RSF Links Socially-Conscious Borrowers, Investors
Dec 18 2013
RSF was recently featured in an article in the The Press-Democrat. Author Cathy Bussewitz interviewed Don Shaffer, President & CEO, and other attendees of the recent Pricing Meeting in Santa Rosa, CA.
It was a strange place for a meeting about interest rates.
On a cold night at the Summerfield Waldorf School in Santa Rosa, while a crowd mingled in the school auditorium munching on locally made hors d’oeuvres under the warm lights of a Christmas tree, a group of borrowers and investors hashed out specifics on the details of their loans.
The event was held by RSF Social Finance, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that provides loans and investment opportunities to socially-conscious enterprises. It was part of RSF’s attempt to make finance more transparent, by bringing borrowers and lenders together in one room.
“Our stated mission is to transform the way the world works with money, and the way we look at it is one relationship at a time,” said Don Shaffer, president and CEO of RSF.
Esmerelda Arreola packages tea displays of Guayaki yerba mate at its Sebastopol facility. (John Burgess/ Press Democrat)
“The way I describe our financial system today is as complex, opaque and anonymous, based on short-term outcomes,” Shaffer said. “And what we try to do at RSF is to model financial transactions that are direct, transparent and personal, based on long-term relationships.”
To accomplish that goal, RSF creates an unusual opportunity for the borrowers — companies like Sebastopol beverage maker Guayaki — to meet with investors. In the gatherings, known as “pricing meetings,” the borrowers explain how they’ve been spending their money and how a change to their interest rate would impact their bottom line. Investors have a chance to meet the entities they’re helping to develop, and they also get a chance to chime in on what a change to the interest rate would do for their financial outlook.
“The pricing meetings are so powerful,” said Susanne Karch, owner of Estate Services, based in San Rafael, who has invested about $17,000 in RSF. “After those meetings, I always go home and write another check.”
