Who Invests in Conscious Community? Investor Job Stories (2020)
The fund's analysis of investor personas — from mindful savers to family trusts to investor-residents — and two structural insights about community ownership.
Who invests in conscious community? (2020)
Archival document (2020). The fund's jobs-to-be-done analysis of who would actually put money into conscious community real estate, and why. The personas — and especially the two structural insights at the end — remain directly relevant to anyone structuring community ownership today. Part of the Fund Archive.
The personas
The conscious/mindful investor. When I'm a mindfulness practitioner wishing to invest my savings or pension in an aligned way, I want reasonably safe, ethically aligned investments, so that I have security whilst engaging in "right" investing. They also want the fund to actively support communities' success — advice, expertise, even sending experienced people to live alongside a struggling community — because thriving communities are the safe investment. (Reference point: Rootstock, lending to housing co-ops, had had no defaults.)
The average investor with an ethical flavour. Wants an ethical vehicle with a reasonable return — increasing wealth while contributing to the collective good. Needs trustworthiness above all.
Investing for the grandchildren. Long-term, ethical, environmentally sound — an investment in continuation. As Thich Nhat Hanh put it: you have no right to invest unless you are investing in continuation.
The high-net-worth impact investor. Wants impact investment rather than donation — projects that provide a return have the discipline of a business plan, so the impact sustains ("teach a man to fish"). One sharp concern: reputational risk. When I invest, I want to know the projects are reputable so I don't get "Wild Wild Country" blowback. Implication: a diversity of communities within clear guide-rails — almost a franchise model.
The discretionary fund / IFA. Needs a regulated, recognised structure — in the UK, a REIT: compliant, highly tax-efficient, ISA-eligible. Without that, this whole capital channel is closed.
The investor-resident. Wants to invest in their own community while retaining flexibility for future life changes.
Two structural insights
These came out of the investor-resident analysis and are the most enduring part of the document:
1. The exit problem of communal ownership. In a traditional co-op, your asset is your right to live there; leave (illness, divorce, children's schooling) and your asset is gone. This traps people and breeds dysfunction — the document records a 1980s London house share near Victoria Park where two groups who hated each other wouldn't leave, because cheap rent and a paid-off mortgage made exit irrational. Fix: separate membership of the community from ownership of the investment vehicle, so someone can leave the community (perhaps with penalties) without losing their asset. A fund structure does exactly this.
2. The imbalance-of-stake problem. If one benefactor puts in €2m and everyone else €10k, power imbalance follows — "energy is money." Fix: route investment through a fund, dissipating concentrated stake while the community retains its integrity; the large investor also gains diversification.
From the Fund Archive. Lightly edited from the 2020 working document.