Author: admin

How to Find Impact Investors to Finance Your Sustainable Business

By admin on October 04 2013
Guest Post by Marta Maretich, Chief Writer for Maximpact.com So, you’ve written the business plan. Congratulations! (And thanks to OpenForests for their useful guide to writing a business plan for a sustainable forestry enterprise.) Now you’re ready to look past the trees and focus on the forest - the wide world of impact investment. It’s time to go out and raise capital. But where do you start?
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in Business development, Impact investing, Uncategorized
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Why More is More: Accelerating Change in the Impact Investing Sector

By admin on November 23 2012
It seems like the impact investing sector is growing by leaps and bounds these days. OpenForests is a good example of the kind of forward-looking organization that now uses impact models to support its efforts to bring positive change. And there are many more joining the sector every day. Maximpact.com, the online portal I founded, was designed to serve the needs of what this growing community of impact investors. It’s a platform where all the players, whether they are entrepreneurs, intermediaries or funds, can list impact deals of all kinds at no cost. Once they join, they can see deals offered by others and use the site to make and scale deals on a global basis. As a piece of sector infrastructure, the platform’s main purpose is to accelerate deal-flow. Our higher purpose, however, is to accelerate the rate at which we do good for our planet and it's inhabitants.
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in Economy, Impact investing
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Chasing Profit in the Forest Products Industries: The Twelve Missteps to Avoid

By admin on October 25 2012
Sustainable forestry depends on a continuous stream of financing for thinning, for protection against fungal and insect infestation, the removal of weed species that interfere with the natural forest and for fire protection, among other hazards. This funding can come from a number of sources: government, which relies on taxation, private support based on eleemosynary motives or income generated from the forest itself, e.g. selling timber. The only reliable purchasers of timber, at least in the long run, are profitable private enterprises that convert timber into lumber, plywood, composite wood products and other materials required for building construction, furniture and cabinetry and the many other aspects of our economy. Clients of our forest industry marketing research firm from time to time set as a target to increase ‘profit’ some fixed percentage each year and ask LGA how we would recommend going about it.
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in Economy, Processing
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Making Biochar out of Slash: Agroforestry Report from Guatemala

By admin on September 27 2012
Application in practice: A guide on how to make biochar out of slash with low-tech methods instead of simply burning the slash. The biochar can be used to enhance soil quality and improve water retention during the dry season. Abstract: At the mixed hardwoods and cacao farm of Izabal Agro-Forest in Caribbean Guatemala, instead of burning in the traditional "slash-and-burn" manner, we made an experimental attempt on one hectare to convert into charcoal 10 years of clear-cut, successional, lowland tropical forest re-growth that had been felled to make way for mahogany and cacao planting. The resulting charcoal was to be incorporated into soil surrounding the cacao seedlings.
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in Carbon, Case studies, Soil, Sustainable forest management
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