Simply, crowdlending is about the crowd teaming up to lend money to small to medium sized businesses that the crowd wants to support, in exchange for a return. The difference between this and crowdfunding is that in crowdlending businesses repay borrowed money to the crowd - principal and interest. LendForGood makes crowdlending exclusively available to businesses that are genuinely using their business to do good while they make money - we call these businesses impact SMEs.

LendForGood provides a platform through which borrowers and lenders can easily find each other, explore deals, and exchange lending agreements and money, all in the name of driving and delivering impact. Our role is to make this as transparent, efficient and affordable as we can. We also make a clear link between borrowers, lenders and the real impact they team up to deliver.

The main way that LendForGood makes money to meet its costs is through interest it earns on funds held while it is managing money movements. This means that we can keep fees related to using the platform low.

You simply create a profile and browse the platform to find the kinds of impact, businesses and deals you’d like to support. The platform can also match you to and notify you of deals that suit your profile. When you find a deal you like, you pledge an amount you’re prepared to lend. When the deal closes, the platform sets up agreements and enables the money exchange. You are repaid your principal plus the interest at the end of the loan term. You are paid your full return even if a business pays back early. Lenders pay no fees to participate in deals - the platform wants to incentivise as many people as possible to to bring their money to the platform.

There are two ways that risk is managed. The first is through the concept of distributed risk. In any given deal, the bigger the crowd the smaller the risk to any one lender. Individual lenders can set their own risk tolerances and work within lending limits that suit them. The second is through a high degree of transparency about the business and repayment performance of borrowers. All businesses that post deals are required to provide a minimum amount of verifiable and reliable information about their impact, their business and the particular deal they are posting - including regular progress updates when deals are underway. The platform makes sure this information is available and provides clear and up-to-date information about the business’s track record of using the platform. Some businesses will also engage intermediaries trusted by the platform to help them meet the requirements.

Beyond ensuring that all businesses using the platform are genuine about impact, LendForGood does not recommend the investment or other merits of any individual businesses or deals. We respect the intelligence of the crowd, so our role is to make sure sufficient information is available about borrowers and their deals for lenders to be able to make their own minds up about who to support. We also enable lenders and borrowers to interact and ask questions of each other while exploring and executing deals. A key feature of this platform is to build of real relationships of trust between the platform, the crowd and borrowers, based around our shared interest in driving and accelerating impact.

When you want to post a deal, you first create and populate a profile about your business and the impact you are seeking to drive. LendForGood or a trusted intermediary will verify your profile and impact story, and clear the way for you to post deals. Then each time you wish to raise a loan, you complete a deal template that lets the platform collect and publish sufficient information about your business, your impact and the deal. You can nominate the purpose of the loan, the loan term and the interest rate you are offering. Borrowers will pay a small annual membership fee as well as a small success fee each time they successfully raise a loan. They can also choose to pay small one off fees for extra support and promotion of individual deals. LendForGood will help you to make sure that the overall balance of interest and fees payable on individual deals is more than competitive with other sources of borrowing.

You can set the amount you wish to borrow and how long you wish to borrow it for, without any limits. However, you will need to bear in mind that the crowd will use its intelligence to work out whether your business performance history and the terms you are proposing make sense enough to support you and what you are trying to achieve.

Yes you can. You’ll be able to access basic support via the platform, or more complex support via the engagement of a trusted intermediary. The more you use the platform, the more we’ll learn about your business and the kinds of support you need. The platform will then be able to match you to the most appropriate support.