Latest news with #WeFunder
Int'l Business Times
07-08-2025
- Business
- Int'l Business Times
DSM Land Launches Funding Campaign to Expand Revolutionary Tree-Based Investment Model that Combines Profit with Purpose
DSM Land, LLC, a land-holding company based in Durango, Colorado, is proud to announce the launch of a funding campaign aimed at scaling its innovative and globally replicable investment model that proves business can be a true force for good. Founded by visionary entrepreneur and CEO Jennifer Thurston, DSM Land is seeking a wide range of investors, from everyday people with $100 to contribute to institutional backers capable of $20 million investments, to join a new kind of financial ecosystem where doing business and doing good go hand in hand. The Equine Therapy The heart of the DSM Land model lies in its unique, nature-inspired structure: the Tree Model. In this model, DSM Land serves as the roots and trunk, the base of long-term land conservation and stewardship, while branches represent individual, purpose-driven businesses such as wellness centers, equestrian therapy programs, and agroforestry initiatives. These branches operate as standalone entities but are interlinked and interdependent, each contributing to a thriving ecosystem designed to regenerate land, foster community well-being, and create diverse investment opportunities. What makes this model revolutionary is its flexibility and inclusivity. Whether a mission-driven donor, a small-scale investor, or a long-term financial partner, the model allows one to choose their level of involvement, timeline for returns, and area of impact. Those who invest in the 'trunk' are looking to fund long-term infrastructure and conservation efforts that yield deeper, multi-tiered returns over time. Meanwhile, those looking for quicker outcomes can invest in 'branches' like the Weaselskin Wellness Retreat and Education Center, which provides companies delivering health and wellness services, or the Weaselskin Equestrian Center, offering equine-assisted therapy. The 2000-Year-Old Tree "This initiative is about rethinking the way business and investment intersect," Thurston stated. "We're not just creating opportunities. We're creating a platform where you can align your financial decisions with the kind of legacy you want to leave behind. Whether it's helping a beginning farmer , supporting ecological preservation, or giving kids outdoor educational experiences. There's something for everyone." DSM Land is democratizing impact investing by dramatically lowering the barrier to entry. Through platforms like WeFunder, individuals can begin investing with as little as $100. For larger capital participants, such as private equity firms or mission-aligned philanthropists, opportunities extend into the millions with ownership stakes, tax incentives, and direct influence over land acquisition and development. "The amount you invest doesn't define the value of your contribution," said Thurston. "It's about what impact you want to make, whether that's conserving 2,000-year-old trees or supporting nature-based youth education programs." Each of DSM Land's current and upcoming initiatives, including Snowcap Sod Farm, an agroforestry site; Eva's Place, which supports beginning farmers with organic food production; and the Weaselskin Institute, a nonprofit coordinating nature-based education, feeds back into the core mission. They not only operate as viable businesses but also serve communities, create jobs, and promote environmental regeneration. This interconnected approach allows capital to circulate in a way that is both profitable and socially transformative. "Our branches give back to our roots," Thurston explained. "Just like in a tree, some operations provide immediate returns while others grow slowly and offer long-term fruit. But all of them are essential, and all of them feed our mission. This is how we create sustainability, both financially and ecologically." In an era when many corporations give back only after profits are tallied, DSM Land has come up with a completely novel model. As a Public Benefit Corporation, it is committed to putting purpose at the center of its operations. Instead of funneling excess profit to shareholders or waiting for tax season to give back, DSM Land reinvests in land, people, and community services from the outset. Through partnerships with organizations like the La Plata Open Space Conservancy, along with local schools and community programs, DSM Land is bringing the vision of regenerative capitalism to life. With a strategic growth plan to expand its land holdings by an additional 120 acres by 2025 and 240 more by 2028, DSM Land is not just planting seeds for local change. It's building a replicable, global model. Partnerships with local educational institutions, conservation organizations, and grassroots nonprofits ensure every inch of land and dollar invested fuels real-world impact. For Jennifer Thurston, who has been involved in Project Weaselskin for over 45 years and is a lifelong advocate for conservation, equity, and experiential healing, this work is deeply personal. She says, "I didn't start this just to build a company but to build a true legacy. We're proving that business can be the engine of positive change, not just a support system for it. Our model is designed to be replicated worldwide, and the time to grow it is now."
San Francisco Chronicle
08-06-2025
- Sport
- San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco's first women's sports bar, Rikki's, to open in the Castro on June 11
San Francisco is finally set to welcome its first women's sports bar next week. Rikki's will officially open its doors on June 11, co-founders Danielle Thoe and Sara Yergovich told the Chronicle. The bar and restaurant, located at 2223 Market Streeet, will operate six days a week from mid-afternoon until 10:00 p.m. on all weeknights except Mondays and midnight on weekends. Rikki's is the latest tenant at the location after five other restaurants have closed there since 2012. Thoe and Yergovich met playing soccer together for the San Francisco Spikes, an LGBTQ+ soccer club. They bonded over their frustrations in finding bars that would play NWSL and WNBA games. They went from joking about opening a women's sports bar to seriously investigating the possibility. The duo signed a lease in November after announcing they were fundraising to open the bar last August. 'It's kind of a relief, honestly, it feels like this is a moment that we've been waiting for,' Thoe said. 'Seeing the expressions on people's faces when they see the pictures on the walls, and they walk around the space and see all women's sports everywhere, it feels overwhelming.' The bar's name honors Rikki Streicher, who was one of the co-founders of the Gay Games Federation in 1982 and two queer women's bars in San Francisco, Maud's and Amelia's, which sponsored several recreation sports leagues and teams in San Francisco. She died in 1994 at 72. Inside, Rikki's is a vibrant tribute to the history of women's sports. Interior designer Wendy Trotter created walls cascaded by colorful outlines of basketball courts, soccer fields and softball diamonds. A framed Bay FC jersey autographed by every member of the 2025 team hangs next to a San Francisco Falcons ultimate frisbee jersey. A lounge area by the bar displays vintage magazine covers and photographs of women's sports icons, while the back wall is dedicated to Streicher, showcasing images of her former rec league teams. There are 15 televisions across the bar. Originally hoping to open by mid-May, the new bar owners were delayed by what Thoe called 'city hiccups.' 'Demolition was a challenge, because the original construction was really well done, so some of the demolition took a little bit longer than we thought,' Thoe said. 'Then getting inspections scheduled was a challenge, it took a little longer than we had hoped, but it all got done in the end. In the months leading up to the opening, Thoe and Yergovich hosted Valkyries and Bay FC watch parties at other San Francisco venues, drawing around 150 fans per event, according to Yergovich. She is hopeful that having a dedicated space showing every game will increase their patrons. Thoe, who works in real estate, and Yergovich, who is in marketing, fundraised over the past year. Through WeFunder, a crowdfunding website, they raised $425,000 in addition to collecting $390,000 in private investments. Rikki's is the latest addition to a growing number of women's sports bars opening across the country. In 2025, six women's sports bars have already opened in Phoenix, Omaha, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Austin and Houston. At least eight more (Kansas City, Seattle, Atlanta, San Diego, Des Moines, Columbus and two in New York) are expected by year's end. The Sports Bra, the first women's sports bar to open in Portland in 2022, recently announced it would expand with franchises in Boston, Indianapolis, St. Louis and Las Vegas. Yergovich said the founders of these bars stay connected in a group chat, sharing everything from licensing tips for streaming games to marketing strategies. Many women's sports events are on newer streaming platforms such as Amazon Prime, Peacock and league-specific services like WNBA League Pass, which pose challenges for public venues. Unlike just purchasing a cable package, the bar owners have to contact the leagues to get permission to publicly air games spread across multiple streaming partners. For Thoe and Yergovich, that only reinforced their feeling of a need for Rikki's. After months of work to get to an opening day, the hard part begins: keeping a bar and restaurant open. 'Diving into this world has felt like a risk,' Yergovich said. 'Seeing how excited people are just makes me know that everything's for the right reasons, and it's all gonna work out.'
Yahoo
02-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Siren, a gene therapy startup, tests unconventional alternative to venture funding
This story was originally published on BioPharma Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily BioPharma Dive newsletter. Biotechnology startups usually turn to a few tried-and-true options to raise the money they need to develop a new drug. Company founders might get initial financial help from friends, family or an angel investor. Perhaps they'll apply for grant funding or a spot in a startup accelerator. More often than not, they'll then rely on venture funding to survive. Siren Biotechnology, a San Francisco-based gene therapy startup, has already done some of that work. The company received a $4 million grant as well as $28 million in venture funding since its founding in 2020, and has the support of a few well-known firms like Founders Fund and Lux Capital. Recently, though, Siren began testing a different idea to supplement its fundraising: the type of 'community investment round' often employed by tech startups but rarely their biotech counterparts. Last month, Siren announced plans to pursue what's known as regulation crowdfunding, a financial tool that involves selling equity stakes to 'accredited' investors who meet specific Securities and Exchange Commission income and net worth criteria, as well as non-accredited individuals who don't. The SEC allows companies to use this approach to raise up to $5 million over a one-year period through an online, agency-registered intermediary, such as a funding portal. Siren is using a platform called WeFunder. The amount Siren seeks represents a fraction of the typically hundreds of millions — if not more — that biotech companies need to bring a drug to market. However, CEO and scientific founder Nicole Paulk views the idea as a creative way to attract different types of investors. 'The scientist in me is just like, 'We're going to run this experiment and see if it works,'' she said in an interview. Siren is developing a kind of medicine that blends elements of gene therapy and cancer immunotherapy. It's using a type of virus to send into tumors engineered versions of cancer-fighting cytokines. The company's lead program, for an aggressive form of brain cancer called high-grade glioma, is in preclinical testing. Siren aims to ask regulators around the end of the year to start human testing, according to Paulk. Biotechs in Siren's mold have had a difficult time of late raising funds for these experiments. Venture firms have coalesced around fewer but larger bets, leading a spike in $100 million-plus 'megarounds' and a preference for more proven drug startups. Gene and cell therapy developers have been hit particularly hard during this shift, with funding totals falling significantly from their peak a few years ago. Paulk says the investment climate didn't factor into Siren's decision to pursue crowdfunding. Nonetheless, Paulk believes such tools could be helpful for Siren and early-stage companies like it. A small amount of cash goes a long way for a preclinical startup, she said, and could be useful for biotechs that need to reach their next milestone but can't secure cash from institutional investors. Paulk, a former University of California, San Francisco assistant professor, said the idea was first suggested to her by a prominent local CEO who invested in Siren. She began looking into it in January, and became intrigued by crowdfunding's novelty, as well as its potential to draw in individuals, like patients and their families, who might have a personal stake in the company's research. 'I just became enamored with the concept,' she said. Patients, caregivers and their friends can, of course, donate to disease foundations that often issue grants to academic labs and scientists. Yet those funds might go toward supporting projects that are years from human testing or may never get there. Paulk contends these communities might be inclined to invest in a company with a treatment their patients could later receive in a trial. Such direct investment does pose risks, however. Siren's WeFunder homepage doesn't mention the gene therapy field's recent headwinds, nor does it fully detail the arduous journey every biotech faces in proving the safety and efficacy of promising new therapies. Most drugs, even those based on cutting-edge and sophisticated science, later fail in testing. Siren does provide information on its financial health and operations for 2023 and 2024, a rare window into the inner workings of a private company, as well as an independent auditor's report. According to the WeFunder page, prospective investors who contribute $50,000 will receive quarterly reports from Siren, while anyone who invests $100,000 gets twice yearly calls with Paulk. Paulk wouldn't say exactly how much the company has raised so far. But she's closely watching to see who the idea resonates with, what works or doesn't, and intends to share the details with other aspiring founders. She's already been contacted by others in the biotech startup community to discuss her experience. 'I'm talking about this everywhere," she said. 'I'm not trying to make it a secret by any means.' Since opening the round, Siren has cleared the $50,000 minimum threshold WeFunder requires before disbursing funds. As of Wednesday, more than a dozen people had publicly identified themselves as investors. One 'lead' investor, Lynn Fischer, a managing director at KMAK Capital, said her firm put in $200,000. 'Our investment is an expression of confidence in Siren Biotechnology's scientific innovation, their ability to navigate the complexities of the regulatory landscape, and their power to deliver on the massive potential of AAV immuno-gene therapy for patients,' Fischer wrote on the funding portal webpage. Sign in to access your portfolio
Forbes
09-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Nine Ways To Sustainable Funding: The Arts Sector And Special Vehicles
Larry Bomback is the founder of Strategic Nonprofit Finance. getty Arts organizations are constantly seeking innovative ways to build long-term financial sustainability. While traditional philanthropy and grant funding remain vital, they can leave organizations vulnerable to shifting economic conditions and donor priorities. Enter special purpose vehicles (SPVs)—or, more specifically, roll-up vehicles (RUVs)—which can help nonprofits to tap into new revenue streams by enabling stakeholders to invest directly in their work. Until recently, investing in private ventures was limited to accredited investors—people with high incomes or significant assets. That changed with the passage of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act of 2012, which introduced crowdfunding regulations. This allowed anyone to invest in private companies, opening the door for nonprofits to use RUVs to attract funding from everyday supporters. On top of this, with the proliferation of investment crowdfunding platforms like WeFunder, Republic and StartEngine, organizations can now more easily pool small contributions from a large number of investors. But while SPVs have been widely used in the startup world, I find that the nonprofit arts sector has been slow to explore this potential. With this in mind, here are nine ways arts organizations can leverage SPVs for growth and impact. Traditional arts funding relies heavily on wealthy donors, foundations and government grants. RUVs open the door to individuals who may not be high-net-worth philanthropists but are willing to invest in a project they believe in. In addition to using crowdfunding platforms, you can identify potential investors within your existing network, using surveys or direct outreach to gauge interest and educate them on how investment through an RUV works. When someone invests in an art project, they're no longer just a donor or a ticket buyer. They're an owner, and ownership breeds advocacy. They are more likely to promote it to their networks, increasing word-of-mouth marketing and strengthening the overall community. To help encourage this toward direct financial investment, you can design a communication plan to keep investors engaged and further encourage this type of advocacy. Many arts organizations operate like startups; they take creative risks, experiment with new ideas and work tirelessly to scale their impact. However, I believe they lack one major startup advantage: the ability to offer equity to employees and stakeholders. By structuring investments through SPVs, nonprofits can mimic the startup model, rewarding those who help drive success without violating their nonprofit status. Subscription-based platforms like Patreon or Kickstarter are fantastic for raising money, but they are not the same as ownership. Those models rely on ongoing goodwill, with no financial upside for supporters. Arts organizations tend to have passionate fan bases that rival those of professional sports teams and music artists. RUVs provide a way to monetize that enthusiasm, turning loyal supporters into real investors who feel even more connected to the work. If audiences are willing to spend hundreds of dollars on VIP experiences or exclusive content, why wouldn't they be interested in owning a piece of something they love? You can use your existing social media and marketing to create buzz around investment opportunities. Consider partnerships with influencers or industry figures to help legitimize and promote your project. The traditional model of arts philanthropy skews toward an older demographic. I find that SPVs appeal to younger generations who are accustomed to investing through crowdfunding, crypto and fractional ownership models. This approach allows organizations to cultivate lifelong relationships with new supporters for whom standard fundraising strategies may have previously overlooked. The nonprofit sector can sometimes be resistant to financial innovation. By adopting SPVs, arts organizations can signal to funders and audiences that they are forward-thinking and adaptable. This reputation for innovation can lead to greater institutional investment and a stronger position. Grants and donations are often one-time infusions of cash, while investment-based funding models create recurring opportunities. If a show, exhibition or production succeeds, investors might reinvest in future projects, providing a longer-term financial runway for the organization. You can identify projects within your organization that have long-term revenue potential, such as licensing, intellectual property or real estate. I believe SPVs and RUVs can provide a bridge to the future, offering a model that blends impact investing with artistic excellence. Those who embrace this shift early, engaging legal and financial experts along the way, can better position themselves to thrive in an increasingly competitive funding environment. One of the biggest questions nonprofits might have is how to structure an SPV or RUV while maintaining their nonprofit status. I believe the key is to create a separate for-profit entity (typically an LLC) under the nonprofit's umbrella. This LLC can manage a specific project or program that aligns with your organization's mission but also has revenue-generating potential. For example, a museum undertaking a major building expansion could use an RUV to invite donors to become investors in the real estate project rather than just contributors. If the museum later rents out space, licenses its brand or monetizes the new facility in other ways, investors could see a return on their participation. Similarly, a theater company launching a new show could establish an LLC specifically for that production, allowing patrons to invest in its future commercial success if it were to be licensed to Broadway or for film. I believe RUVs present a bold new way to build sustainable funding streams, engage supporters in a more meaningful way and help to ensure that creative institutions thrive in an increasingly competitive environment. I am certain that the organizations embracing this kind of financial innovation today will be the ones shaping the cultural landscape for generations to come. The information provided here is not investment, tax, or financial advice. You should consult with a licensed professional for advice concerning your specific situation. Forbes Business Council is the foremost growth and networking organization for business owners and leaders. Do I qualify?
