build industry infrastructure
Support the identification, capacity-building and scaling of market-ready and worthy social enterprises, and help to direct significant new capital flows to these enterprises
Complement and reinforce emerging and established industry standards, systems and integrative reporting practice
Capable of spanning boundaries and communicating across sectors, while appealing to a wide spectrum of key stakeholders with diverse financial expectations and social interests
Translate social processes, complex connections, issues and technical topics to make them intelligible and compelling for non-specialized audiences
Catalyze critical conversations about the nature of social change

Early in 2011 I founded REEF Reports (Realizing the Ecosystem Effects of Finance)  to document, communicate and publicize impact investing opportunities and successes worldwide by using the most powerful tools that humankind has devised: storytelling and photography. Paired together, these art forms have proven capable of facilitating and translating highly complex social processes, while expanding our consciousness, reflecting our times and testing our courage.

- Mick Minard, Strategic Communications Consultant

Guest Post: One Planet Investments

2011-06-21T10:13:00.004-04:00

Top 5 Dirty Secrets of Impact Investing

1. Any investment can be an impact investment, by adding environmental, social and governance (ESG) objectives in addition to financial return targets.

2. “Impact Investment” as a formal discipline only emerged in 2007. While some of us have done social investing for decades under different names, most teams and managers (as well as social entrepreneurs) are relatively new/young. Experience is critical to success, but relevant track records and benchmarks are scarce.

3. “Market Rate Returns” don’t exist – at least not in the form of 25% IRRs. Some years investors (VC, PE or mutual fund) do well, some years they do very poorly. What you should look for as an investor, or aim for as an entrepreneur, is a commercial rate of return.

4. Capital isn’t the primary roadblock, multiple bottom line investment management capacity is the weak link. In the US, at the end of 2009, there were almost 7000 hedge funds and almost 800 VC firms – but only two microfinance asset managers with more than US$100 million under management. In order to massively increase funding to ventures with social impact, we need new business models for social impact investment management that reduce risk, cost and time to market.

5. Achieving impact means understanding your core values. Defining a mission isn’t enough. What specific objectives do you have for your impact investments — and can your investment advisor or fund manager deliver performance metrics around those objectives? Are you aware that you can create impact at three different levels?

- Lauren Burnhill, CEO, One Planet Investments

Lauren began working in social impact in 1983 at the Organization of American States, where she worked with KC Soares on community-based income generating activities. Over the past three decades, she has held increasingly responsible positions in emerging markets investments at the Inter-American Investment Corporation, Barclays Bank (BZW), Ariel Ventures and most recently as Chief Investment Officer at ACCION International, a leading microfinance network. At ACCION, Lauren developed new funds, achieved significant impact (end beneficiaries increased from 1 million to 7 million in less than 3 years) and generated important financial results (more than US$137 million in income). Her experience covers a range of financial instruments, including equity, quasi-equity, debt and special-purpose investment vehicles, across a variety of priority sectors, including microfinance, SME, technology & telecoms, health, wellness & nutrition and energy. Lauren's most notable successes include the establishment of BancoSol (structuring, founding investor, governance), ProFund (structuring, governance, first microfinance fund), Banco Compartamos IPO (initiated liquidity event activities), Equity Bank IPO (as Africap investor), and creating and launching the Gateway Microfinance Infrastructure Fund (global first for investing in companies that serve microfinance institutions).

This blog post was re-posted from The Money in the Middle. Read more here.

Mission Markets Issuer Perspectives: Quantum Intech

2011-06-16T08:57:00.001-04:00

Three Often Ignored Factors in CSR – Are you doing all Three?

Corporate Social Responsibility begins with self-responsibility. If not, social responsibility can’t sustain. When we aren’t self-responsible, we drain personal energy needed to power our social mission. We punch a hole in our energy bucket, limiting our effectiveness. Social responsibility is not an entity that survives with people feeding it only when they have energy to do so. It is an expression of who we are, individually and collectively. There is a consciousness shift going on, and part of the shift is realizing that the end cannot justify the means. We have to be the change we want to see. It’s just math. To do that, we have to include three often ignored factors in our definition of sustainability:

1.    Emotional Sustainability – balance and self-management of our emotional energy expenditures; emotional alignment
2.    Mental Sustainability – managing time and overload
3.    Environmental Sustainability (internal) - healthy attitudes and behaviors; respect and care for others and for oneself

Often, what drains sustainability initiatives is neglecting one or more of these factors. A major drain is stress overload, which gets justified as necessary in the name of mission. But this is an inefficient use of our internal energy. Stress compromises mental and emotional well-being, health, relationships, creativity, intuitive discernment and more.

Internal energy management is realized as people operate more from the heart. It’s interesting that more mission statements are mentioning the importance of the heart in leadership, teamwork and client service. Whether this implies listening from the heart or practicing heart values like respect, non-blame, compassion and appreciation, there is growing awareness of the need for more heart connection and a growing understanding of the stress and dysfunction that are created without it.

The Institute of HeartMath has developed researched-based tools for developing these three factors of sustainability. As people increase their capacity for internal energy management and heart-infused intentions (not just mind-infused), they can progressively establish an ascending octave of self-responsibility, resilience, passion and social responsibility. This gives new life and new meaning to what it takes to sustain sustainability.

Deborah Rozman is President and CEO of Quantum Intech, Inc. (dba HeartMath Inc.) and serves on the advisory board of the Institute of HeartMath. Quantum Intech, with its scientifically validated HeartMath® programs, is a world leader in personal and organizational stress reduction. HeartMath provides individuals and businesses with a set of tools, methods and emWave technologies to empower themselves to navigate through stressful, changing times. HeartMath programs have enabled organizations to achieve a 2:1 ROI in lowered health costs within one year – while at the same time increasing employee satisfaction and performance. The aggregate savings – and additional returns from enhanced performance – add up fast, creating a significant value proposition for companies and society as a whole.

Quantum Intech also has a strong reputation as a socially responsible and triple bottom line company in partnership with the 501(c)3 non-profit stress research organization, Institute of HeartMath, which provides HeartMath’s stress solutions to the underserved, including schools, community service organizations and veterans.

Read more from Deborah Rozman on 3BL.

Communications Barriers in Impact Investing: A perspective from Mission Markets issuer member T. Wright Dickinson

2011-06-14T14:55:00.002-04:00

The topic of sustainable and impact investing often brings together an unlikely crowd, from tree-huggers to philanthropists to Wall Street veterans. While it can be a fascinating and productive combination, there are clear challenges in communicating between these groups that can impede progress in accomplishing our overarching goal—to create positive social and environmental value through investment strategies.

T. Wright Dickinson, a fourth-generation rancher of Vermillion Ranch and issuer member on Mission Markets, shared with me some interesting perspectives based on his experiences on the farm and at conferences.

“My work as a cattle rancher is informed first and foremost by an appreciation and love for natural resources and stewardship of the environment that we are entrusted with,” says T. Wright, when asked what gets him out of bed every morning. “I was raised with an ethic that we want to leave the land better than we found it. Along with our traditional livestock production, I see our ability to provide environmental services like clean air, clean water, and species preservation, as a sustainable business model for my family’s operation.”

After attending and speaking at a number of industry conferences and attempting to obtain funding for his operation, T. Wright brings up some important challenges that are applicable not only to the U.S. agricultural markets, but across the impact investing spectrum.

In certain sectors, it is challenging for companies and organizations to provide the profit margins and rates of return that many investors are expecting while at the same time maximizing social and environmental impact. There are, however, innovative ways of generating additional revenue. T. Wright shares with us his experience in this area:

“The challenge in agriculture is that land prices and other input costs are so high that rates of return end up being fairly low, creating a real challenge for us to create a sustainable business. We have tried to broaden our business model by monetizing the environmental benefits that we create as a part of our normal business practice. We believe environment and economics cannot be separated.”

Another issue is a simple “language barrier” between investors and sustainable businesses. We need to work harder to understand one another across industries and sectors because the larger problems that we are ambitiously trying to tackle are in need of an interdisciplinary, cross-sector approach. In other words, investors who may be more than three generations removed from any farming activity need to be talking with farmers whose families have been working the land for generations.

“What really jumped out at me at a recent workshop on ecosystem development was the communications gap between investors and farmers and ranchers,” says T. Wright, “If I expect people to talk my language, which I do, then I need to be willing to do the same for investors, on their turf, and in a language they understand. I came away from that workshop with a renewed commitment to talk to the investment community more effectively. I was drawn to Mission Markets and your vision because your platform is an efficient way for me to start that dialogue.”

Recently entering the 126th year of their family operation, Vermillion Ranch has big plans ahead. T. Wright speaks passionately of his vision for his own niece and nephew to continue the sixth generation of sustainable business.

“As a part of our community industry and our environment, there is a role for us in raising beef in a sustainable manner and also a role for us in providing valuable environmental services,” T. Wright explains, “We hope to connect with investors that would like to become part of such an endeavor and who understand the value of our operation and wish to help us grow and to capitalize on some of these benefits.”

We at Mission Markets are thrilled to see a movement developing around these important issues and hope to cultivate the development of sustainable agriculture as an important sector within the broader community using our marketplace. If you are an accredited investor with an interest in the work of T. Wright and others doing great work in the space, you can register for free in order to learn more about the opportunities available. We hope that you will join our movement to bring transparency and efficiency to these markets by becoming a member of our online community.

-Sonali Mehta-Rao, Mission Markets Associate, Business Development/Communications

Vermillion Ranch Limited Partnership is a fifth generation family-owned and operated open range livestock production business. Since 1885, Vermillion Ranch has continuously been in the business, clearly reflecting the sustainability (both economically and environmentally) of the operation. Throughout all of the economic fluctuations of these years, the Ranch has produced food for our society from rangelands that retain the healthy native plant communities that evolved on these lands. T. Wright is a founding board member of Partners for Western Conservation national non-profit seeking to play the role of implementing ecosystem services and facilitating them between landowners who can provide those services and those who need to offset their impact-the oil and gas industry, homebuilders, and large corporations.

Guest Post: Educate!

2011-06-08T10:55:00.001-04:00

Investing in Africa: Enterprising Education and Microtechnology

When I first sat down to research the Ugandan market, I read a statistic which made me first smile with giddy anticipation and then shiver in trepidation: over 50% of the Ugandan population is under the age of 18. Uganda has a population of over 32 million people. I smiled because that means my field, education, must be a thriving industry; however, as a teacher I know the hazards of fitting such a large a number of youth together into classrooms and the dangers of leaving them out.

I am in the business of Enterprising Education. It is a new field of social entrepreneurs who recognize that the factory-model education we inherited from the 19th century cannot be exported around the world to markets such as Uganda where there are millions of young people living on two dollars a day. The solution is neither more low-quality public schools nor more traditional private schools. The growth is in entirely new models of education enterprises. I am part of a global network of social innovators with solutions on how to educate the world in self-sustainable schools or without classrooms. This method allows students to earn and learn at the same time by using new cost-saving technology such as cell-phones, community-based web portals, and even youtube.com!

My organization, Educate!, is at the forefront of this new wave of Enterprising Education. Educate! unlocks the potential of youth in Africa to combat poverty, disease, and environmental degradation. We provide a proven mix of a social entrepreneurship course, long term mentoring, and an alumni program that empowers high school aged youth to create effective solutions to the most intractable problems facing their communities. Educate! has over 1,000 young people from every major demographic group in Uganda: urban, rural, wealthy, impoverished, etc. The government of Uganda asked Educate! to incorporate our curriculum into the national education system, which will reach 100,000 youth by 2015 and be the first national social entrepreneurship curriculum in the world. This curriculum pilot will also include an extensive randomized impact evaluation. Educate’s core model is exponential empowerment – a long-term investment in youth so they can positively impact and empower many others. Educate! students have directly impacted over 15,000 lives and created thousands of dollars in value for their communities.

Our newest initiative iterates on the Microfinance Institution model by tailoring it to youth (who are not legally permitted to take out loans in Uganda) and to green technology. Educate!’s MicroTechnology Institution (MTI) is a sustainable answer to challenges associated with a small-scale start-up: lack of information and training, inability to absorb R&D costs, lack of access to capital, and most importantly, poor cash-flow management. Instead of loaning young people cash which can be appropriated by parents and caretakers or misused, MTI loans ready-made sets of technology equipment. MTI focuses on appropriate technology such as solar power, energy-efficient stoves, sustainable agriculture, water filtration, etc. First, we train students on the creation, maintenance, and usage of existing development technologies. Then, we give them the tools to organize community based social enterprises. Finally, we open a free space for them to experiment and innovate. It borrows a system for financial sustainability from MFI by operating as a revolving loan program. MTI can thus incubate a new generation of “technopreneurs” in Uganda!

I believe the best investments in Africa are in MicroTechnology and Enterprising Education. The MTI model, similar to the MFI model, has the potential to become a global tool in the fight against global poverty, turning knowledge and potential into concrete social ventures and projects. And, our disparate group of small giants in Enterprising Education needs large numbers of patient capitalists who believe as we do that the future of education is not in financing more classrooms. Educate! has created a model of education: the curriculum is tailored to the skills and experience students need to lead enterprises, the teachers are mentors, and the classroom is the community itself where Educate! students start social businesses.

Educate! student George William Bakka started a microfinance organization at age 19. Most recently, Phiona Ntegeka, also 19, initiated the planting of 20,000 tree seedlings in a heavily deforested area of her community. A young Educate! alumni named Lillian Aero is currently leading a social enterprise with international sales, employing 36 women affected by HIV/AIDS.

Ultimately, isn’t that exactly what we need in Africa– the next generation of leaders and entrepreneurs?

So, when you sit down to research the next emerging market to invest in, remember two questions: How many people are under 18 yrs old? And how can I invest in them?

By Angelica Towne

Angelica Towne is the Program Director for Educate! in Uganda. At Educate!, Angelica designed a trendsetting model of social entrepreneurship education that has transformed the lives and communities of 830 students, is being used by nearly 20 organizations in 8 countries across four continents, and was translated to French and Swahili. The Ministry of Education of Uganda recently asked Angelica to write the social entrepreneurship unit of the national entrepreneurship curriculum – the first of its kind in the world.

Educate! has been backed by Echoing Green, the leading venture philanthropy fund, won the Ashoka Changemakers Quality Education in Africa award, received first place in the Pan African Awards for Entrepreneurship in Education, and was recognized by EntrepreneurMagazine as one of 100 Brilliant Companies of 2009.

Reporting from SOCAP Europe: Mission Markets Goes International

2011-06-01T13:30:00.001-04:00

Greetings from old Amsterdam! I am sitting with Steve Rocco (Mission Markets Co-Founder) in the foyer of a building that was built when New York was New Amsterdam, and the wireless internet is faster than in our offices in Soho. SOCAP picked a great spot for its inaugural European conference.

The conference is sold out (again, that makes three years running!) which bodes well for the social capital markets in general, but it makes for an awful lot to absorb in just three days.

I presented Mission Markets to a global audience of impact investors (yes that's me in the photo) yesterday, and am pleased to report it went smashingly well.

We were already pleasantly surprised how well-known Mission Markets was here on The Continent before our session, and afterwards it only got better. We may not be a household name yet, but within this admittedly small pond, we're pretty big fish and it feels terrific.

Timing our announcement of Mission Markets' partnership with Impact Investment Exchange Asia with SOCAP worked out nicely - no surprise that news played well to this international audience. I plugged the partnership in the presentation too, in addition to HubCulture, the brains behind the Ven digital social currency.

The conference is winding down now, there's an oddly dressed man informing us the final session is about to begin by gently banging a gong as he wanders the room (sounds tacky but here it works) and so I will end here. I'll have more to say about the experience after giving it a while to soak in... dag!

- Jeff Tuller, CTO/Director of Social Metrics

Guest Post: Slow Money NYC

2011-05-10T12:24:00.001-04:00

Mission Markets + Slow Money NYC = Entrepreneur Showcase and Resource Exchange, this Saturday, May 14th in Brooklyn, NY.

A former boss of mine, whenever he heard a good idea, would look at his staff and say, "Let's dream that into existence." He was directing a team of artists, and his words were our marching orders to transform our wildest thoughts into tangible work.

I was reminded of this when I read the book Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money by Woody Tasch. For a few years now, our country has been wading through tough economic times. Yet, to give an example, we continue to search for signs of recovery in a higher GDP. Considering that the GDP measures all economic activity -- everything from car accidents to mountain-top removal included -- it hardly seems a measure of improvement. It's time for kindred thinkers like those behind Mission Markets and the Slow Money movement to dream something new into existence.

With these lofty goals, I'm happy to announce tangible work right now: This Saturday, May 14th, Slow Money NYC is proud to partner with Mission Markets for the first-ever Entrepreneur Showcase and Resource Exchange in Brooklyn, NY. The event will be at The Commons, 388 Atlantic Avenue, from 1-6 pm.

Slow Money NYC is a network of food activists, investors and entrepreneurs. We nurture a range of conversations in order to actively develop funding and investment channels for local and sustainable food enterprises. Our work is based on the principles of collaborative knowledge sharing, mutually reinforcing relationships, community participation, fairness, diversity and non-violence. Like Mission Markets, we want to see investment directed towards companies that restore our environment. We believe that, in turn, will restore the economy.

On Saturday, May 14th the doors are open to all. In addition to the presentations from the ten Slow Money NYC entrepreneur finalists, we’ll have a Resource Exchange with numerous exhibitors who offer a range of services for sustainable food and farming entrepreneurs. And we're delighted to host Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer as the Opening Speaker.

Why this and why now? On page 116 of Slow Money, Tasch gives us the status quo: "I would argue that an investor whose financial activity is predicated on extraction -- on the linear take-make-waste methodologies of a world that had never seen the picture of the earth rising over the moon -- is not really an investor at all. He is not truly investing himself in that to which he is applying his capital. Quite the opposite. He is keeping himself completely out of it, denying any personal connection to or responsibility for that to which his capital is lending its energy."

Later in the book, within pages 132-136, he writes, "...financial markets are man-made. And we can remake them...We need to create a new market. A new kind of market. A market that will turn the market into a market or that market."

Join Mission Markets and Slow Money NYC as we bring into existence new, sustainable food and farming markets for New York City this Saturday, May 14th.

Nicole Reed
Steering Committee
Slow Money NYC

First Wetland Mitigation Project Financing listing on Mission Markets

2011-04-08T14:12:00.000-04:00

We are very pleased to announce our first Wetland Mitigation Project Financing listing. Located in Skagit County, Washington State, the 396 acre wetland mitigation bank will offer an estimated 242 "general wetland credits" over the next ten years as the bank matures. The restored wetlands will be typical of bottom-land floodplain systems that provide fish, water quality, storm water storage, wildlife, and hydraulic and floodplain process functions, and endangered species habitat.

The mission of the Skagit Environmental Bank Project is to create and preserve 396 acres of critical habitat processes and functions in a way that contributes to achieving a net gain of those values and strengthens the integrity of those ecosystems, while successfully achieving economic and social development and increasing human health and well-being for our generation and for generations to come.

Here at Mission Markets we are promoting conservation finance as an investible sector to socially responsible impact investors. Conservation projects like wetland mitigation banking not only offer potential above market returns but also produce tangible social and environmental benefits. Specifically, this project conserves wetlands and the wildlife, allowing these vital ecosystems to continue to provide a wide range of critical environmental services.

This project is listed on our Sustainable Impact Investing Platform (SIIP). Accredited investors can gain access to this listing by registering at www.missionmarkets.com.

- The Mission Markets Team

Mission Markets Musings: Rob Thomas

2011-04-01T10:09:00.003-04:00

I realized Michael Van Patten was following me after the third conference.

Social Venture Network, Slow Money Gathering, and SRI In The Rockies are all conferences I have attended for quite some time. The beauty of these conferences is the opportunity to network with like-minded members of our community. Michael is the founder and president of Mission Markets, and we soon sat down together to learn more about each other’s business.

To say Michael is enthusiastic would be a gross understatement. He radiates a passion for his work. Mission Markets is an active and robust community marketplace for impact investments of all kinds. I heard Michael out for an hour, and when he finally stopped for a breath I chimed in. I told him that Mission Markets is much like Social(k), in that we are both building investment products to fulfill a demand for conscientious investing--a demand that has reached critical mass. Our two businesses also took root in the same community of innovators who are looking for investments that make more than one kind of return.

Roughly put, Social(k) and Mission Markets put investors’ money to good work on the two opposite ends of the investment spectrum. Mission Markets fuels the growth of new firms, and Social(k) provides a place for employees of those firms to save and grow their money...where it can, in turn, grow the market more. It’s sustainable investment that sustains itself.

Social(k) offers organizations a chance to provide employees a way to learn about Triple Bottom Line accounting, Environmental, Social and Governance screens, and saving money for another day. Matching the investments in a retirement plan with the overall culture of the organization makes a huge difference to the employees, and grows the market share of sustainable business. Imagine a natural vitamin company asking employees to pick a fund heavy with Monsanto, or one loaded with Pfizer. Now imagine that same employee realizing they could invest in funds like Portfolio 21 as opposed to The Vice Fund. Let’s take a look at the difference between those funds, from the managers’ mouths:

From Portfolio 21’s website:

Portfolio 21 invests in companies designing ecologically superior products, using renewable energy, and developing efficient production methods. Portfolio 21 companies seek to prosper in the 21st Century by recognizing environmental sustainability as a fundamental human challenge and a tremendous business opportunity.

By contrast, the manager of The Vice Fund spoke gleefully to the AP of how he’s taking advantage of a dying demand for holdings in predatory companies. (Some of these quotes are so sinister that they may sound made up, but check the article out yourself.) Here is a highlight reel of his answer to the AP’s questions:

Were you at all reluctant to manage the fund because of its focus on sin stocks?

Not at all [...]These are stocks with the (financial) characteristics everybody says they want, and we're getting them at a discount. That's because certain people don't want to own them.

Your top holding, at about 12 percent of the fund's assets, is Philip Morris. What do you find attractive about one of the world's largest tobacco companies?

Philip Morris has international tobacco exposure, which is still growing. In emerging markets, people are smoking more, and they're going for brand name cigarettes.

Why have you cut back on gaming stocks?

Because gaming companies hold so much debt, and their U.S. growth prospects are limited.

We at Social(k) and Mission Markets are happy to welcome the rush of “certain people” who decided they have had enough of owning a stake in sin. We’ll happily welcome ex-Vice Fund investors when governments in foreign countries ban things like advertising Marlboro to children and reduce Philip Morris’s growth more and more. The message is clear: Gambling is so 20th century, and its growth prospects are limited.

Sustainable growth is, by nature, limitless.

To succeed in business is a challenge and a thrill. To see that, finally, the success of our sector is flying in the face of the old Gordon Gecko guard, that’s a milestone. I love that my client list reads like a who’s who in the Progressive world, and that we are all growing together.

As I became more familiar with Mission Markets’ clients, it became clear we were going to work together in some way. Many Social(k) clients can use a service that helps bring investment dollars, free up shareholder positions as needed, and, after they succeed, invest in some of the most exciting opportunities coming to market today. Mission Markets provides all that.

As I said before, the need for a marketplace for our community has been at critical mass for awhile. The work to bring this concept to life was challenging to say the least. It’s a good thing Michael does not need sleep.

The team at Mission Markets is deep with talent and experience. To think I could add value to that group was a little intimidating. But I have been here before. In March 1998 I was introduced to Bill Guerin, father of the NHL hockey star of the same name. Bill ran one of the most successful PaineWebber offices in the country, Hartford CT. The team, or teams, of talented people Bill had assembled was literally of legend. Ask any Kidder Peabody or PaineWebber manager about Bill Guerin, and pull up a chair. I never looked back. April 1st 1998 was my greatest April Fools Prank. In that office, there only two weeks - trainee, we still laugh. I spent 11 years there with four of the best teams in the UBS system, developed and own Social(k), and still thank them for the opportunity. So here I am again. A little different path to common project, with a great team.

- Rob Thomas, Mission Markets Relationship Manager

Mission Markets Musings: Vicky Stein

2011-03-31T15:07:00.002-04:00

It’s spring and the crocuses are finally peeking through in the garden. I am excited about the prospect of rebirth and regeneration that comes with this season. As I look around, I see some exciting new growth in impact investment opportunities as well. One that caught my eye recently is a press release from Enterprise Community Partners announcing the launch of their Community Impact Note.

Why is this noteworthy and why do I think this bodes well for the spring impact investing season? Well first, I am thrilled to see an industry leader like Enterprise creating a new vehicle to help investors support the development of not only affordable housing – but green affordable housing. I read about the work Enterprise is doing in a Wall Street Journal article last year. Dana Bourland, a Vice President with the Columbia, MD-based nonprofit predicted that the affordable housing industry will be 100% green by 2020. Why? Her answer was “Not only are green buildings better for the environment, but they make better financial sense too ….because they come with lower water and energy bills and lower tenant turnover rates.” An obvious win-win from my perspective!

I should also note that Enterprise had embarked on it’s Green Communities initiative back in 2004 when they “set out to prove that is was possible to bring the health, economic and environmental benefits of green building to low-income communities nationwide.” Over the past five years, the Enterprise Green Communities initiative has invested $700 million to build and preserve nearly 16,000 green affordable  homes. But Enterprise has not limited itself just to building green affordable housing; they want to transform local, state and national policies to encourage “a national commitment to healthier, greener affordable homes.”

With the introduction of the Enterprise Community Impact Note – Enterprise has given investors an easy way to put their money where their heart and their values are: investing in green affordable housing and community enhancing projects that also provide a financial return. Having a well established affordable housing developer offer this type of triple-bottom line investment instrument is an important sign that a true marketplace with investor friendly tools is growing in the fertile soil of impact investing. The challenge for many community based lending and investing organizations has been creating an instrument that enables investors to support their work while still meeting the needs of those investors. Enterprise has taken an important step forward with their Note and we at Mission Markets are pleased to spread the word about this innovative new impact investment product.

This new Note offering provides a wonderful new way to finance the supply of green affordable housing that uses environmentally sustainable and safe materials, reduces negative environmental impacts while improving energy efficiency. If you would like to learn more about the terms of this new note – please click here and read the press release. We look forward to seeing what else is growing in the impact investing garden this spring!

- Vicky Stein, Mission Markets Director of Community Investments

Mission Markets Musings: Andrea Alexopoulos

2011-03-08T11:55:00.000-05:00

My job here at Mission Markets gives me the unique opportunity to be inspired on a daily basis. I am in charge of Member Services -- that means I assist companies seeking capital that demonstrate a social or environmental mission to list their offering on our platform. Aside from providing these groups with the listing requirements, walking them through our platform, and encouraging their patience with our website, I have the privilege of learning about these different companies and the great work they are doing in the social and environmental space.

From funds to start ups, and from fisheries to habitat / conservation banks, I have seen so many different companies register on or inquire about Mission Markets. Some of the most interesting companies have been traditional consumer goods companies incorporating a social or environmental component -- like organic food delivery services or social enterprises employing women in developing countries. Others are tackling existing infrastructure shortcomings by using social and environmental strategies -- including LEED certified housing projects and natural gas vehicles locally owned in Latin America. Most of these companies praise our efforts to create a sustainable investment platform but I think the companies on our site are the ones that deserve all the praise.

All of these organizations have one thing in common -- they are harnessing the power of business to solve some of the world's most pressing sustainability issues. Granted, none of these companies can ever single-handedly "save the world", but they can set a great example for the way business should be conducted. If enough companies can realize the benefits of doing good while doing well, we may see a paradigm shift in what we accept from companies doing business. It might start out small, but when I see all of the companies that have expressed an interest in Mission Markets, it makes me very optimistic that one day we will see social and environmental missions replacing even those of the largest corporations.

Forever an optimist,

Andrea Alexopoulos
Mission Markets Director of Member Services

Mission Markets Feature Story in Green Money Journal

2011-03-01T13:39:00.000-05:00

Mission Markets was featured in the Spring 2011 issue of Green Money Journal in a great article written by CEO and Founder Michael Van Patten about his journey from Wall Street to the social and environmental markets. Here is a brief quote from the article:

"Mission Markets: One Market(place), Many Missions"

"My early years heavily influenced my decision to focus my career on growing the impact investing space through the establishment of my current company, Mission Markets. I spent the majority of my teenage years in Ecuador, where my father worked as a diplomat. At this impressionable age, I had the unusual opportunity to experience life in the developing world--Every day I was faced with the extremes of poverty and vast wealth. To this day, I am stunned by the inequalities that exist in the world."

Click here to read the full article!

- The Mission Markets Team

Kevin Jones of GOOD Capital announces "Mission Markets Working"

2011-02-11T12:18:00.001-05:00

Check out this great post from our friends at Good Capital!

"Mission Markets Working"

By Kevin Jones

"I’m seeing the infrastructure of the social capital market come together with accelerating speed and clarity this year. An important step toward maturity was reached when Impact Investors bought equity in two social enterprises on the Mission Markets platform. Lumni, an international pioneer in what it calls “human capital financing” invests in higher-education for low-income students, raised $50,000. HotFrog, an online media portal that has yet to launch, raised $25,00.

The investments come from a Family Office and an accredited investor, people who believe creating the social capital market itself is important, along with investing in an enterprise. In addition, Better World Books, a $50 million plus revenue for profit social enterprise is using Mission Markets for a secondary offering. “Secondary liquidity is critical to driving a fast moving enterprise’s growth as it reaches scale, and we are the first in impact investing space to reach this milestone,” said BWB CEO, David Murphy. Better World Books is a Good Capital portfolio company.

The transactions are more important for what they represent than the dollar totals. They are a solid step away from the visionary social enterprise founder having to make endless rounds of sales pitches, losing focus on her company while she raises money. Things that had just been concepts and ideas are becoming real and institutionalized as the infrastructure of the market that wants to create a good world comes together."

Click here to read the full article.

- The Mission Markets Team

Mission Markets 101 online training Webinar on Wednesday, February 16th at 3pm EST

2011-02-10T11:31:00.001-05:00

Please join us for a Mission Markets 101 online training webinar on Wednesday, February 16th at 3:00pm EST. Learn from our President and Co-founder, Steve Rocco, how the Mission Markets investment platform makes it easy for investors to find sustainable and impact investment opportunities.

This webinar will feature 5-minute presentations from three Mission Markets members representing hot topics in impact investing. The presentors are: Leading social enterprise Better World Books, triple bottom line microfinance cooperative, Envest, and Farmland LP, an innovative fund focused on sustainable agriculture.

Don't miss this opportunity to learn more about Mission Markets and our members!

Space is limited.

Reserve your Webinar seat now:

https://missionmarketsvrs.webex.com/missionmarketsvrs/onstage/g.php?d=666861861&t=a&EA=sonali%40missionmarkets.com&ET=532d51763636cf3e239474aefe4c34eb&ETR=cf91ae0d22f178e99edacab3905e8f5b&RT=MiMxMQ==&p

You will receive a confirmation email immediately after you register with a link to join the meeting.

The online training will show you how to use the Mission Markets investment platform to access the following services:

· A diverse selection of pre-vetted and third-party certified impact investment opportunities

· Secondary liquidity for investors

· Measurement and reporting of financial, social and environmental performance

· Transaction clearing and settlement

· Improved access to investors for social and environmental companies seeking capital

· Greater efficiency and reduced cost of raising capital

Upcoming Virtual Roadshows

Mission Markets will be hosting exclusive virtual roadshows for registered investor members. If you are interested in learning more about these companies and other opportunities on the investment platform, sign up now as an investor member to receive invitations to these presentations.

MISSION MARKETS FACILITATES FIRST TRANSACTIONS ON IMPACT INVESTMENT PLATFORM

2011-02-03T11:05:00.001-05:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: February 3, 2011

NEW YORK—After recently launching the world’s first fully functional, FINRA-regulated electronic impact investment platform, Mission Markets has executed its first two transactions. This is a significant milestone for Mission Markets in realizing its goal of increasing transparency, efficiency, liquidity and volume of capital flowing into these new markets.

A recently published report on impact investing by J.P. Morgan and the Rockefeller Foundation estimates an investment opportunity of between $400 billion and $1 trillion and classifies impact investing as an emerging asset class.

“This is a pivotal moment in Mission Markets’ history and for the impact investing space,” says Mission Markets Founder and CEO Mike Van Patten, “These first two investments show that impact investors are willing to trust in and use our electronic marketplace to find new opportunities and diversify their portfolios.”

The two companies that have raised capital through the Mission Markets investment platform are Hotfrog LLC, an early stage, triple bottom line new media company with Rockefeller family lead investment and Lumni, Inc., an international pioneer in human capital financing that facilitates investment in higher-education for low-income students. The investments come from a Family Office and a High Net Worth Individual.

“We are honored to be one of the first companies to successfully transact on the Mission Markets investment platform,” says Laurie Lane-Zucker, Hotfrog’s CEO, “This transformational infrastructure is critical to the maturation of the impact investing industry.”

Felipe Vergara, Lumni’s CEO notes, “Lumni is thrilled to start working with Mission Markets. We believe Mission Markets will be a key partner in our vision to invest in human capital and transform the lives of hundreds of thousands of talented young students.”

Mission Markets anticipates a dramatic increase in transaction opportunities benefiting mission-driven companies, organizations, and projects as the impact investing industry grows. If you are an accredited investor interested in learning more about impact investment opportunities or a socially or environmentally focused company seeking capital, click here to become a member. For more information on Mission Markets, visit www.missionmarkets.com.

Hotfrog LLC is a Founding B Corporation led by award-winning media entrepreneur Laurie Lane-Zucker that has attracted lead investment of $500,000 from Marion Rockefeller Weber, a highly regarded philanthropist and social venture investor.

Lumni Inc. designs and manages impact-investment funds that invest in diversified pools of students. Lumni operates in the U.S., Mexico, Colombia and Chile. Among Lumni’s investors are Calvert and MicroVest. Founder and CEO Felipe Vergara is an Ashoka Global Fellow and Endeavor Entrepreneur.

Mission Markets has launched the first secure, FINRA-regulated impact investing marketplace that provides accredited investors, investment advisors, and other financial professionals with an efficient way to identify, evaluate, and invest in socially and environmentally focused companies.

Portland Business Journal announces Mission Markets Partnership with Springboard Innovation

2011-02-02T14:04:00.000-05:00

The Portland Business Journal and Sustainable Business Oregon just released a story featuring Mission Markets and Springboard Innovation. Here is a brief quote from the article:

"The partnership highlights a growing interest in the practice of impact investing among both accredited investors and money managers on Wall Street as well as individuals inspired by the popularity of microfinance programs.

"We're sort of a LinkedIn platform for investor groups," said Michael Van Patten, founder and CEO of Mission Markets and a 20-year Wall Street veteran. "We try to provide an infrastructure for accessing capital."

Mission Markets is working with 85 companies in various stages of approval that the company will attempt to match up with a group of 90-and-growing accredited investors. Mission Markets complies with U.S. Securities and Exchange regulations and uses standards such as the Benefit Corporation certification and the Global Impact Investing Rating System to vet companies."

Click here to read more!

- The Mission Markets Team

Mission Markets Musings: Peter J. Mastella

2011-01-27T10:51:00.000-05:00

I recently joined the Mission Markets team as the Director of Climate Change Markets. What does that mean? As with any position or title, the person grows with the role and the role is plied as the person grows. For now, it seems my role is to oversee many aspects of the environmental side of the Mission Markets platforms.

Did you know that Mission Markets incorporates more than traditional impact investment? More than your typical (if anything truly is typical) microfinance opportunity? Mission Markets is actually a financial services firm leveraging technology and cloud computing to provide solutions to the sustainable market and community. I bet you didn't know that.

Mission Markets has developed three unique, secure transaction platforms that, when combined, create a holistic and expansive sustainable marketplace for discerning buyers and sellers in search of opportunities throughout the impact, environmental, and socially responsible sectors. So, "yes, Virginia. . ." (forget about Santa) "sustainability" incorporates the impact, environmental, and socially responsible sectors. That's why I'm here; because of the environmental side of sustainability. I'm also here because I believe in what we're doing at Mission Markets; that is, providing stakeholders in this sustainable community with tools enabling them to execute.
I spent years practicing in the M&A transaction world and participating in that ever-so-popular investment banking world - except I was one of the good guys. I didn't buy and sell credit default swaps, or securitize poorly vetted pools of mortgages and flog them off as decent investments. Rather, I financed and built portfolios of hard assets; particularly infrastructure assets. You know, the stuff we use every day - roads, bridges, water distribution, electricity production. Most relevant, I financed and built renewable energy generation facilities. So, I guess my role today is to provide my financial knowledge and capital markets know-how to the Mission Markets organization at large, while I help cement Mission Markets as the leader in facilitating environmental and clean energy transactions and projects.

Sound good? I think so. Wrap your head around this. An organization (e.g., company, government, foundation, etc.) wants to build or facilitate the development of a renewable energy or water conservation project. That organization should become a member of Mission Markets. Why, you ask? Well, for starters, that organization will need to raise capital for such a project. How do they do that? On the Mission Markets investment platform. Where member buyers and sellers can meet and entertain working with one another through investment.

That same organization would then want to oversee or ensure proper oversight and management of the project. Possibly ensure that the project was developed in a competitive, transparent, and cost effective environment. Does such a world exist? Yes; on the Mission Markets climate and sustainability platform. Where members can list requests for proposals, pick winning bidders, and manage the entire project development process securely and efficiently.

Then, in this world of environmental sustainability, these projects will produce intangible attributes (maybe you've heard of carbon credits or renewable energy certificates or water quality credits) that the organization will either wish to bank or monetize. Where will they do that? On the Mission Markets earth platform. Where member issuers of such intangible attributes can list those attributes for sale, and/or purchase such attributes in an exchange environment.

What do you call one place where someone can go to find what they were originally looking for, yet still come across other items of interest before they leave that same place? Sounds like your neighborhood mall! Or in this case, the Mission Markets "mall".

Mission Markets is a central marketplace or a “mall,” creating a secure online community where buyers and sellers in the sustainable sector, and the sub-sectors that exist within sustainability, can assess opportunities that run the gamut from equity in a global micro-finance investment, to the development of and investment in a renewable energy project, to the purchase of energy efficiency credits.

Did you see the President's State of the Union address the other night? President Barack Obama has launched what is to be a new era of clean energy development in the U.S., announcing that this could be a “Sputnik moment.” He's urged Americans to rally around a new goal: obtaining 80 percent of America's electricity from clean energy sources by 2035. While this could mean many things to many people, my understanding is that President Obama is referring to a combination of all resources – renewable energy, nuclear, natural gas, and yes, possibly even clean coal. A lofty goal perhaps. But, a goal that, nonetheless, will need 1) facilitation around the investments that make such goals attainable; 2) efficient means by which to develop such assets leading to successful achievement of these goals; and, 3) a market to facilitate the trading and exchanging of products related to these goals. If there was a place that could lend a hand with all this - that would be a great community to be involved in, let alone a cool place to work. That's why I joined Mission Markets.

If it’s not evident, what Mission Markets has done is revolutionize the ability to invest in and execute on an entire spectrum of sustainable opportunities through the Impact Investment Platform, the Earth Exchange, and the Climate and Sustainability Network. In essence, we will help you attain your sustainable goal - whatever that is. If this sounds interesting to you, even if you're not lucky enough to work at Mission Markets like me, register as a Member of our community. Be part of the solution - Mission Markets.

- Peter J. Mastella, Mission Markets Director of Climate Change Markets

Great Response to First Mission Markets 101 Webinar

2011-01-26T17:02:00.000-05:00

We are thrilled to report an overwhelmingly positive response to our very first Mission Markets 101 educational Webinar! We had a very high turnout of over 60 participants and many interesting questions. If you are interested in being placed on our list to receive Mission Markets news and notifications about future Webinars please email your name, organization and email address to media@missionmarkets.com. If you are an accredited or institutional investor, sign up now to see the impact investment opportunities that have gone through our rigorous listing process. To see a brief recorded demo of the platform by our Founder and CEO Mike Van Patten, click here. As always, questions and comments are welcome!

- The Mission Markets Team

Mission Markets Musings: Theda Braddock

2011-01-26T11:30:00.001-05:00

Stormwater runoff has been identified as one of the largest sources of pollutants in the Nation’s waterways. Stormwater is rain and snow melt that runs off impervious surfaces such as roads and rooftops. In the draining process, the runoff picks up chemicals such as nitrogen and phosphorus as well as oil, heavy metals, fertilizers, pesticides, trash, and animal waste. Whether it is channeled in a storm drain or flows directly into streams and rivers, the end result is pollution of the ultimate receiving waterbody. In addition, if the flow rate is not controlled, the runoff delivers unnatural sediment loads to waterways and/or scours the bed of the receiving waterway destroying habitat. In urban areas the problem is acute due to the concentration of pollutants in stormwater. If the urban area is located on an estuary, the runoff gradually concentrates if tidal flushing fails to carry it away. Puget Sound and the Chesapeake Bay are two such estuaries surrounded by urban areas which both are experiencing pollution from stormwater runoff.

After spending some $5 Billion to clean up the Chesapeake Bay with little or no success, in December 2010, EPA issued the Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL), which identifies the necessary reductions of nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment from Delaware, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia waters. Each state submitted for approval a Watershed Implementation Plan detailing how it plans to achieve the allocations of pollutants established by EPA. A “nutrient trading” scheme was devised by Pennsylvania in which polluters who reduced their nutrient output in excess of the requirement could sell their excess “credits” to others who were not so successful. PennVest, the agency in charge of nutrient trading, held two auctions of nutrient credits in 2010.

The concept of nutrient trading is one of the fastest growing in the ecosystem market. Washington State farmers are looking to establish a similar program. Mission Markets now lists voluntary nutrient credits from Chesapeake EcoFinance, a Maryland-based firm. We anticipate many more such programs being devised across the country in the near term. By establishing TMDLs, EPA creates the cap. Trading is the natural consequence, and Mission Markets plans to be the marketplace.

- Theda Braddock, Mission Markets Director of Ecosystem Markets

Theda leads the ecosystem markets effort at Mission Markets and Mission Markets Earth with a particular focus in the areas of conservation based market mechanisms including wetland mitigation banking, conservation banking and water quality trading. Theda has been an environmental and securities attorney for over 20 years.

Mission Markets presents to Northwest Leaders Network on Impact Investing (NW-LNII)

2011-01-24T11:14:00.002-05:00

Mission Markets CEO Mike Van Patten presented the Mission Markets investment platform to the Northwest Leaders Network on Impact Investing (NW-LNII) last week in Portland. Below is a write up on the event from the Springboard Innovation Blog.

"Mission Markets Founder Presents to NW-LNII"

Mike Van Patten, a 20-year veteran of Wall Street, recently launched a platform for impact investing, defined broadly as making money while also making a difference. Mission Markets is a brilliant idea–a gift to the future really. It is also the first of its kind… An emerging, disruptive innovation, the kind we claim we want. Innovation is often not created, but recognized. We should recognize this opportunity and make it not just an adjunct to “real” investing, but drive it to be a mainstream strategy for economic and community development.

“This is new infrastructure”, he says, “but it needs content at all points of the investment opportunity. It is designed to build on the trend of impact investing that Rockefeller Foundation, JP Morgan, and the Global Impact Investment Network believe will reach 400bn to 1trillion in the decade.”
Mike presented to the NW-LNII group in Portland, Oregon, a new group that includes a wide range of professionals, from the Mayor’s Office to academia, nonprofits, business incubators and funders. It was exactly the kind of cross-sector, cross-pollination we must cultivate in order to grow hybridized, multiple-return enterprises. Amy Pearl opened the session my sharing the five critical gaps we must fill, and then introduced Mike and Mission Markets as filling one of those five. One seeded, four to grow.

Mike and his team will be here in March for ReVV2011. They will offer a two-hour session on how to engage on the Mission Markets platform–a how-to rather than an overview. ReVV2011 is designed as a how-to conference on this kind of change, and Mission Markets is only one of many sessions that will help us integrate innovation.

Imagine you’re a business that makes a better window that saves energy, or an investment firm that only invests in organic, sustainable agriculture, or an accredited investor wishing to explore a wide spectrum of impact investing opportunities. Mission Markets is for you. Join us at ReVV to dig into making this vision a reality.

- The Mission Markets Team

Mission Markets 101 Webinar

2011-01-21T13:15:00.002-05:00

We are proud to announce that we will be hosting the first-ever "Mission Markets 101" Webinar on Wednesday, January 26 at 3:00pm EST. Mission Markets President and Co-founder, Steve Rocco, will be giving a live demonstration of our user-friendly marketplace and will discuss the services we provide, including:

A diverse selection of pre-vetted and third-party certified impact investment opportunities
Secondary liquidity for investors
Measurement and reporting of financial, social and environmental performance
Transaction clearing and settlement
Improved access to investors for double and triple bottom line companies and organizations seeking capital
Greater efficiency and reduced cost of raising capital

Space is limited. Click here to reserve your Webinar seat now!

- The Mission Markets Team

Mission Markets Earth Exchange featured in Private Landowner Network (PLN) Blog

2011-01-21T11:45:00.000-05:00

The Mission Markets Earth Exchange was featured today on the PLN blog in a post entitled, "Farmers, Foresters, Ranchers, and Wall Street". Here is a brief quote from the article:

"Mission Markets Earth (MME) is all about monetizing ecosystem services, making the prices of these things more available to private landowners and others who want to buy or sell the credits," explains Michael Van Patten, MME's creator and Executive Director.

I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Mike in his Soho office in New York. We both share a desire to secure the long-term future of ecosystems and working lands. We both are also using cutting edge internet-based technology and information systems to do it. Click here to read more.

- The Mission Markets Team

Mission Markets mentioned in Huffington Post

2011-01-19T10:30:00.001-05:00

Mission Markets was mentioned in Huffington Post article, "The Rise of the Entrepreneur Activist". The article discusses the rise of social enterprise and how different organizations are using social media and technology to support the growth of social enterprises around the world.

- The Mission Markets Team

Mission Markets Musings: Steve Rocco

2011-01-13T14:49:00.002-05:00

First let me get this out of the way: I’m a finance guy, I’ve always done finance, my first job was working in micro-finance and perhaps I’m biased, but my long history making deals in what is now known as "impact investing" has given me the well-earned practical experience that impact investing works to make real positive change in the world. But rather than bore you to death by rehashing my bio, I would like to address the fundamental question behind our mission here at Mission Markets: "Why is impact investing important?"

In today’s world of increasing income disparity and poverty, the shortcomings of traditional approaches to addressing social issues grow ever more apparent as does the need for a market-based solution to fill the gap between traditional financial capital markets and philanthropy. This is where impact investing fits in. And this is absolutely important or I wouldn’t be working hard each and every day to nurture the growth of this industry.

Impact investing has existed piecemeal for most of my career, but what we need now is to apply the same tools traditional markets use to the impact investment space. In many ways, as social investors we’re still operating like the ancient Silk Road traders were a millennium ago. If an investor wants to invest in a social enterprise, he or she has to hunt through their network or call their broker who would to do the same. At the end of a lengthy journey they would be lucky to find upwards of 10 suitable deals. Compared to traditional markets where investors merely have to look at the NASDAQ and have hundreds of options immediately available, the social marketplace is in its infancy. We need a centralized, transparent marketplace for one stop shopping for socially oriented companies. Imagine if an investor could stop by an electronic marketplace with thousands of pre-vetted deals. It would be game changing—potentially generating real, systemic social change.

And I’ll be honest: the deals that come to us are pretty cool. Take Prosperity Candle. This remarkable company is operating in Iraq providing hope and a livelihood to impoverished women. It’s a simple and undeniable fact that empowering women can help families and whole communities break out of poverty. The pilot project is operating successfully and they are already looking to expand. The company utilizes a fully sustainable triple-bottom-line model, not only financially and socially but also environmentally. Rather than use traditional soy wax or beeswax, Prosperity candles are made out of paraffin – a ubiquitous regional by-product that otherwise would end up in a landfill. This is just one very cool company of thousands that fight for the recognition and access to capital they deserve.

Now seems to be the right time to craft a stage for companies like Prosperity Candle. The 2008 market crash changed the way people think about investing. They began to question whether a focus solely on profit generation was adequate. Into the investor ethos entered the notion that perhaps ethics and morals do matter when creating an investment strategy, especially a sustainable investment strategy. Mission Markets addresses this need. We’re here to provide easy, fluid access to companies offering stable, long term, social and financial returns and we’re excited to do it.

- Steve Rocco, Mission Markets Co-founder and President

Mission Markets Milestones, 2010

2011-01-11T13:58:00.001-05:00

As we look back on 2010, we would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your interest in our activities and share with you our progress to date and our plans for the upcoming months. During 2010, we have transformed our vision into reality. The investment platform launched successfully in July and our membership of accredited investors and companies offering double and triple bottom line investments has been growing steadily. We are grateful for your support, encouragement, and partnership. Please feel free to forward this to anyone who you think may be interested in the sustainable and impact investment space.

Platform Developments and New Services

Since our launch, we have been listening closely to our growing member community and we understand that it is essential to provide high-quality, impact-generating, socially and environmentally responsible investments on our platform. To this end, we are constantly working to improve our Minimum Listing Requirements (MLRs) and internal screening processes. One key listing requirement is that every company, organization, or project must show proof of a third party Assessment, Rating, or Certification (ARC) that confirms the social or environmental mission of the offering. We are currently working with B Lab and Trucost as preferred third party ARC providers, but accept a wide variety for different sectors.

Mission Markets recently integrated the Global Impact Investing Network's (GIIN) Impact Reporting and Investment Standards (IRIS) into the MLRs for the Impact Investment platform. The IRIS taxonomy consists of standardized social and environmental performance measures that facilitate comparison of impact data across a wide range of social and environmental sectors. IRIS complements our existing ARC framework and will help issuers quantify and communicate social and environmental value to investors.

We have recently begun organizing and moderating virtual roadshows on our platform, enabling issuers with offerings listed on the site to give investor presentation conferences via WebEx’s real-time desktop sharing system. These presentations are recorded and are made available on our platform to investors who are unable to attend the live presentation. This new feature allows for more interactivity and direct issuer-investor engagement.

Conferences

Mission Markets received an overwhelmingly positive response after exhibiting and presenting in October at SOCAP10 in San Francisco, the premier gathering for impact investors, social entrepreneurs, funders and other innovators. CEO Mike Van Patten was also invited to present on the Sustainable Stock Exchanges panel at the TBLI Conference in London in November. The TBLI Conference is considered the leading annual ESG and SRI event in Europe, where the world’s leaders on sustainability network and exchange information and ideas on the latest developments in screening, auditing, reporting, SRI analysis, corporate citizenship, indices, and research.

Currently, we have a diverse set of 77 accredited Investors using our platform that range from high net worth individuals, investment advisors, family offices, social venture funds, and foundations. Our Issuer member group has expanded to 82 companies, from social enterprises to community investment to renewable energy and cleantech companies. A total of 15 approved deals have passed through our MLRs and are published on the secure platform. If you are an accredited or institutional investor or an organization seeking capital, sign up today for free!

Strategic Relationships

We are making significant progress in building strategic relationships. We are currently utilizing existing partnerships and pursuing new relationships with a wide range of organizations and networks in order to further leverage our platform and improve services to existing members.

The Slow Money Alliance formally announced a partnership with Mission Markets in October at SOCAP10. Slow Money is a leading national network founded by Woody Tasch to provide strategic and financial assistance with a focus on local social and environmental initiatives. Mission Markets has also established relationships in the past year with B Lab, Trucost, Social Enterprise Alliance, Social Venture Network, First Affirmative Financial Network, Social Enterprise Associates, Nature’s Equity, and a number of other organizations.

We view our partners as part of the community of organizations, businesses, and groups that together will allow Mission Markets and the impact investing space to grow. With each new partnership, the value of our platform to the entire impact investment community grows.

-The Mission Markets Team

Mission Markets Musings: Jeff Tuller

2010-12-22T08:46:00.001-05:00

I wear two hats here at Mission Markets: Chief Technology Officer and Director of Social Metrics, and right now is a pretty good time for both.

Technology first. Let's take a quick look at how the current state of technology helps Mission Markets fulfill its mission: to grow the impact investing space.  

For starters, we have the internet. We take for granted these days the ability to set up a storefront in cyberspace, but the internet has matured way beyond that:  

Virtual communications: email was the internet's original killer app because it filled one basic need: to communicate. Email still comes in handy, but real-time tools like Skype, LiveMeeting and Webex offer virtual conferencing capabilities that seem indispensable now. Our Virtual Road Shows are just the latest example of this technology in action.

The Social Web: "Social" websites allow us to spread the Mission Markets gospel through channels such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter - on top of our own blog and newsletter.

Mega-Networking: The viral growth inherent in the network model is multiplied when your network includes networks. Our own social network grows steadily with each new Mission Markets fan, but it takes one giant leap each time we partner with organizations with networks of their own. For example, there are our friends at Slow Money and Social Venture Network. We love each other not only for the alignment of our missions, but for the cross-pollination potential of our networks.

I can't say technology makes building an impact investing marketplace easy, but it sure makes it easier. Next post, I'll talk about how recent developments in performance metrics makes social and environmental impact easier to capture and compare.

- Jeff Tuller, Mission Markets Chief Technology Officer/Director of Social Metrics

Mission Markets announcement in ANDE Newsletter

2010-12-20T11:06:00.000-05:00

This month's ANDE Newsletter included a feature piece on the Mission Markets Impact Investment Platform and the integration of the IRIS indicators. To read the newsletter online, click here.

--The Mission Markets Team

Mission Markets Musings: Vicky Stein

2010-12-10T14:35:00.002-05:00

Lately, I have found that unusual conversations are occurring in unexpected places. For example, the Community Affairs staff at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston hosted a roundtable event this week on “Financing Disability Housing in New England”. The event brought together a wide variety of organizations from five different states, ranging from social service organizations and CDFIs to bankers to discuss a subject that receives far too little attention from community development practitioners: “How can we scale the current models for financing housing for the disabled in New England?”. I should point out; this round table is part of a series that have been hosted by Federal Reserve Banks around the country. The Boston event was the most recent one.

While this may sound like an esoteric subject, it in fact raises important issues that we as a society have failed to confront. In a piece prepared for the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, entitled “The Disability Housing Market: Opportunity for Community Development Finance as the Americans with Disabilities Act Turns 20”, Charles D. Hammerman of The Disability Opportunity Fund and Samantha Bennett of the Center for Wealth Preservation note that “In 2006, there were more than 21 million people between 18 and 65 in the United States with one or more disabilities.” Moreover, people with disabilities have among the highest poverty rates.

What I find particularly compelling is the sheer number of disabled individuals who will need housing in the not too distant future. For example, according to official studies, there are between 1 and 1.2 million Americans who have been diagnosed with some form of Autism and 80% of these individuals are below the age of 22. Some 800,000 of these young people will need to be housed in the near future. Hammerman and Bennett pinpoint the problem in their article, explaining that “Although there is no coherent approach to providing housing, the demand for it is strong. There are more than 41 million noninstitutionalized Americans living with some form of disability. More than 23 million are between the ages of 18 and 65. It is the inadequate supply that has ultimately hindered those with disabilities from attaining housing.”

As a long time consultant in the community development field this would seem to be a natural fit for community development financial institutions (CDFIs) that finance affordable housing for low and moderate income individuals. But much to my surprise there are relatively few CDFIs that focus on the housing needs of the disabled.

One relatively new organization in the space is The Disability Opportunity Fund, with a mission to increase the amount of quality, affordable, and suitable housing for people with disabilities. DOF founder, Charles Hammerman, has put out a clarion call to the CDFI industry about the growing need for housing among

This week's Americans with disabilities roundtable at the Boston Fed and others across the country are highlighting a critical housing need in this country and one for which we need scalable financing solutions. It also showcased a number of promising approaches from around New England. I hope CDFIs, banks and other private and public sector players will consider developing such models into larger programs to address this pressing need.

The Federal Reserve System might seem like an unlikely partner in this effort but as a convener and a research organization – the Fed has an amazing ability to bring together parties who serve disabled people but often times do not coordinate or collaborate to support this population. What was uplifting about this roundtable was the level of expertise and the range of participants in the room, including CDFIs, social service providers, bankers, advocates, federal, state and local agencies.

The disabled community is an incredibly diverse population with a wide range of needs for housing and accompanying support services. This event and others like it around the country have started a critical dialogue that we need to continue, particularly in the community development field. I applaud the Federal Reserve’s effort and look forward to more of these convenings in the future.

- Vicky Stein, Mission Markets Director of Community Investments

Mission Markets CEO Mike Van Patten featured in Emerging Markets "Weekly Expert Interview"

2010-12-10T13:55:00.001-05:00

Each week Emerging Markets ESG publishes an interview entitled, “Five Questions about SRI”  The interview features a practitioner’s insights about SRI in emerging markets and through Emerging Markets ESG shares this expertise with a wide global audience. The goals of Five Questions about SRI are fourfold:
   •   To reflect on what SRI in emerging markets means to practitioners;
   •   To collect a catalogue of examples of SRI in practice in emerging markets;
   •   To raise awareness about SRI in emerging markets; and
   •   To enable SRI practitioners in emerging markets to network with peers around the world.

To see the most recent interview with Mike Van Patten, click here.

- The Mission Markets Team

Mission Markets Musings: David Meyers, PhD

2010-12-08T14:37:00.005-05:00

The world needs some changes. Quite a few actually. As I go through my day, I often think about the food that I eat, the vehicles that get me where I need to go, the buildings I work and live in, and the wide variety of products I use. I ask myself, “How much of this is truly sustainable?” The answer is frighteningly few. When you consider that even “organic” fruits and vegetables come from miles (or countries) away, even the best products and services seem to be part of the problem and too few are part of the solution. Although this point of view may seem somewhat depressing, I am a strong optimist and believe that we humans can respond to the challenges ahead through our ingenuity, compassion, entrepreneurship, and greed. Yes, greed too. Perhaps my background will help explain my attitude.

I began my career as a scientist studying primate ecology and evolution and aiming to help conserve the earth’s threatened biodiversity. I first went to Madagascar for research back in 1985 and have spent nearly half my adult life in that amazing yet troubled country. My PhD (1993) research was on the effects of resource seasonality on the ecology and social behavior of an endangered Malagasy lemur – the Golden Crowned Sifaka. As a field ecologist, I learned of the many cyclical feedback loops in the tropical forests where nothing is wasted. One species’ waste is another’s food. Because the heavy tropical rains have, over time, depleted most of the nutrients under the forest’s peat layer, the forests are a closed sustainable system where the energy of the sun provides the systems’ energy and all nutrients are hotly competed for by the myriad species of trees, primates, birds, insects, fungi, and other life. Somehow we need to change our current economic system so it looks a lot more like a tropical forest than a smokestack.

After working in nature conservation for many years, I completed an MBA at Yale’s School of Management (1999). My goal was to use the power of business to make environmental conservation more effective. I used my new knowledge for a few years in various entrepreneurial endeavors in New Haven, CT during the technology boom, but jumped at the opportunity to return to Madagascar with my family in 2002. I helped establish a 400,000 hectare protected area, created carbon offset projects, conducted environmental impact studies, and founded and ran a triple bottom line sustainable bamboo flooring company – Madagascar Bamboo. After returning to the US in 2008, I fortunately connected up with Mike Van Patten and Steve Rocco. At Mission Markets, I merge my experience and passion about the environment and social wellbeing with my business experience – it’s a perfect fit. So back to greed…

To solve the enormous challenges we face as we make the transition from what Gus Speth calls the “Bubble” (when you jump off a cliff, most of the way down feels like flying) to a truly sustainable and happy society, we should not ignore our evolutionary past. This past has given us incredible intelligence, an astounding ability to work in groups, and also an impressive drive to get the most for ourselves, our families, and our social groups - greed.

How can we use our nature to help the planet rather than hurt it? In my opinion, the first step is to accept who we are. Humans seem especially well built for short to medium term thinking and we are constantly looking out for our own best interests. Business systems have been able to harness this greed and produced some of the most impressive technological and financial feats imaginable. Sustainable business and impact investing can harness this same power of greed to make the world a better place. If business profitability and planetary sustainability can be combined so that the business makes money and helps the world become a better place at the same time – then the more successful these businesses are , the better the world becomes. It may not be the only solution but the ground is coming up fast and everything you do matters. Where you put your money matters.

- David Meyers, PhD, Mission Markets CFO/COO

Mission Markets featured in Axiom News

2010-12-08T13:24:00.000-05:00

Axiom News published a feature story on Mission Markets' exchanges:

"Mission Markets' Exchange to Grow Impact Investing"
December 7, 2010
Camille Jenson

"Mission Markets is looking to mature and grow impact investing with the creation of a centralized marketplace that connects social and environmental stakeholders, says its founder and CEO Michael Van Patten.

"Currently, we have social markets and environmental markets, and they tend to be very separate but these are clear impact investment opportunities,” he says. “By putting them together you are enabling investors to have much more diverse portfolio and have access to multiple types of social and environmental investments in many geographic regions in many sectors and sub sectors."

To read the full article, click here.

- The Mission Markets Team

Mission Markets in Investment News Article on Impact Investing

2010-12-06T11:52:00.001-05:00

An Investment News article entitled "Impact Investing is poised to experience growth surge" discusses the Mission Markets Platform and Impact Assets Global 50, an organization that introduces foundations and asset managers to opportunities in the impact-investing space. According to Ron Cordes, founder of Impact Assets Global 50, Mission Markets will serve as a resource for the asset managers on his platform. Here is a quote from the article:

"Mission Markets Inc., for example, has built a database of $300 million worth of offerings across 13 investments for wealthy investors. Launched in July, the platform offers private-placement investments in specific companies that fit the impact-investing category.

The platform is restricted to accredited investors, minimums start at about $25,000 and regulatory restrictions prohibit Mission Markets from identifying specific investments.

“There is a demand and the space is growing,” said Michael Van Patten, founder and chief executive of Mission Markets.

“We're seeing a macro shift away from the way people think about their investments. When you have a catastrophic financial event, people look more closely at what they're investing in.”

Mr. Cordes said that he thinks that the Mission Markets platform will serve as an investment resource for the asset managers on his Global 50 platform, which will also be restricted to investors who meet certain net-worth and income requirements.

Although experts don't expect to see an impact-investing registered mutual fund in the immediate future, the retail-class investor is being considered, according to Mr. Van Patten. He said that he hopes to roll out some state-regulated products for smaller investors early next year."

To read the full article, click here.

--The Mission Markets Team

Mission Markets featured in Axiom News Social Finance

2010-12-03T11:55:00.001-05:00

Mission Markets was featured in an article in Axiom news discussing the emergence of the new impact investing asset class and the recently released J.P. Morgan report. Mission Markets is creating the essential infrastructure necessary to scale the social and environmental markets discussed in the report. Check out the article here!

-The Mission Markets Team

Mission Markets Musings: Howard Finkelstein

2010-12-02T10:56:00.003-05:00

Why I Joined Mission Markets

Okay -- just to get the facts out of the way first -- I have practiced law since 1979, put in 25+ years at super-large and large firms. In 2002, I was asked to put together the first microfinance-backed CDO. I knew CDOs, I didn't know microfinance. Nine years later I can say pretty much the opposite. I witnessed and was (I like to believe) a significant part of the birth of microfinance as an investable capital markets asset, and in many ways the forerunner of many other business models that will tend to help improve the world -- what we wonderfully call today impact investments.

For the last nine years, I have watched my clients and others with whom I have been associated build successful business models, scalable and "impactful" (to coin a term). These have been bright, passionate people whose entire lives were lived "outside the box". Then I have watched these people struggle mightily to get funding for their dreams. To people going down this path, I would say, " If you can take the pressure and have a world of patience, and a sense of humor and a contact list as large as the NY phone book .... you'll survive... just barely."

Building capital markets for microfinance and other impact asset classes has been one of my dreams for the last few years and one of the reasons I left my large law firm practice. That, and, as I've said so often, to be partners with entrepreneurs, not with other lawyers.

So this summer I was introduced to Mike Van Patten and Steve Rocco, the founders of Mission Markets. When I came to understand their business plan, I realized that these are people I wanted to partner with. The business model goes far beyond the groundwork laid by my friends at Kiva and MicroPlace; it puts a very serious face (but we do laugh here at Mission Markets) on a very important asset class. And the one thing I told Mike and Steve when our discussions started was that Mission Markets' margin of error is zero -- that both for the sake of Mission Markets and for the sake of the asset class, the entrepreneurs and the investors which we so proudly represent, we had to make sure that everything we did had no negative repercussions.

And so beginning November I joined Mission Markets (on a part-time basis -- I can't give up my law practice just yet) as Director of Microfinance Investments, and will be part of the team that helps to populate the website from both the issuer and the investor sides, and to continually refine the product that we put out. This is an exciting and absorbing process, but the goals are clear and we are up for the challenge.

-Howard Finkelstein, Mission Markets Director of Microfinance

Mission Markets Musings: Mike Van Patten

2010-11-30T14:33:00.000-05:00

There are several trends that I have been following that I feel will contribute significantly to the success of Mission Markets and the growth of the Impact Investing movement.

One trend that will help drive our success is the growing awareness that local businesses, products, and services are inherently more socially and environmentally responsible as well as impactful to the community in general. The investment community is seeking greater social and environmental impact and accountability from their investment choices. Mission Markets can help to meet the rising demand for high-quality, triple bottom line opportunities

Another very important trend that has received significant news coverage as of late is the dramatic drop in the number of smaller companies going public. This is a direct result of high cost of going public, regulations and the fact that there is now less investor demand for earlier stage companies seeking public capital.

Investors have lost a great deal of money in the last few years, and have become more conservative. This is going to drive an increase in companies that stay private or choose to self underwrite a pubic offering via a “DPO or Direct Public Offering”. Both of these trends are supported through the Mission Markets private, password protected Impact Investment Platform, through the facilitation of private placement offerings and our secondary trading board that provides a bid/offer system for restricted private equity, debt and illiquid DPO shares for impact and community investments.

Mission Markets plans on providing a market for DPO’s beginning in early 2011.

Here is a recent New York Times Article on the decline in I.P.O.s:

“Wall Street, the Home of the Vanishing I.P.O.”
New York Times
November 17, 2010

-Mike Van Patten, Mission Markets CEO and Founder

Mission Markets mentioned in International Herald Tribune article on Water Footprinting

2010-11-29T14:54:00.000-05:00

Mission Markets was mentioned in an article published today in the International Herald Tribune entitled "'Water Footprinting' to Deal with Demand for Supplies". The article discusses the growing interest in "water footprinting", similar to carbon footprinting.

Here is a brief quote from the article that mentions Mission Markets:

"Michael Van Patten is chief executive and founder of Mission Markets, a financial services company that operates Earth, a multi-environmental credit exchange regulated by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority in the United States. “We might be several years away, but the potential is huge,” he said. “The world knows we have a huge water problem, and no one knows how to solve it yet. This is one way to approach it.”

His idea is to develop tradable credits from the offsets of localized water projects. These could be bought by companies, countries or any community with a direct effect on the water supply. While there is no regulation in the United States to drive such a market, credit programs, if managed properly, could help to encourage environmental protection by reducing the costs involved, said Christian Holmes, a senior adviser for energy and environment at the U.S. Agency for International Development."

Click here to read the full article.

-The Mission Markets Team

Required Reading: Report on Impact Investing by J.P. Morgan and The Rockefeller Foundation

2010-11-29T12:11:00.000-05:00

Impact Investments: An emerging asset class, is a new report put together by Social Finance at J.P. Morgan and The Rockefeller Foundation, in partnership with the Global Impact Investment Network. This report suggests that impact investing will establish itself as an important investment movement over the coming years.

The report estimates significant market opportunity for impact investment over the next ten years. After analyzing selected segments of five sectors – urban affordable housing, rural access to clean water, maternal health, primary education, and microfinance – serving the population at the “base of the economic pyramid,” the report estimates a potential profit opportunity of between $183 and $667 billion and a potential investment opportunity between $400 billion and $1 trillion in the next decade for just these segments of the impact investing market.

The report also includes the first large-scale data analysis of return expectations, including comparisons to established benchmarks for emerging and developed market debt and equity returns. The analysis shows that investors have broad expectations for impact investment financial returns, ranging from concessionary to market-beating. This report is aimed at advancing the understanding of impact investing as an appropriate and economically effective way to complement government and philanthropy in solving the world’s greatest problems at scale.

Happy Reading!

-The Mission Markets Team

Mission Markets CEO Mike Van Patten quoted in CNBC article on Environmental Markets

2010-11-15T11:12:00.000-05:00

Mike Van Patten was recently quoted in a CNBC article on environmental markets entitled "As Carbon Market Stumbles, Other Environmental Markets Succeed". The article discusses the creation of economic value from natural processes that have critical functions for the human species. Here is a brief quote from the article:

'Markets like the wetlands mitigation credits—aimed at solving the damage caused to crucial wetlands by industrial and commercial activities—are worth billions and already well-established, says Michael Van Patten, CEO of environmental markets firm Mission Markets.

"As it stands, compared to the compliance carbon markets they’re microscopic," says Van Patten, comparing the $3.5 billion wetlands credits market to the $20 billion carbon markets in Europe where polluters are required to offset their carbon footprint. "But compared to voluntary carbon (markets), they’re big."'

To read more, click here.

- The Mission Markets Team

CEO Mike Van Patten Presents Mission Markets to European Investors at TBLI Conference in London

2010-11-11T14:08:00.000-05:00

Mike Van Patten presented Mission Markets today on the panel on Social Stock Exchanges at TBLI Europe, the largest annual global networking and learning event on Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Investing of Asia and Europe. The conference is being held in London, and the theme is "Values and Leadership in Finance". To view the Mission Markets press release for the event, click here.

- The Mission Markets Team

Mission Markets featured in CSRwire Member Spotlight

2010-11-10T09:26:00.001-05:00

"CSRwire Member Spotlight: Man with a Mission"
Jayne Flannery

"A 20-year-long career in capital markets and traditional Wall Street transactions endowed Mike Van Patten with material success, but also a deep and lingering feeling of dissatisfaction. "A long sab!batical enabled me to take an objective look at the world around me, finally creating an insight into how capital could be used to support contemporary social and environmental challenges, rather than simply moving around money for the sake of a financial return that would benefit nobody and nothing in particular," he comments.
Mission Markets, founded in 2009, is the result. The company exists to create an impact investing marketplace that dramatically increases the flow of capital for sustainable investments, which in turn generates measurable social and environmental impacts intended to improve the human condition and life on earth."

Click here to read the full article.

-The Mission Markets Team

Mission Markets completes first Virtual Roadshow!

2010-11-09T13:30:00.000-05:00

Today, Mission Markets executed the first Virtual Roadshow for the Impact Investment Platform. This new service enables companies and organizations that have listed an offering on the platform to present their business and offering via Webex (real-time desktop sharing alongside phone conferencing). Mission Markets plans to schedule and host these investor presentations weekly to increase the interactivity of the investment platform and to better facilitate communications between issuer and investor members. Presentations will be recorded and available on our platform. Please feel free to share your comments as always, and we look forward to sharing more exciting developments as we continue to build the infrastructure necessary to build a vibrant impact investing marketplace.

-The Mission Markets Team

Mission Markets Impact Investment Platform Integrates IRIS Taxonomy

2010-11-05T15:06:00.001-04:00

Mission Markets is excited to announce that the Global Impact Investing Network’s (GIIN) Impact Reporting and Investment Standards (IRIS) have been integrated into our Impact Investment Platform. IRIS consists of social and environmental performance measures that facilitate comparison of impact data across a wide range of social and environmental sectors. The IRIS taxonomy is an important tool that will help companies and organizations seeking capital quantify and communicate social and environmental value to investors. We look forward to integrating more useful tools like IRIS as the impact investing industry grows!

- The Mission Markets Team

Mission Markets featured in Invesment News

2010-11-01T11:30:00.000-04:00

Mission Markets was featured yesterday in an Investment News article on impact investing, along with the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN) and First Affirmative Financial Network LLC. The article discusses the current challenges facing the impact investing industry and explains how Mission Markets, GIIN, and First Affirmative are working together to overcome these barriers to growth. Investment News, owned by Crain Communications, Inc., is a key publication delivering news and analysis essential to the financial adviser community, who are often referred to as the 'gatekeepers' of the impact investing market. Click below to read the full article.

"Advisers seen as key to success of 'impact investing'"
Investment News

"Broker-dealer Mission Markets Inc. is poised to capitalize on this growing interest. It offers two transaction platforms — Mission Markets, which allows direct investment in organizations with a socially focused mission, and Mission Markets Earth, which provides access to environmental-market credits...This one-stop-shopping approach is what makes the Mission Markets platform the first private sustainable investment exchange of its kind, said Michael J. Van Patten, the firm's chief executive and founder."

-The Mission Markets Team

Mission Markets News Update

2010-10-26T10:32:00.000-04:00

We have been reading increasing numbers of articles and blog posts about Impact Investing in both traditional and social media outlets. We are excited to see word of impact investing getting out. The media is creating buzz that will ultimately contribute to the growth of the entire space.

Here are links to some reading material that we found interesting:

"At SOCAP, Lessons on Measuring the Impact of Investments"
- Conservation International Blog

"Pension Funds Buy into Sustainable Investing"
- Triple Pundit Blog

"Can high impact investing yield returns?"
- Interactive Investor

"B Lab Advances Stakeholder Capitalism"
- Capital Institute Blog

"IRIS Project Overview"
- Scribd

"Learning from Mistakes: Following up on Failed Ventures"
- Acumen Fund Blog

We hope you enjoy your reading. Your comments are always welcome!

- The Mission Markets Team

B Corp Retreat Update

2010-10-22T12:24:00.000-04:00

Mission Markets attended the B Corp Retreat yesterday in Long Branch, NJ. Some fellow B Corps also in attendance were Better World Books, CSRWire, Grassroots Capital, Murex Investments, and Singlebrook Technologies. It was a great opportunity for us to continue building our networks and we were inspired by the stories we heard from the B Corp community. The discussions of the day centered around three issue areas: Policy, Increasing B Corp numbers and visibility, and Impact Investing.

Today, we will be at the Social Venture Network's Fall Conference. Stay tuned for an update next week!

-The Mission Markets Team

Mike Van Patten quoted in Ecosystem Marketplace

2010-10-19T12:51:00.000-04:00

Mission Markets CEO Mike Van Patten was quoted along with ecologist David Hill in a recent Ecosystem Marketplace article on environmental credit markets. Here is the section of the article that talks about Mission Markets:

"Van Patten, who just unleashed his own ecosystem exchange platform in the United States, Mission Markets Earth, says absence of a regulatory driver does not pose a significant hurdle.

'If you show policy makers you already have landowners who want to do this on a voluntary basis they’ll start a regulatory market,' he says from his home office in Greenwich, Ct."

Click here to read more!

-The Mission Markets Team

Mission Markets in Ashoka Changemakers blog and Wired Magazine

2010-10-18T10:43:00.000-04:00

Mission Markets was featured in an "Idea exChange" blog post written by Ashoka's Changemakers program. The post was entitled "SOCAP10 Recap: Woodstock for Social Entrepreneurs". According to their recap, the conference "reverberated as a call to action to technology and investment infrastructures that heretofore have glossed over the practice of impact investing", and Mike Van Patten was quoted in the post. To read the full recap click here.

We were also featured in the October edition of Wired Magazine in an article entitled "The New Green Economy". The article looks at programs that assign economic value to nature and discusses the fragmentation of the space as a whole. Here is a section of the article:

"That's what Michael Van Patten hopes to change. In a small loft on Manhattan's Hudson Street, just west of SoHo, Van Patten presides over an office so new there's nothing adorning its white walls. In early spring, the view was of a construction site across the street, where a large building was being demolished. But though he'd been working in the space for a month, Van Patten hadn't even noticed the project. He had other things on his mind, namely the impending soft launch of Mission Markets, his investment platform for social and environmental markets. A former bond trader, Van Patten has spent the past two years positioning himself as the consummate expert on the "markets" portion of ecosystem markets. 'We're trying to make it easier for investors to identify what these projects are,' he says.

Environmental markets are about more than just equity and debt. 'They have values that investors care about,' says David Meyers, Mission Markets' COO and a biological anthropologist who spent years working on conservation projects in Madagascar before earning an MBA from Yale. 'People are fed up with investing with no morals.'

Mission Markets, the first company of its kind, hopes to make environmental investing "more liquid and less fragmented" by turning ecosystem services into asset classes, just like stocks or bonds. A private platform will help match accredited investors with companies seeking capital for conservation projects. An open-access platform will enable anyone to invest in various types of credits, bonds and offsets, from the simple to the overwhelmingly complex.

Still, finding companies looking for investors is the easy part. 'We have 90-plus issuers that have expressed interest, and we haven't done any marketing yet,' van Patten says, 'The difficult part is getting people to invest. One of the biggest challenges is to teach people and these markets.'"

Click here to read the full article.

-The Mission Markets Team

Weekly News Update from the Mission Markets Team

2010-10-15T15:11:00.000-04:00

We are happy to see Impact Investing making more of an appearance in the news lately! Here are some of the articles that we thought were particularly relevant to what we do and our vision for the future of the space. We hope you find them interesting and useful. Your comments are welcome, as always!

"'Impact Investing' Teeters on the Edge of Explosive Growth"
-The New York Times

"Money Catches up With Meaning in Social Enterprise"
-The Huffington Post

"IGNIA Fund I Invests MX$38.1 million in Barafon, and Innovative Provider of Public Telecommunications and Related Services to Low Income Populations"
-PR Newswire

"Social Investment Company ResponsAbility Makes Debt Investments Totaling $2.8m in Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) Pearl Microfinance Limited of Uganda and fondiBESA of Albania"
-Microcapital.org

"Kenyan Regulator to Link Investors With Technology Companies"
- Bloomberg Business Week

Happy Reading!

-The Mission Markets Team

Mike Van Patten quoted in Schooled Green Blog

2010-10-15T13:14:00.000-04:00

Today, there was an interesting article on the Schooled Green blog about water quality credit markets entitled "Finding the Money in Water: Why You Should Watch the Chesapeake". Mike shared some of his insights as an expert on the subject. Here is a brief quote from the post:

"Fortune magazine has called water the oil of the 21st century. As watersheds around the world become increasingly strained, thirsty communities and businesses will be in the market for anything that can ensure sustainable access to this life-or-death resource. To understand this rapidly growing ecosystem, I sat down with Mike Van Patten, CEO of Mission Markets Earth. Mike specializes in trading environmental credits for things like wetland mitigation and water quality, and asked him where to find the hottest market opportunity on his radar. He answered before I could blink. 'No question,' he said, 'it's the nitrogen and phosphorous emissions markets in the Chesapeake Bay.'"

To read the full article, click here.

-The Mission Markets Team

Mission Markets

2010-10-13T12:37:00.002-04:00

A CSR Minute video story featuring Mission Markets was just featured on Reuters Insider. Check it out here!

-The Mission Markets Team

Mission Markets in the Huffington Post

2010-10-12T09:59:00.000-04:00

We just saw that our platform was mentioned in a recent Huffington Post article by journalist and social entrepreneur Gail Vida Hamburg, who we met at SoCap:

"Nevertheless, it is technology that will allow social entrepreneurs increased access to capital. The most exciting advance in social enterprise is Mission Markets recent introduction of an online investment exchange that facilitates relationships between socially and environmentally responsible enterprises and impact investors. This elegant platform will enable the flourishing of a vibrant marketplace where entrepreneurs and investors can make deals to co-create mission driven companies. It is a vehicle for impact writ large."

You can read the full article here.

-The Mission Markets Team

Mission Markets Required Reading: 'Impact Investing Teeters on the Edge of Explosive Growth'

2010-10-11T10:00:00.000-04:00

"'Impact Investing' Teeters on the Edge of Explosive Growth"
We were pleased to see this article on Impact Investing in the New York Times this weekend and wanted to share it with our readers. The article mentions SOCAP10's resounding success as an indicator of the potential for future growth in the industry.

-The Mission Markets Team

SOCAP Update: DAY 2

2010-10-06T08:37:00.002-04:00

SOCAP really hit its stride here on Tuesday. With even more sessions on the schedule across twelve parallel conference tracks, it was even more difficult to decide where to go when.

Once again you can find complete coverage of these sessions on the main SOCAP site and once again Mission Markets offers you a few highlights here.

With so many excellent choices, it was tough to decide which was the best talk of the day. But after much deliberation the Mission Markets Team voted for the session on "Mapping the Space of Marketplaces", which just happened to feature Mission Markets CEO Mike Van Patten.

To those of you who might accuse us of prejudice, we ask you to consider that CNBC and Yahoo! Finance also selected Mike's contribution as its featured SOCAP coverage of the day!

To be fair, Mike was not alone on the stage of the Cowell Auditorium, SOCAP's largest and most highly featured venue. The panel also included representatives from Microplace, NeXii, and The Hoop.

After brief individual introductions of these variations on the theme of impact-driven marketplaces, there was a highly interactive discussion on the state of the on-line market space.

Some of the most significant ideas from that discussion included the challenges of working in what has historically been a highly fragmented investment space, the importance of the adoption of standards, and predictions for the volume of transactions to increase dramatically in the very near future.

Another hidden gem in today's jam-packed schedule was the "Deep Dive Into the Evergreen Cooperative Initiative." This panel brought together the Rockefeller Foundation, the Cleveland Foundation and Veris Wealth Management to share their promising new model for revitalizing urban neighborhoods in Cleveland.

Cleveland is a city clearly suffering from all the social and economic ills that plagued rust-belt cities across the midwest. But the city is fighting back with new cooperative businesses that not only generate desperately needed new jobs and services for local anchor institutions, but also build ownership and wealth for communities where the median income is less than $20,000.

This strategy develops businesses that not only generate jobs but the opportunity for residents to have a financial stake in the companies that are rebuilding their community. The Evergreen Initiative is about connecting anchor institutions to the businesses that generate jobs and wealth. We hope SOCAP invites them back next year to report on their progress.

Tomorrow is Wednesday and SOCAP's swan song, at least for 2010. As in previous years, the last day's format is wide-open, with the agenda set mainly by the attendees themselves.

Anything can happen in such an environment, so please stay tuned to this channel for our report on how SOCAP's final day unfolds.

- The Mission Markets Team

SOCAP Update: DAY 1

2010-10-05T03:58:00.002-04:00

Mission Markets has had a productive and inspiring first day here at SOCAP!

We have been giving live demos and signing up issuers and investors all day at our exhibitor booth (above) and have attended as many of the excellent panel discussions as we could manage.

Coverage of all these sessions through a variety of media channels can be found on the SOCAP site but here are some highlights from what we've seen for ourselves:

The talk on "Connecting Private Capital Markets to Impact Investing Opportunities" was completely jam-packed. This is a terrific indicator of how much excitement there is around impact investing, but we were lucky to even find a seat on the floor!

Many of the panelists commented on the exact marketplace deficiencies that led to the creation of Mission Markets:

Ron Cordes of The Cordes Foundation noted that there was no good way to find and compare impact investing opportunities.

Greg Ulrich of Money for Good said that the inability of knowing where to find good investment opportunities combined with insufficient ratings and benchmarks presented significant barriers to impact investors.

We were impatiently awaiting the opportunity to explain how Mission Markets directly addresses these issues, when moderator Gerhard Pries of Sarona Asset Management beat us to the punch - and told the crowd about the recent lauch of our platform! Looks like the word on Mission Markets is officially out!!

You should also check out Hope Consulting's insightful and well-researched Money for Good survey on Impact Investing which was discussed at some length in this session.

Since impact measurement is such a core part of the Mission Markets model, we were also sure not to miss the session on "Harmonizing Tools to Measure Impact".

This was another standing room only crowd, at least partly due to the excitement around the near-simultaneous official launch of the IRIS 2.0 taxonomy of impact indicators. For the record, Mission Markets is a long-time advocate of IRIS (and the standardization it affords our sector) going all the way back to pre-version 1.0 :)

This session really brought home the message that IRIS is just one piece of the larger metrics measurement puzzle. With IRIS as a foundation, an entire performance ecosystem becomes possible, including the GIIRS Morningstar-style impact ratings report, and the PULSE portfolio management system for impact measurement.

We will continue to closely follow the impact investing and metrics tracks here at SOCAP, so please stay tuned for more on-the-spot updates on these topics - and others - as the conference continues…

- The Mission Markets Team

SoCap, Here We Come!

2010-10-01T17:13:00.000-04:00

As we pack our bags for SoCap10, we just wanted to give our readers an update on what we expect to get out of the conference by answering a few questions that we were encouraged to answer on the SoCap Community Site.

What are you looking forward to at SoCap10?

Mission Markets is looking forward to presenting our recently launched, cutting-edge private impact investment exchange to the SoCap community of investors, entrepreneurs and innovators. Our CEO, Mike Van Patten, will be presenting a demo showing exactly how our innovative online marketplace will increase the flow of capital into the impact investing space, which the Monitor Institute predicts will be a $500 billion industry within the next 5 years.

What are you passionate about at the intersection of money and meaning?

The Mission Markets team is passionate about using our unique value proposition to connect buyers and sellers within the currently fragmented impact investing sectors. Most socially and environmentally focused companies and organizations are too small or specialized to access conventional capital markets. Investors seeking to expand their holdings in impact investments are often only aware of a limited number of available opportunities. We address these issues by providing a single destination for consistent, comprehensive financial and impact data on mission-driven companies and organizations seeking to raise capital and we also facilitate the transaction itself.

What do you want to get out of the event?

We are looking forward to introducing ourselves and our platform to many of the key stakeholders in the space and showing them how we can add value to their sectors.

We can’t wait to tell you how it goes. Stay tuned for more updates from San Francisco!

-The Mission Markets Team

Mission Markets featured on Ashoka's Blogs!

2010-09-29T16:33:00.000-04:00

Ashoka, the global association of the world's leading social entrepreneurs, just published a great Mission Markets feature on their Change InSight and US Programs blogs. Check it out!

"Markets on a Mission"

"Enter Mission Markets, a marketplace with its own mission: to make impact investing easier, more effective and more personal. Mission Markets provides infrastructure and coherence to the fragmented industry of social and environmental capital exchange, and in the process they’re changing the way organizations and businesses in the field find capital."

You can read the entire article here. Stay tuned for more Mission Markets press updates!

-The Mission Markets Team

Join the SOCAP twitter chat!

2010-09-28T10:00:00.002-04:00

This Wednesday, September 29, SocialFinance.ca and Twitter are co-hosting a live chat about SOCAP10 and aligning philanthropy and impact investing. This is a space that Mission Markets is very interested in. We encourage you to sign in and be a part of the discussion! For more information, click here.

- The Mission Markets Team

Mission Markets Earth Mentioned in Suite 101 Article

2010-09-27T11:45:00.000-04:00

Check out this article from Suite 101 on ecosystem credit trading. CEO Michael Van Patten is quoted.

"Beyond Cap and Trade"

"Michael Van Patten, founder of Mission Markets Earth, believes that the voluntary market component will be key to the economic valuation of viable ecosystems in the long term. 'In addition to regulatory participants, we need nontraditional buyers who are not subject to purchase by regulations, the voluntary buyers,' he says, because compliance markets are not currently broad enough to counter our overall impact on the planet's resources. With sufficient vision, voluntary markets just might be."

Click here to read more!

- The Mission Markets Team

Weekly News Update from the Mission Markets Team

2010-09-24T14:12:00.000-04:00

We came across these articles while reading the industry news this week and thought that our readers would find them relevant. We hope that you find them interesting and would love to hear your comments!

"Launch of Global Impact 50 Index Will Spur Increase in Investments with Social and Financial Return"

PRNewswire-USNewswire

Sept. 21, 2010

We at Mission Markets are excited about this new index for the top impact investment funds announced this week at the Clinton Global Initiative. It is an important step toward opening up the space to investors and their financial advisors.

"Moody’s to Develop Social Performance Assessment of Microfinance Institutions"

Wall Street Journal MarketWatch

Sept. 22, 2010

Moody’s commitment to develop a quantitative, independent, and globally consistent standard to measure social performance in the microfinance industry is a major step forward in standardizing social metrics to enable impact investors to make more informed investment decisions and maximize social impact.

"Five Golden Rules for Attracting Impact Investors"

Triple Pundit and SOCAP10

Sept. 23, 2010

We liked this brief exercise taken on by Triple Pundit and SOCAP10 to answer the question, “What’s Next? How will social enterprise unlock the $120 billion market opportunity for impact investment?” We were also recently focused in the Triple Pundit blog. If you haven’t had the opportunity to check it out, you can read it here.

"College Showdown: Two Schools Face Off… To Invest Responsibly"

Venture Capital Dispatch (WSJ Blog)

Sept. 21, 2010

We are greatly encouraged by the fact that the younger generation is taking on an increasing role in the industry with student-managed social venture funds. It is good to see that the next generation of investors is already looking to maximize social impact alongside profits.

Happy Reading!

-The Mission Markets Team

Mission Markets CEO Mike Van Patten quoted in Ecosystem Marketplace Article on Water Footprint Markets

2010-09-21T10:44:00.001-04:00

“Can Footprinting Stomp out Water Waste?”

This article explores a “water footprinting” exercise jointly undertaken by the Coca-Cola Company and The Nature Conservancy (TNC). The goal was to determine the total amount of water used throughout the company’s orange juice supply chain, from the water pulled from the ground to grow the oranges to the water used in transporting the finished product.

What can we do with this information? According to the article, environmental groups like TNC can use it to monitor corporate impact and companies can use it to voluntarily pursue more sustainable and economical water use practices. Ecosystem Marketplace also has high hopes that in the long term these initiatives could develop into a water trade system similar to carbon trading.

Our CEO, Mike Van Patten, shares his perspective on the development of a regulatory water trading system in the article.

“The fact that many companies will start measuring the water content of many of their products suggests that where there is transparency in this footprint, there must be action, and a water footprint credit could be one way to offset this impact…My opinion is that a tradable water footprint credit could be used to finance water projects in areas that have limited access to water,” says Van Patten.

Click here to read the full article!

-The Mission Markets Team

Check Out the SOCAP Interactive Press Conference Video!

2010-09-20T15:16:00.000-04:00

We are looking forward to the opportunity to showcase MissionMarkets.com and Mission Markets Earth to the Impact Investing community at SOCAP in just two weeks! Check out the interactive press conference recently posted on the SOCAP Blog for a preview and discussion of the event.

http://video.socialcapitalmarkets.net/

-The Mission Markets Team

Mission Markets Required Reading: Improving environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards among listed companies

2010-09-17T16:11:00.007-04:00

“Sustainable Stock Exchanges: Improving ESG Standards among Listed Companies”

According to this briefing from the Experts in Responsible Investment Solutions (EIRIS), stock exchanges can play an important role in improving corporate transparency and performance on sustainability issues by enhancing corporate ESG disclosure and performance. This would involve applying ESG standards within IPO and ongoing listing rules, corporate governance codes, and offering ESG-related trading products.

EIRIS claims that strengthening ESG disclosure requirements can provide new business opportunities and potentially increase revenues, safeguard reputation, maximize competitive advantage and mitigate operational risks. Especially in the current financial environment, investors are always looking for new ways to mitigate their investment risks, opening up an opportunity for stock exchanges to adopt a more systematic approach towards integrated corporate reporting.

In 2010, Aviva Investors, with support from UN-backed Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), launched the Sustainable Stock Exchanges Initiative which enlists the support of financial institutions that are PRI signatories to bring about change in global listing rules. While some exchanges, such as China’s Green IPO policy and the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, have incorporated ESG reporting requirements in their listing rules and corporate governance codes, EIRIS thinks that stock exchanges can do more to compel companies to address ESG issues and to create a level playing field.

We like the way that the EIRIS is thinking, and we feel that this briefing highlights an important part of our company mission . Click here to read more!

-The Mission Markets Team

Mike Van Patten Speaks at SJF Summit on the New Green Economy

2010-09-16T14:46:00.001-04:00

Mission Markets CEO Mike Van Patten just returned from the SJF Summit on the New Green Economy in Durham, NC, where he spoke on the “Impact Investing: Emerging Capital Market Innovations” panel alongside Josh Cohen from City Light Capital and Beth Richardson from B Lab. This year’s summit focused on accelerating growth and impact, and integrating job creation and economic development with Cleantech and Renewable energy investment.

We look forward to many more speaking opportunities at other major conferences this year. Stay tuned for more updates!

- The Mission Markets Team

Mission Markets Featured in TriplePundit Blog

2010-09-13T16:08:00.001-04:00

Check out this article on Mission Markets recently posted by TriplePundit, an innovative new-media company for the business community that cultivates awareness and understanding of the triple bottom line.

A Mission to Change Capital Markets: Mission Markets

“Have you ever wanted to invest in a company that focuses on the triple bottom line of people, planet and profits? Or are you a triple bottom line based company that seeks capital? It is difficult to find a marketplace where sustainability minded investors and businesses can meet. This is about to get easier.”

TriplePundit predicts that Mission Markets will fill an important void in the marketplace for sustainability. Click here to read more.

Happy reading!

-The Mission Markets Team

Slow Money encourages members to join Mission Markets

2010-09-13T15:53:00.000-04:00

Our friends at Slow Money, an organization dedicated to building local and national networks and developing new financial products and services, are recommending the Mission Markets platform to their members.

Call to Slow Money Members: Join the Mission Markets Sustainability Exchange!

“Mission Markets aims to be the go-to platform for Slow Money members. Companies in the Slow Money alliance seeking to raise capital can sign up and list their company and their financial offering on the Mission Markets platform. Slow Money accredited investors can sign up as well, and search through these listed offerings to pursue due diligence and make an investment. Slow Money members Greenling Inc. and Farmland LP have been the first to hop on. Come join them! We charge no membership or listing fees.”

Click here to read more!

Mission Markets Inc.

Mission Markets operates a private investment exchange facilitating transactions within the social and environmental capital markets. The Mission Markets platform provides companies and organizations with access to funding and impact investors an efficient way to evaluate, invest in and monitor sustainable investment opportunities.

Mission Markets Required Reading: Green Development Mechanism

2010-09-09T14:55:00.003-04:00

The GDM, or Green Development Mechanism, is developing a more standard method of valuing biodiversity such that it could be somewhat more fungible and allow for greater financial support and protection of critical habitat. The idea is to provide a unit of measure that is more akin to real estate than to a carbon credit, and apply various attributes that the specific protected area would protect.

Units exist for "Sustainable Agriculture", "Species and Habitat", "Sustainable Fish Harvesting", etc.

These units would be verified and monitored similar to how carbon projects are monitored, with long term management agreements.

To learn more go to: http://www.earthmind.net/bbb/gdm.htm

Think Big,
- The Mission Markets team

Mission Markets Required Reading: Financial Advisor article

2010-09-07T17:50:00.004-04:00

Mission Markets' core goal is to expand the network of investors and companies/organizations that comprise the small but growing sector called 'impact investing". We are doing this by redefining return on investment to include social and environmental components, leveraging technology, and raising the credibility of impact investment opportunities. The article "Wealthy Attracted to Impact Investing" in Financial Advisor magazine discusses various actors in this emerging space and their work throughout the world.

Happy reading,
- The Mission Markets Team

SJF Summit on the New Green Economy

2010-09-01T15:30:00.003-04:00

Mission Markets' CEO and Co-Founder, Mike Van Patten, will be speaking at the SJF event in Durham, NC on September 15.

The panel will focus on "new concepts and tools that are building the infrastructure for impact investing and facilitating investment in businesses generating social and environmental benefits."

Mike will sharing his thoughts on his work with Mission Markets and other innovations in the large and growing "green" impact investing sector.

- The Mission Markets Team

The Road To SOCAP

2010-09-01T14:55:00.002-04:00

SOCAP is an annual gathering of impact investors and other like-minded social capitalists in San Francisco, and Mission Markets will be there in force this year!

Mission Markets is an official SOCAP sponsor and will have dedicated exhibition space in the conference hall. In addition, our CEO Mike Van Patten will be a featured speaker on the Social Capital Marketplace conference track.

SOCAP starts October 4th, and we have great expectations for the event. We will be talking more about SOCAP - and how Mission Markets will participate - in the coming weeks, so stay tuned!

- The Mission Markets Team

75 Members on Mission Markets!

2010-09-01T11:19:00.002-04:00

MISSION MARKETS REGISTERED MEMBERS:

TOTAL # ORGANIZATIONS SEEKING CAPITAL: 40
TOTAL # INVESTORS: 35

TOTAL # OFFERINGS/DEALS:

APPROVED: 7
DRAFTS: 6

Mission Markets Inc.

Mission Markets operates a private investment exchange facilitating transactions within the social and environmental capital markets. The Mission Markets platform provides companies and organizations with access to funding, and impact investors an efficient way to evaluate, invest in, and monitor sustainable investment opportunities.

To register now, click HERE.

See you on the platform,

- The Mission Markets Team

The Sustainable Future

2010-08-26T17:06:00.003-04:00

The recent economic downturn has many people striving to bring US GDP growth back up to its historic levels of about 3%. This growth should be considered against a backdrop of 1% or less population growth. Many forward looking economists see continuing compound growth in GDP as an impossibility given that current world populations are pushing against natural limits. As we approach (some say we have passed) these limits, continued growth in consumption requires increasing exploitation of diminishing natural capital such as forests, soils, fresh water systems, fisheries, etc. This can be termed uneconomic growth. Many pundits point to the current economic crisis as a failure of the finance sector and the common solution espoused (after improving regulation in the financial sector) is to increase consumption – this can be explained by the fact that 70% of the US economy is retail driven. But is this a real solution? Should our economy be 70% based on consumption – especially since we are only producing a fraction of what we consume, buying massive amounts of oil from countries antagonistic to US interests, and increasing our trade deficit with China as we purchase more and more products that don’t really create deep satisfaction and end up in landfills?

What if the “financial” crisis is based on a deeper crisis emanating from a global economy reaching its limits to healthy growth? What if we are deep into uneconomic growth and really what we are seeing are the first clear signs that we are heading towards a steady-state economy with zero real growth in GDP. The signs are overwhelming that we are at or over the limits to healthy growth. Climate disruptions and the hottest decade on record, an ever expanding list of extinct and endangered species, decreasing forest cover, expanding deserts, fisheries on the brink of collapse, coral reefs bleaching and dying, massive islands of plastic in our seas, man-made chemicals being found in all of us and even in species on the edge of civilization such as polar bears; the list is endless and frightening. Is the economic crisis just part of a global ecological crisis? Are we heading towards a steady state economy?

A steady state economy is similar to an ecosystem in a “dynamic balance”. The balance comes from a diverse set of interactions in which growth in some elements is checked by growth in others such that the overall system remains in a steady state – regardless of various internal dynamics. What would the global economy look like in steady state? It would not be stagnation as companies and countries that did not adapt to the changing (dynamic) conditions would diminish (economically speaking) and those companies and countries that moved the most rapidly to exploit the new dynamic balance would have the best chance. Nor would a steady state economy reduce technological and social innovation – on the contrary. Innovation would be spurred by competition for efficiency, sustainability, effectiveness and value generated.

One of the greatest opportunities in the world today is the emergence of sustainable businesses: clean energy being one obvious example. Clean energy and transportation create environmental, social and economic value and many companies are striving to capitalize on this opportunity. So even with the economy (especially GDP) remaining flat, there are enormous opportunities to create value and grow companies. Competition will be higher because the size of the economy (especially raw material consumption and waste generation) will not continue to expand on a planet with limited land, water, sunlight, and atmosphere. But perhaps the most important opportunity will be that as we consume less stuff, we will have more time to live better lives with family, friends and community. These turn out to be much greater generators of happiness then material consumption. Turn off the TV and go for a walk.

For an interesting perspective on the idea a steady state economy in Japan read New York Times Op-Ed Contributor: Japan and the Ancient Art of Shrugging by NORIHIRO KATO.

For more on the topics discussed above, read the book by Gus Speth “Bridge at the End of the World” and works by Herman Daly.

For more information on Mission Markets, visit www.missionmarkets.com.

- David Meyers, a member of the Mission Markets Team

Clean Water - EPA Goals and Mission Markets Goals

2010-08-26T12:40:00.004-04:00

The Environmental Protection Agency has created a forum, “The Coming Together for Clean Water” to discuss a strategy for how to move forward in protecting America's waters. The resulting draft document “Coming Together for Clean Water: EPA's Strategy for Achieving Clean Water – Public Discussion Draft, August 2010” delineates the problems and solutions the EPA has identified, and welcomes public discussion on the issues. See below for some major points:

Problems:

nutrient pollution
excess sedimentation
degradation of shoreline vegetation
pathogens in rivers and streams
stormwater runoff
habitat, hydrology, and landscape modifications
municipal wastewater

Challenges to solving these problems:

fiscal pressure on states
limited resources
demands of economic growth
climate adaptation

EPA's goals:

1) baseline for tracking progress

National Aquatic Resource Surveys provide baseline for streams, lakes, coastal waters
EPA will complete first of five Aquatic Resource Surveys to provide a baseline for the state of US water bodies
make listings of healthy watersheds
monitoring and assessment reports

2) protection of healthy waters

metrics for healthy watersheds, through Healthy Watershed Initiative
strengthen anti-degradation regulations

3) restoration of degraded waters

will use Chesapeake Bay as an example for Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) pollution reduction plans
coordinate funding with USDA for nutrient and sediment reductions
use trading offsets and other market-based tools, to clean up watersheds
create a tracking system for TMDL
improvements to stormwater program
regulations for animal feeding operations
implement federal land management practices

4) reduce pollution entering waters

strengthen “National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System” (NPDES) to reduce pollution entering waterways
sewer overflow control
green infrastructure
municipal stormwater permitting
permit requirements to reduce pesticide discharges
nutrient reduction strategies

5) sustainable technologies and community revitalization

green stormwater infrastructure
water efficiency projects
energy efficiency projects

For a more comprehensive list and explanation of the above, please find the draft here.

Mission Markets provides a platform for market-based mechanisms such as water quality trading to help protect and restore America's waters. The Mission Markets Earth platform allows citizens, members of the private sector, and members of the public and non-profit sectors, to buy and sell water quality credits. By bringing together the market for water quality on one comprehensive platform, Mission Markets strengthens the market-based incentives to care for our environment.

Please contact the Mission Markets team for more information:

www.missionmarkets.com

www.mmearth.com

Clean Up,

- The Mission Markets Team

Mission Markets in Sustainable Industries

2010-08-16T11:38:00.003-04:00

Mission Markets was featured in a short article in Sustainable Industries online, read it here. The article is titled "Mission Markets Propels Ecosystem Markets: Two trading platforms from Mission Markets could spur environmental and social investment."

Sustainable Industries is a media company with an award-winning magazine, online articles, podcasts, webinars, and more. Sustainable Industries, like Mission Markets, is a B Corp, that "connects the dots between the environmental and social components of the region's economy."

Like Sustainable Industries, MissionMarkets.com works to unite the social and environmental fields, bringing socially and environmentally focused companies together with mission-driven investors.

MissionMarketsEarth.com, our comprehensive environmental credits platform, is described in the article:

"Ecosystem markets, or payments for ecosystem services, place a value on services provided by nature, such as water filtration or carbon sequestration and offer a means to provide economic incentive for conservation. Mission Markets’ tradable credits include renewable energy certificates, carbon credits, water quality credits, wetland mitigation and habitat credits, and fisheries catch shares, all of which would first be certified by Markit Environmental Registry".

A longer, more in-depth article about Mission Markets will be featured in Sustainable Industries this October.

Visit www.missionmarkets.com and www.mmearth.com for more information, and sign up as a company or an investor here.

Keep Reading,
- The Mission Markets Team

Mission Markets featured on Ecosystem Marketplace

2010-08-13T14:11:00.002-04:00

Mission Markets and CEO Mike Van Patten are featured in a new article on Ecosystem Marketplace, led by the Katoomba group. Ecosystem Marketplace is THE destination for environmental news. Don't miss it, read it here: http://3bl.me/32vpcf

Some quotes from the article about how Mission Markets Earth solves the problems faced by current environmental markets:

"A variety of environmental markets have sprung up over the past two decades. They encourage businesses that damage water, land, habitat or air to compensate by purchasing credits from enterprises that restore these resources and their ecosystems.

Unfortunately, buyers and sellers in different communities tend to be clustered in different market silos. They rarely speak to – or even know about – buyers and sellers from other markets and communities. But for the environment and the markets built around them to thrive, Van Patten says “we need a holistic approach to break down silos that separate environmental markets and fragment them when we think they are all interconnected.”

To facilitate this, he and Rocco first launched Mission Markets, a private investment exchange for environmental projects that raises capital for people seeking funding.

Mission Markets Earth is a sub-platform that pulls together disparate information gleaned from environmental markets nationwide, building on local environmental markets that already exist. It lists and maps property attributes including size, vegetation, habitat and type of property proposed. It enables bankers to bid on projects through an online reverse auction, and it enables people to get information, monetize multiple environmental credits or offset multiple ecological imprints without having to go to multiple exchanges.

...It packages assets in a way familiar to investors. It connects environmental finance with traditional capital markets. It provides liquidity, transparency and a central place to buy and sell ecosystem services. And, the bottom line, it liberates untapped capital for conservation."

Read more on Ecosystem Marketplace!

Stay Green,
- The Team

Mission Markets Demo Video

2010-08-06T16:09:00.003-04:00

See the Mission Markets platform on our new demonstration video, www.missionmarkets.com/demo. The video is a guided tour of the platform narrated by our CEO, Mike Van Patten exhibiting MissionMarkets.com, with a preview of Mission Markets Earth. You will learn how to sign up, what membership entails, and how the platform works. The video shows the platform from the investor's perspective, so it's a great way for companies to see what their capital raise information will look like to an investor member navigating the platform.

Please feel free to send it around to anyone who might be interested and don't forget to contact us with feedback.

Happy viewing!

- The Mission Markets Team

Over 50 Members on Mission Markets!

2010-08-06T15:32:00.001-04:00

MISSION MARKETS REGISTERED MEMBERS:

TOTAL # ORGANIZATIONS SEEKING CAPITAL: 25
TOTAL # INVESTORS: 26

TOTAL # OFFERINGS/DEALS:

APPROVED: 6
DRAFTS: 3

Mission Markets is growing strong! Sign up here.

- The Mission Markets team

BP Isn't the Only Problem in the Gulf

2010-07-30T17:21:00.004-04:00

The New York Times today came out with an article "Gulf of Mexico Has Long Been A Dump Site for Industry" that explains the pollution -- independent of the BP oil spill -- that slides into the Gulf on a regular basis. This is worth worrying about:

"Runoff and waste from cornfields, sewage plants, golf courses and oil-stained parking lots drain into the Mississippi River from vast swaths of the United States, and then flow down to the gulf, creating a zone of lifeless water the size of Lake Ontario just off the coast of Louisiana."

"the waters of the northwestern gulf take on more oil on average per year, from spills, natural seeps and land-based sources like coastal refineries and everyday transportation, than any other North American marine waters"

Of course someone needs to clean this up, but the article states that "environmental groups said they had found much of the gulf a hostile fund-raising and political atmosphere".

This is where Mission Markets comes in. As a sustainability exchange, Mission Markets helps companies working on projects like mitigating water pollution, to get access to investors interested in supporting their cause. It also provides a space on Mission Markets Earth for companies to buy and sell water quality credits (among other environmental credits) which helps buyers to offset their environmental footprint, and sellers to clean up our waters.

See www.missionmarkets.com and www.mmearth.com.

Save the Earth
- The Mission Markets Team

Mission Markets is growing every day!

2010-07-29T14:40:00.001-04:00

MISSION MARKETS REGISTERED MEMBERS:

TOTAL # ORGANIZATIONS SEEKING CAPITAL: 15
TOTAL # INVESTORS: 15

TOTAL # OFFERINGS/DEALS:

APPROVED: 4
DRAFTS: 4

Mission Markets is currently in its beta launch, accepting both issuers and investors in the social and environmental markets to sign up as members. Learn more and register at www.missionmarkets.com. Call 646-837-6877 or email info@missionmarkets.com for more information or assistance signing up.

- The Mission Markets Team

Mission Markets - a B Corp for B Corps

2010-07-26T15:39:00.006-04:00

Mission Markets is now one of B Lab's Financial Service Partners!

B Lab is a nonprofit focused on making a new type of corporation, the B Corporation, focused on Benefit to all stakeholders, not just shareholders. To become a B Corporation, companies must pass the B Survey which rates a company's level of accountability, treatment of employees and consumers, and impact on their community and environment. They must also include the interests of employees, the environment, and the community in their corporate governing documents. Mission Markets is a B Corp and you should become one, too!

Mission Markets was featured in the B Lab newsletter sent out last week with the news that Mission Markets is now one of B Lab's Financial Service Partners! Here's the blurb about us that showed up in the newsletter:

This B Corporation is a new private investment exchange that brings socially and environmentally focused companies like B Corporations into contact with mission-driven investors, allowing companies efficient access to capital. B Corporations seeking to raise capital can list their company and their financial offering on the Mission Markets private capital marketplace. Accredited investors search through listed offerings and can decide to pursue due diligence and make an investment. Fees are only success-based and are currently low during their Beta release phase. There are no membership or listing fees for B Corporations. As a B Corporation itself, Mission Markets aims to be the go-to platform for other B Corps seeking funding. Several B Corporations are already considering or in the process of listing their offerings. Please visit Mission Markets and sign up as a issuer member at www.missionmarkets.com. Contact the Mission Markets team for more information, a demo of the platform, or for help signing up as an Issuer. You can reach them at 646-837-6877 or at info@missionmarkets.com.

To learn more about Mission Markets as a B Corp and the rest of the B Corp community, check out the following links:

- Read about Mission Markets on the B Corp website here.
- Read more about B Corps here.
- Check out the B Corps Declaration of Interdependence

And remember, Mission Markets is still in its Beta launch and waiting for YOU. List your company at www.missionmarkets.com.

- The Mission Market Team

Slow Down! Mission Markets in Slow Money Newsletter

2010-07-20T14:14:00.004-04:00

Mission Markets was mentioned in the Slow Money July newsletter!

The Slow Money alliance, led by Woody Tasch, works to channel capital to local communities by supporting sustainable agriculture and other social and environmental initiatives. The Newsletter describes Slow Money's planning group Discovery Session in Wisconsin this past June 28th. The discussions of the day ranged from local food system financing, keeping businesses local, alternative financing structures, Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI's), L3C's, and other ways we can use corporate and investment structures for the good of the community and the environment. As a part of these discussions, Mike Van Patten, Mission Markets CEO told the entire group about Mission Markets during a lunch presentation. Mike addressed how MissionMarkets.com could help finance the full range of financing solutions for companies and organizations.

Read more about the gathering here.
Read more about Slow Money at www.slowmoneyalliance.org

Don't miss the planning groups' next Slow Money Wisconsin gathering on August 9th.

Remember, Mission Markets is in its Beta launch. List your company at www.missionmarkets.com.

- The Mission Markets Team

TEEB report on biodiversity Released! Mission Markets mentioned

2010-07-14T15:44:00.001-04:00

New release of one of the most anticipated business and biodiversity reports, the 2010 TEEB Report, “The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity - Report for Business”! The third annual report was created by The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) research consortium at the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), and released at the first Global Business of Biodiversity Symposium in London, England yesterday, July 13, 2010. As the UN has declared 2010 the International Year of Biodiversity, reading this report is key to getting up to date in the business-biodiversity fields.

The report focuses on the role of business in biodiversity ecosystem services, and covers areas such as climate change, pollution, threats to habitat, and REDD+. It stresses the interrelated effects of increasing biodiversity loss with other aspects of climate change and the degradation of ecosystem services. It also emphasizes the opportunity for the world of business and the natural world to not only coexist, but benefit from each other.

Read it at: http://www.teebweb.org/

Mission Markets brings together organizations in all environmental sectors to battle the environmental issues relayed in the TEEB report, and to build opportunities from the potential synergies between business's and nature's services.

The TEEB report describes us on Page 19 in Section 5:

“Mission Markets Inc. is an example of a new company anticipating the emergence and growing importance of biodiversity and ecosystem services markets, as societal and market norms shift towards sustainability and social responsibility. As such, it has created an electronic transactions and communications platform for voluntary environmental and social capital markets. It allows the increasing number of investors focusing on Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) and sustainability to access a network through which to find, compare and assess new investments, organizations and assets. The platform not only consolidates social and environmental markets, but provides transparency and liquidity, unifying selected metrics so that visitors can compare organization and assets in creative ways, confirming the quality and credibility of transactions and the accountability of the organizations themselves (www.missionmarkets.com).”

Enjoy biodiversity!
- The Mission Markets Team

Social/Environmental Resources at the Mission Markets Knowledge Center

2010-07-13T13:43:00.002-04:00

The Mission Markets team has aggregated reports, articles, and links regarding the various social and environmental sectors that Mission Markets works with, and has uploaded all the info into one webpage. For a place to learn more about your sector, a launching pad for research, or a place to learn about the environmental and social fields at large, visit the Mission Markets Knowledge Center to browse around. (Bookmark our link: http://www.missionmarkets.com/about/knowledge-center)

Our knowledge center reflects our company's goal: to bring all of the sectors in the social and environmental fields together in one place. Our Knowledge Center begins to do this simply on the informational end. Our Private Capital Marketplace does this for capital raising, providing social and environmental companies a place to find mission related investors. And our Mission Markets Earth platform does this for environmental credits – helping people and institutions buy and sell carbon, water quality, renewable energy, habitat, and wetlands credits, to name a few. We are the one-stop-shop for anyone interested in social or environmental information, data, and financing. Come join us for free!

Please don't hesitate to email or call us to learn more about us and how we can help you get involved. We're very happy to show you a demo of our platform, and walk you through the sign-up process to become a member.

We look forward to hearing from you soon!

- The Mission Markets Team

Issuers and Investors Unite! Mission Markets has opened its doors

2010-07-12T16:22:00.000-04:00

Mission Markets is in beta launch, accepting both issuers and investors in the social and environmental fields to sign up as members. We're growing fast - after less than a week, we already have 5 issuers and 5 investors on board! Call or email us for basic info, for a demo of the platform, or for help signing up. Or feel free to login yourself, at www.missionmarkets.com. We look forward to seeing you on the Mission Markets sustainable investment platform!

- The Mission Markets Team

Issuer Sign-Up

2010-07-01T11:15:00.005-04:00

The Mission Markets Private Capital Marketplace is now in beta launch, open to social and environmental organizations looking to raise capital.

How does it work? Contact us and we'll send you our beta agreement, making sure you have the minimum requirements we need (proving you're social/environmental, and getting your paperwork together). Once you have everything in order, sign the beta agreement and send us the documents. We'll give you the beta website you can use to sign up on the Mission Markets Private Capital Marketplace as a member. You'll get a confirmation email or two, and you're in! Fill in your profile - contact info, info about your company, info about the financing you're looking for. We're here to walk you through the process if you have any questions.

Investors will soon be signing on as well, and will see the information you've provided - if you'd rather keep your detailed info and your documents private, you can hide them and only be available as a discreet offering: investors will see you're there, but will have to be approved by you to see more.

We've spoken to thousands of interested issuers and investors, and are now available to get you on board if you're ready to join our beta launch!

For more info about the Mission Markets Private Capital Marketplace, click here.

Introducing... Mission Markets Earth!

2010-06-24T15:25:00.008-04:00

Mike and Theda (our CEO and Director of Environmental Policy) are currently at the 3rd Annual Ecosystem Markets Conference in Raleigh-Durham introducing our latest creation: Mission Markets Earth!

Mission Markets Earth is a private exchange for trading in the large and growing environmental credit markets. Carbon is the most well-known product in this space, but is really just the tip of the iceberg: our information and transaction services also covers habitats, water quality, fishery catch shares and other credit markets.

You can read more details about the Mission Markets Earth intro in our press release - and please stay tuned to this channel for more news as we continue to spread the word about Mission Markets!

Mission Markets On The Road

2010-06-24T14:49:00.014-04:00

Over the past few months, the Mission Markets (MM) team has been criss-crossing the US, attending over 15 conferences and events, spreading the news about the MM exchange platforms.

We've shown demos of our platform to hundreds of interested viewers, both from these events and from meetings and calls at MM headquarters here in NYC. Feedback has been extremely positive from the issuer and investor sides, as well as from intermediaries and others on our growing list of partners.

Here's a brief recap of where we've been:

National Mitigation Banking conference (VA)
Mitigation and conservation banking, protecting wetlands and endangered species
BALLE Business Conference (Business Alliance for Local Living Economies) (SC)
Socially responsible businesses building community based, green, local economies
National Ecosystem Markets conference (NC)
Scaling markets that protect and restore ecosystems, through business, new transactions, voluntary markets - presented by American Forest Foundation & World Resources Institute
Slow Money National Conference (VT) & Greater Boston Slow Money (MA)
Bringing investment capital to a wide range of local food producers and processors, for a sustainable, equitable food system
Ceres Conference 2010: Roadmap for a Sustainable Future (MA)
Sustainable business solutions for long term shareholder value
Responsible Property Investing Forum: Growing the Field (NY)
Using responsible property investing to improve social, environmental, and financial impact

Social Impact Exchange Conference on Scaling Financing and scaling social programs through high growth non-profits

SRI Basecamp (NY)
Positive, transformative investment strategies, through sustainable investing, ESG, SRI
Mid-Atlantic Fisheries Management Council
Determining catch shares for two New England species
Boston Area Sustainable Investment Consortium (MA)
Connecting the Boston local community to SRI investors
Spread the B-Love B Corp event (NY)
Uniting B Corporations for networking and partnership

Ecosystem Markets - States Coming on Board

2010-05-17T17:41:00.004-04:00

If anyone doubted that the markets for conservation finance or specifically ecosystem markets, including water quality, wetland mitigation and conservation banking, would remain on the fringe should read the state of Maryland executive order 13508.

This is a blueprint for restoring and preserving the Chesapeake Bay watershed through the use of market based mechanisms that will help to motivate private landowners and increase vigilance on polluting industries, including CAFO, or Concentrated Animal Feed Organizations, such as industrial sized chicken and pig producers.

I think this could become a model for other states and regions of the country to not only achieve environmental goals, but to increase the tax base and levy fines for violators. Its 173 pages but well worth reading. Here is the link http://executiveorder.chesapeakebay.net/

BTW, Mission Markets is finally close to launching the private capital marketplace, which is our private investment exchange, and will launch the Mission Markets Earth Environmental markets exchange in mid June.

For more information go to http://www.missionmarkets.com/ and http://www.mmearth.com/

Thanks
Mike

Scaling Social & Environmental Impact Investing - Its Not About the Technology

2010-01-14T11:18:00.044-05:00

Over the past 20 months I have been involved in the creation and development of a business model that I strongly feel will dramatically increase the ability for capital to flow in support of social and environmental issues, challenges and organizations worldwide. This has been as much of a personal journey as it has been a business approach.

In the beginning, being that I came from a traditional Wall Street background, I thought that this was about implementing the latest technology and building a state of the art transactions platform. It did not take me long to realize that it’s not about the technology!

Technology is important to efficiently bring people together and distribute information, though technology is the easy part of our task. Using our expertise to build relationships and trust and to unite stakeholders that previously did not join forces is our real work, as we encourage a norm shift within the social and environmental capital markets. It is in these efforts that we differentiate ourselves, and through which we add our most important contribution to these markets. Though we are still a young company, we have already been recognized and accepted by many, and because we are still a young company, we have also been viewed by some with skepticism and disdain.

As many of these markets are still very much in their emerging stages, supporting the social and environmental efforts is not about anonymity or functionality. It is about bringing like-minded organizations and people together in the spirit of collaboration and getting them engaged. This is the essence of relationship building unique to our company, Mission Markets Inc.

At least in the first few years Mission Markets will have to be as much an advocate for social and environmental change as we are an electronic marketplace for transactions. As I have stated in previous writings, so that sufficient amounts of capital can be deployed within and across markets to support some of the monumental challenges facing our society today, we are motivating the mainstream investing public to embark upon a very long learning curve where they will not be limited to an awareness of the challenges of these markets, but where they will gain an awareness of how to best allocate financial assets.

Creating this more efficient marketplace is very much a grass roots effort that will take many years and the cooperation of many actors within the social and environmental markets ecosystem. Each of our participants will come with their own distinct needs, challenges, and communities, and cannot be viewed and organized into cookie cutter sectors or classifications, because we are shifting the very way stakeholders in these markets are organized and classified.

Participants include:

• Impact investors
• Foundations, investment advisers, broker dealers, money managers
• Ecosystem markets stakeholders
• Corporations
• NGO's
• Third party social and environmental metrics providers
• Data and content providers
• Local governments and municipalities
• Slow money and slow food movement advocates
• Community development financial institutions
• Fisheries and agriculture communities

Unless we understand these sub-sectors and gain cooperation and buy-in from these stakeholders, we will never succeed in our vision of creating a true centralized social and environmental capital marketplace.

Mission Markets is scheduled to launch its phase 1 platform in March of this year. For more information please visit http://www.missionmarkets.com. You can reach me at mvp@missionmarkets.com.

- Mike

Sustainable Fisheries Investment - Balancing Catch Shares & Fishing Communities

2009-12-01T08:46:00.081-05:00

One of the major opportunities that exists for socially responsible investors is investment in the sustainable fisheries sector. causing devastating effects on marine ecosystems and the local communities that depend on this resource.

There has been much discussion regarding the best way to implement comprehensive sustainable fisheries management practices. Within the U.S. the re-authorization of the "Magnuson Stevens Fisheries Management Act" mandates some form of annual catch limit or "CAP". The NOAA is recommending the use of a "Catch Share, or transferable quota system, for all major fisheries to help address this challenge.

This has been a highly controversial topic. At one end stand environmental NGO's and the NOAA advocating a quota system as the most viable approach to fishery stewardship. On the other end stand the commercial fishermen and their communities that are concerned about the effects that migrating their fishery to a quota system will have on their future.

Problems include:

• A dramatic reduction in the number of local jobs and vessels
• Large corporations buying up or leasing a high percentage of the available quota
• Quota lease and purchase prices becoming too high and therefore unattainable or unprofitable for smaller vessels

As evidenced by current ITQ systems, both sides of this debate have reasons to be both supportive and concerned. Over the next two years all major fisheries within the U.S. will be migrating to some form of transferable quota system. There are, however, ways to balance the needs of the community and the environment with the funding vehicles that support stewardship and the community.

Such funding vehicles include:

• Community Fishing Associations (Fisheries COOPS)
• Fisheries Trusts
• Community Quota Entities (CQE's)

From an investment perspective, the purchasing of Catch Shares does offer opportunities for potential capital gains, however we believe that this is not where socially responsible investors should be focusing. Many foundations and environmentally focused organizations have invested capital into the funding vehicles above to focus their support on both fishery stewardship and local communities. Organizations such as The Cape Cod Fisheries Trust http://www.ccchfa.org/, The Island Institute http://www.islandinstitute.org/ and Ecotrust http://www.ecotrust.org/ either have or are creating various funding vehicles that, amongst other functions, will purchase quotas and lease them out at below market rates in an effort to support local fishing communities and allow access to those who were not allocated quota. Investors receive either below market rate or market rate fixed returns by placing capital in these types of funding vehicles.

My company, Mission Markets Inc., is creating an electronic transactions and communications platform that will support investment and trading in emerging social and environmental sectors, including sustainable fisheries and the facilitation of Catch Share transfers and leases. We will not, however, support speculative investments in Catch Shares.

For further information please visit http://www.missionmarkets.com/

- Mike

Emerging Ecosystem Service Markets Trends, Innovations

2009-11-25T08:08:00.040-05:00

There are several major macro trends developing globally that will create a need for more innovative market based mechanisms for payments for ecosystem services.

These include:

* Demand by investors for ESG measurement by major corporations
* Increase in socially responsible or "Impact Investing" assets
* Increasing environmental regulation
* Recognition by governments of the need to put a price on ecosystem services

I will now explain each of these four in further depth:

1) The integration of ESG measurements and the growing transparency of corporations’ environmental impacts spur on discussion and demand, as what is measured must then be addressed. Investors and consumers are driving the need for corporations to act in a more socially responsible manner and to reduce their impacts on the environment. One of the methods that will be used by companies to reduce negative environmental impacts is by purchasing offsets, whether directly investing in the projects, or by purchasing environmental credits.

2) There is a growing trend created by investors to align some of their investable assets with their moral beliefs, so called "Impact Investing". This trend will have a direct effect on the markets for ecosystem services and the demand for investment vehicles and market based mechanisms related to the PES markets. Demand for products and services within this sector will increase and benefit private biodiversity funds, project developers, consultants, and third party service providers, including the regional marketplaces that are being created to more effectively facilitate these transactions.

3) Climate change regulation is inevitable in the U.S.; behind the scenes and less publicized, however, are more stringent regulations that affect stormwater runoff, watershed pollution, and fisheries management. These will drive demand in markets for water quality credits and "Catch Shares", which are transferable commercial fishing permits.

4) Governments and NGO's worldwide are recognizing the need to price and value ecosystem services, and various efforts are being implemented that will help promote standardized metrics as well as international payment mechanisms for these markets. These include the "Ecosystem Services Benchmark", created by the "Natural Value Initiative", and supported by the UNEP FI http://www.naturalvalueinitiative.org/. The "Ecosystem Services Benchmark" is a metric that measures the biodiversity footprints of major corporations, beginning with the beverage, tobacco, and food industries. An other innovation is called the "Green Development Mechanism", similar to the CDM under the Kyoto Protocol, which attempts to map out and create an international market-based mechanism for credit transactions, or "Transferable Conservation Obligations". The Green Development Mechanism has been created by a consortium of several global NGO's www.earthmind.net/bbb/gdm.htm.

My company, Mission Markets Inc., is anticipating these trends by creating an electronic transactions and communications platform that will facilitate both capital raising and secondary transactions for environmental projects, fisheries trusts, eco-credits and catch shares. Our belief is that over the next several years we will see these trends becoming firmly integrated into the purchasing decisions of consumers and investment processes of investors.

For more information please visit http://www.missionmarkets.com/ and Earthmind, which is creating an international payment for ecosystem services mechanism, at http://www.earthmind.net/bbb/gdm.htm.

- Mike

Conservation Finance and Investment Part 2 - Creation Of An Asset Class

2009-07-08T08:17:00.004-04:00

In part 1 of this discussion I highlighted the challenges that exist within the ecosystem service markets sector which limit their consideration as an investable asset class for mainstream institutions. The following is an overview of what is being done to make the sector more accessible to the investment community.

1) The Learning Curve

Our society has embarked upon the learning curve about how the environment and finance can work together for the benefit of both, but this education process must expand before financial professionals recognize the existence of an investment opportunity in environmental conservation. The carbon markets are accelerating this trend. I like to say that carbon is the entry drug of the ecosystem markets as evidenced by the fact that as recently as three years ago very few people understood what a carbon footprint was, and now the sector is becoming widely researched by major institutional investors.

The next step in the ecosystem services education process has involved increased information and discussion regarding water and biodiversity footprints and the associated risks and opportunities for investors. Eventually, consultants, financial advisors, and investment banks will advise their clients on how best to allocate capital to the ecosystem markets in a similar fashion that they now do wih regards to carbon.

2) Metrics & Price Data

Since information regarding price history and transactions within the ecosystem services sector often remains unpublished, the general public is only able to access a limited portion of reported financial returns data. The profession of wetland and habitat banking is very competitive and information is kept closely held. While those with access to this information hold an advantage, if our society is to scale beyond a niche market, ecosystem professionals will need to disclose such data. When this information becomes more accessible, investors will have a stronger foundational basis for decision-making.

Firms like Parametrix http://www.parametrix.com/ in Portland Oregon, who do have access to this information, are creating effective metrics and research tools to help quantify investment opportunities for both specific habitats and for the analysis of environmental projects. Another organization providing comprehensive information and data, is The Ecosystem Marketplace, (http://www.ecosystemmarketplace.com/) which has created Speciesbanking.com, (http://www.speciesbanking.com/) an open database providing details and historical data regarding most of the wetland and habitat banking projects and credits in the US.

3) Regional and Fragmented

The ecosystem services sector is very specific to geographic regions. The credits generated by wetland and habitat projects are not easily fungible, as credit transactions are only valid within a specific geographic region or "Service Area". (Compare these to carbon credits, which are extremely fungible, since a carbon credit in China is equal to a carbon credit in Texas.) As the liquidity of eco-credits is limited to parties focused in a specific area, ecosystem market transactions can be seen as more similar to real estate investing than to a natural resource investment. (Detailed discussions of market mechanisms to navigate this obstacle will be presented in Part 3).

To begin sourcing potential transactions, organizations like Defenders of Wildlife have created databases and useful tools such as The Conservation Registry, (http://www.conservationregistry.org/) which assist organizations that are seeking potential conservation project funding opportunities across the US.

Another valuable resource is a conservation tool created by Sustainable Solutions (http://www.sustainablesolutionsllc.net/) and The Pinchot Institute, called Land Server (http://www.thebaybank.org/?page_id=75. Land Server helps both private landowners and environmental bankers quantify the potential ecosystem services and resulting environmental credits that might be available on a specific property. It is currently in beta test but is expected to be ready for use in a limited number of states this fall.

4) Centralized Ecosystem Marketplace

Investors, service providers, and landowners need a centralized platform or marketplace where they can meet and transact. Such a platform will bring together the myriad ecosystems services transactions into an organized framework. Currently, if an investor or developer desires to undergo a transaction he or she must first contact a habitat banker, a local Department of Fish & Wildlife Services,, or an Army Corp of Engineers office. Once credits are located, the buyer must negotiate the transaction in a time consuming private bi-lateral agreement. More importantly, a transaction based on a private bi-lateral agreement is not a process that lends itself to the creation of an investable asset class.

As a solution to this problem, organizations such as the Willamette Partnership (http://www.willamettepartnership.org/the-willamette-marketplace) and the Bay Bank (http://www.pinchot.org/current_projects/baybank) are creating regional electronic marketplaces that will serve to facilitate ecosystem credit transactions, providing much greater transparency and ease in price determination.

My company, Mission Markets Inc. (http://www.missionmarkets.com/) is also creating a comprehensive electronic marketplace that will provide a national platform for these transactions, and act as a link to these regional exchanges. Mission Markets adds liquidity and visibility for credits and environmental projects. Our platform also serves to enhance the flow of capital to the social as well as environmental markets.

In Part 3 I will detail the necessary next steps to add liquidity, transparency, and investment appeal to this sector.

- Mike

Conservation Finance and Investment Part 1 - Opportunities & Obstacles

2009-06-21T12:12:00.001-04:00

The market for both terrestrial and marine conservation finance offers participants a wide array of opportunities to generate both financial return on investment and to direct environmental and social impact in the support of vital habitats. With the exception of the marine conservation sector, these markets share a common characteristic: the generation of a tradable or transferable credit or right which produces a financial return. The sub-sectors of conservation finance include:

- Wetland mitigation banking
- Habitat and endangered species banking
- Water quality and water temperature credit transactions
- Carbon sequestration projects
- Conservation easements and Transferable Development Rights (TDR’s)
- Marine protected areas and marine conservation agreements

In my previous article I highlighted some of the innovative products and services that provide greater transparency, liquidity and standardized metrics to the ecosystem markets. They create the critical infrastructure needed for this market to scale and appeal to a much wider audience of both philanthropic and PRI and mission investor funding sources. In the first of what will be a series of writings on this topic I will start with some basic observations.

Though some of these sectors have been in existence for over twenty years, they are still not considered an investment asset class. However, as investments in ecosystem services provide opportunities for long-term financial returns coupled with social and environmental impact, a valuable public image for investors, and benefits to stakeholders, they are uniquely attractive and will become moreso with the heightening consciousness among our society of environmental issues.The group of investors which I believe will be the most receptive to these markets includes corporate and state pension funds, foundations, family offices, investment advisors and financial intermediaries, faith based organizations and private equity investors.

With the current economic crisis investors limited to traditional investment choices have become increasingly dissatisfied, and have turned towards investing in the social and environmental sectors that reflect their personal values.

Before this market can be considered for inclusion in an asset manager’s portfolio, it must still overcome various obstacles:

- Lack of standardized financial and environmental metrics
- Limited or lacking transparency in historical financial return data
- Lack of clarity with regards to transactions data and price discovery
- Fragmented and regional/localized nature of the sector
- Limited ability to more effectively monetize credits beyond the current traditional buyers
- No centralized marketplace (exchange) to efficiently facilitate transactions between buyers and sellers

In Part 2 of this series I will detail the rapid innovation currently taking place that will provide the needed infrastructure to globally scale these markets and dramatically increase the flow of capital in support of environmental conservation.

- Mike

Ecosystem Markets Innovation Alive and Well In Portland Oregon!

2009-06-19T23:10:00.002-04:00

I am sitting in the airport in Portland Oregon waiting for my flight back to JFK Airport after attending the two-day Northwest Environmental Business Counsel Conference on Ecosystem Services Markets and basking in the glow of inspiration, enthusiasm and hope for the future of these markets.

Portland Oregon is a hotbed of innovation where technology entrepreneurs are partnering with leading environmental NGO’s to create market based mechanisms for the environmental markets. Together they are improve ecosystem markets by enabling stakeholders to gain access to information and capital in order to ensure that vital habitats can be more effectively protected, measured and valued.

Below I include a list of organizations that are cutting a trail in these markets and helping to turn what most people feel is a vague and somewhat confusing concept into mainstream concepts and opportunities.

- The Defenders of Wildlife http://www.defenders.org/
- The Willamette Partnership http://www.willamettepartnership.org/
- Parametrix http://www.parametrix.com/
- The Other Firm http://www.theotherfirm.com/
- The Bonneville Environmental Foundation http://www.b-e-f.org/
- The Ecosystem Marketplace http://www.ecosystemmarketplace.com/
- The Bay Bank http://www.thebaybank.org/
- Biodiversity and carbon registry TZ1 http://www.tz1market.com/

About 250 ecosytem enthusiasts from around the country attended the Northwest Environmental Business Counsel Conference to hear speakers such as Sally Collins, who heads the new USDA Office of Ecosystem Services Markets, and environmental markets advocate Sara Vickerman of Defenders of Wildlife, discuss and debate the current state and future of these markets.

New Contributions in the Field:

- Innovations that will provide private landowners and environmental investors with a centralized data and information portal include The Conservation Registry (http://www.conservationregistry.org/) and LandServer (http://www.landserver.org/) (scheduled to launch in the fall).
- Other creative initiatives include The Bonneville Environmental Foundation's Water Restoration Certificates, which allow the public to purchase certificates that will offset their personal and business water use footprints. For a minimum $25 donation, BEF will return 25,000 gallons of water to rivers and streams, as 1 certificate = 1000 gallons. Visit http://www.befwater.org/.
- Parametrix is creating ecosystem metrics to measure and value ecosystem services, thereby opening the sector to a wider investor base where they can direct capital and impact in support of conservation.
The participants at the conference exhibited a strong sense of community and open collaboration, and a clear understanding of their leading roles in changing the way the world views and values our precious habitats. I plan to follow their example in becoming part of this cohesive community of pioneers supporting the environmental markets. I plan to supporting and collaborating with the above organizations so that my company, Mission Markets, can provide our members with the leading edge in technology, science, and information.

- Mike

Sustainable Agriculture Financing

2009-05-25T16:38:00.002-04:00

Monday, May 25, 2009
Sustainable Agriculture Financing

For today’s farmers to have the incentive to adopt sustainable farming methods, stewardship must lead to an increase in the farm’s income. Stewardship is more than just the use of organic farming methods, however, but includes methods such as biodynamic farming. Biodynamic farming produces robust and flavorful crops, uses methods that reduce the usage of nitrogen and phosphorous rich fertilizers, plants vegetation in riparian zones, creates shading, and generates water quality credits, easements, transferable development rights, renewable energy, and carbon credits.

Any and all stewardship methods can be utilized by farmers to generate extra income without reducing crop yields.

The tradeoff a farmer faces between selling crops themselves, versus selling the water rights connected to the croplands, lies in their price comparison. If selling crops such as rice allows the farmer a higher income gain than selling the crop lands’ water rights, the farmer will typically choose to grow the crops instead of fallowing his or her fields and selling the rights. The California Drought Bank, which faced little success when attempting to buy its desired amount of water rights from farmers noted that the price of water rights was too low.

While many organizations focus on educating farmers on the various ways to generate income from stewardship, our society still faces a general lack of knowledge regarding the current existing market mechanisms, and how to generate the financial incentives necessary to increase stewardship.

More agricultural organizations have been joining the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) in order to sell the carbon credits they have generated. Such a movement is very encouraging, though it is just the start in a long process toward cementing stewardship as financially viable, attractive, competitive. If we are to expect more farmers to adopt sustainable measures, we must enable them to efficiently create and monetize their farming methods. Mission Markets Inc. provides a crucial step in this process.

- Mike

Posted by Mike Van Patten at Monday, May 25, 2009 0 comments

Social and Ecosystem Markets Financing Mechanisms

2009-05-25T10:46:00.003-04:00

Much has been discussed and debated regarding how to increase capital flows in support of vital social and environmental challenges and opportunities. This debate has become even more pressing considering the current global financial crisis. It is clear that the world lacks the philanthropic capital needed to solve the vital challenges our global community faces.

What can we do to solve this funding gap? Private capital market mechanisms can provide incentives for mainstream investors to fund various social and environmental sectors. In the social sphere, these sectors include microfinance, community investment and CDFI's, and the LOHAS sector, among others. On the environmental side, private investments can and should flow to areas such as conservation finance, sustainable water solutions, terrestrial and marine ecosystem services, and sustainable fisheries and agriculture,.

Microfinance and community investment have been able to raise billions of dollars through private capital market mechanisms, albeit still not in sufficient amounts. The carbon markets are seeing dramatic increases in capital because of current and pending climate change regulation, and the wetland and conservation banking markets have also benefited from the Clean Water Act and Endandgered Species Act. However, the environmental markets are still only at the brink of their potential.

I wrote in an Ecosystem Marketplace article (http://ecosystemmarketplace.com/pages/article.opinion.php?component_id=6652&component_version_id=9948&language_id=12) suggesting that the social and environmental communities should view social as well as conservation finance similar to how the institutional investment community looks at other asset classes: underlying assets and cash flows.

When I speak of the mainstream investment community, I am referring to the growing number of patient capital investors focused on double and triple bottom line returns – not speculators. As a result of the recent crisis’s capital markets turmoil, popped bubbles, higher risk aversion, and lower predicted returns have changed what investors perceive as "market rate returns". The current economic climate has actually opened up the opportunity for the 3%-7% annual returns from investments in the social and environmental markets to present themselves as more attractive than they were the past, when compared mainstream investments.

Below is a list of the various financial structures being created to more effectively support and monetize the social and environmental markets:

Social:

- Social Enterprise Royalty Trust Securities (SERTS), in which social enterprises pay out a portion of their revenues as a dividend to their shareholders.
- Low Profit Social Limited Liability Corporation, or, L3C company, where PRI and market rate return investors can invest in and support social enterprises, and in which cash flow and returns are distributed according to the investors’ interests.

Environmental:

- Water Footprint Credits & Water Restoration Certificates support various water usage and restoration projects globally.
- Stormwater Runoff Credits support the reduction of impervious surfaces to reduce stormwater pollution.
- Marine Impact Credits support marine protected areas and various estuary and marine conservation and fisheries projects.
- Community Quota Entities support local sustainable fishing communities.

The above structures can provide diversified double and triple bottom line market rates of return to investors. Mission Markets Inc., an electronic marketplace for the environmental and social capital markets, supports these markets by helping to scale the various social and environmental sectors as viable investments. Please visit http://www.missionmarkets.com/.

An overview of our marketplace:

Our Markets

- Social Capital Markets - L3C's, B-Corporations, Microfinance, Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI's), NGO’s, LOHAS Sector
- Environmental Markets - Ecosystem Services & Conservation Finance, Renewable Energy, Sustainable Fisheries, Sustainable Water Solutions, Stormwater Management, Sustainable Agriculture

Our Products & Services

- Capital Raising for Social & Environmental Enterprises, Environmental & Renewable Energy Projects, MIV's, Water Banks, through debt, equity, and credits
- Secondary Liquidity & Transactions for Private Debt, Shares, Environmental Notes & Credits, Transferable Development Rights
- Public/Private Partnering for Financing Fisheries and Conservation Investment Opportunities
- Innovative Environmental Financing Structures Including Carbon Notes, Renewable Energy Notes, Biodiversity Notes
- Transaction Data, Research and Market News Aggregation for the Social & Environmental Capital Markets
- Creation of Pilot Programs for Catch Shares and Marine Impact and Water Usage Credits
- Metrics Quantifying Environmental & Social Performance and Return on Investment
- Stringent Screening and Certification Standards for Social Enterprises and Environmental Projects

Details will follow on each sector and structure and how to effectively scale these markets. For more information please visit http://www.missionmarkets.com/ or email me at mvp@missionmarkets.com

- Michael Van Patten