Berkeley links to this NextCity story: Crowdfunding Fans Are Crazy About Denver’s Mini-Bonds.
Denver gained notice in the municipal funding world last month when a $12 million public offering of “mini-bonds” sold out in a single hour. The sale was supposed to run for five days. The $500 mini-bonds were tied to the $550 million municipal bond program called Better Denver.
Demand was so high and the cap was reached so quickly that afterward, 375 online orders had to be refunded.
“Denver residents — and these bonds were also open to all Colorado residents — really appreciated the opportunity to invest their money in good projects in their own community that they see everyday when they drive around town,” says Deputy Mayor Cary Kennedy, who is also the city’s chief financial officer. …
Better Denver passed as a ballot initiative in 2007. That year the city sold $8 million in mini-bonds over the course of a week. Kennedy attributes the feverish excitement this year to the online ordering system: “Back [then], we didn’t have the online capacity. People had to visit the bank or mail in their orders. This time around people were sitting at home on their computers at 8 o’clock in the morning and those orders came in very quickly.”
Pat Sabol, a senior policy and research assistant at the Brookings Institute’s Metropolitan Policy Program, says … “Right now, as an everyday person,” he says, “it’s pretty difficult to invest in my community besides me paying taxes or going out and doing a community garden. If I care about infrastructure, it’s pretty hard for me to invest in it. If you give people a safe path to do that, which Denver has done, you can go on their website and see how well they’ve done … this is really savvy urban planning and really good outreach and communications.”
