Trillion Fund

Idea

Introduction

Trillion is a crowdfunding platform that raises money for environmental and social projects from ordinary people who want better returns.

We focus on loan based crowdfunding in green energy and social investment, and earn a percentage of funds raised, paid by borrowers, and an annual percentage of funds lent, paid by the lenders.

Using profit as motivation we aim to re-engage consumers with their money and help them make a profit and make a difference.

We effectively operate a two sided network, bringing together people with money and those who need it. We aim to do it quickly and cost effectively and to try make connections between people and projects that provide more value than just financial backing.

Intended impact

We aggregate small amounts of money from large numbers of investors and in doing so:

• Raise capital cost effectively for projects and businesses
• Fund smaller projects that the banks won’t finance
• Offer higher risk adjusted returns than small investors can normally access

Our goal is to be raising almost £500 million a year for environmental and social businesses and projects, from a base of 100,000 active lenders and investors.

Substantial accomplishments to date

MEMBERS: Trillion already has a base of 14,000 members of whom 5,000 are active funders.

POLICY: Julia Groves is founding Chair of the UK Crowdfunding Association, sits on the DECC community energy finance working group and is a member of HMT's consulting group on p2p ISAs. Theresa Burton is also a Director of the UKCFA and sits on the Social Economy Alliance Finance working group, of which Buzzbnk (now Trillion) was a founding member.

AWARDS: In 2014 alone Julia has won "Business Green Entrepreneur of the Year", Michael Norton OBE was awarded with the "Outstanding Achievement Award" at The Charity Awards in 2014, Theresa Burton, has been shortlisted for an award as “2014 Social Enterprise Women’s Champion", and Trillion was named "Funder of the Year" by Community Energy England.

PARTNERS: Include Albion London on design & digital, Seedrs for client money, and Abundance on securities regulation as well as leading organisations in the charity and social enterprise sector, such as NCVO, School for Social Entrepreneurs, the Community Development Foundation (CDF) and The Young Foundation.

TECHNOLOGY: A proven platform designed to offer white label capability from day one and already enterprise scale with 120 raises and three successful branded platforms in operation. In 2013 £200,000 of funding from NESTA and the Cabinet Office was awarded to extend the technology base.

PROFILE: Julia is regularly interviewed in the press as a crowdfunding expert; she is the founding Chair of the UK Crowdfunding Association a member of the Innovate Finance Founding 50 in the UK. Michael Norton and Theresa Burton are frequent speakers in the Social Investment sector.

Monetisation strategy

We effectively operate a two sided network, bringing together people with money and those who need it. We aim to do it quickly and cost effectively and try to make connections between people and projects that bring more value than just financial backing.

On infrastructure projects we earn a percentage of funds raised (typically 2.5-4%) paid by borrowers, and an annual percentage of funds lent (normally 1%), paid by the lenders. These are deducted from borrower payments to the platform before we distribute lender returns.

Structuring costs such as the review of models, writing offer documents and due diligence process are paid for by the borrower, up front, and are not at risks. These are typically £10,000 per deal when asset backed.

Simpler and smaller social projects via the Buzzbnk.org P&L pay 5%.

Key to our success is the ability to structure and perform due diligence on deals cost effectively, and to build a membership base of repeat lenders and investors.

We also provide white-label services for crowdfunding where we typically charge setup and customisation fees up front, plus 1% of funds raised successfully. Thundafund.com is our first international client successfully operating in South Africa in Rands.

Use of proceeds

Trillion is raising a total of £1.5m in a Series A round of which we hope £500,000 will come from the crowd, the remainder from professional investors.

The funds will be used primarily to:

1.Invest in the technology platform to support a secondary market and ISA investments.

2. Run an extensive marketing campaign to build awareness and a trusted mainstream brand to reach 500,000 investors.

3. Expand the business development team to access £500m of deals p/annum by 2017.

We then anticipate a further £1.5m raise in September 2015.