Trillion Fund to Raise Half a Million

One of the UK’s leading social impact crowdfunding platforms – Trillion Fund – has turned to Seedrs in an effort to raise £500k.

This Seedrs round is the first portion of a £3m chunk of money that the platform is hoping to attract over the next 6 months. The other £2.5m will come courtesy of institutional investors. All in all, Trillion will offer up to 33% of the business to new investors.

Julia Groves, Chief Executive of Trillion Fund, commented:

“Trillion’s mission is to give as many people as possible access to investment opportunities that support the triple bottom line of people, planet and profit. We have worked hard to keep the ‘crowd’ in crowdfunding, and launching our own raise is just the next step of that campaign.

“Our goal is to be raising £500,000,000 a year by 2017 for environmental and social businesses and projects from a base of 100,000 active lenders and investors, so we’re really excited to have the opportunity to offer them the chance to put their money where their mouth is and be part of this journey.”

The £500m a year figure is particularly punchy. Trillion’s most recent project, and indeed its first P2P funded loan, was a £1.25m loan for refinancing wind turbines. That loan was quickly fully funded and boasted particularly high conversion rates. 1 in 5 of the investors who watched the pitch video put money into the loan, and 1 in 3 of those who read the offer document invested.

Trillion facilitates investment through a range of instruments: loans, community shares, equity raises, debentures and funds. The platform funds some projects using its own network of private investors, but also showcases investment opportunities in the green energy space from other platforms and businesses.

Trillion will look to use the £500k to bolster the platform’s technology in order to support a functioning secondary market as well as peer-to-peer ISAs. Trillion will also embark upon an extensive marketing campaign, as well as significantly expanding the business development team.

The social investment market in the UK is worth more than £200m – a figure that’s expected to balloon to £1 billion by 2016. Trillion Fund will have to capture a sizeable slice of that market if it is to reach the gaudy heights of £500m a year by the year 2017.