Earlier this week, New Zealand social enterprise, Eat My Lunch, launched the first campaign on PledgeMe’s new peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platform, PledgeMe.Lend. Setting out to raise $500,000, the initiative has already raised over 20% ($100,000) of its initial goal.
Earlier this spring, co-founder and CEO of PledgeMe, Anna Guenther, announced PledgeMe has received approved by the Financial Markets Authority (FMA) to launch its very own P2P lending platform. The website will reportedly allow companies and organizations to run transparent initiatives to crowdsource lending from not only their existing crowd but also the wider market.
Eat My Lunch revealed in a press release that it will be issuing its very own Lunch Bonds, an innovative offer that provides a financial return to their crowd and gives more lunches to Kiwi kids. Currently operating in Auckland and Hamilton, the funds will be used to launch the organization in Wellington. The minimum investment in the Lunch Bonds is $1,000 and lenders will be able to choose between two combinations of interest rate and giving. Each of the bonds will have a 5-year term.
“Eat My Lunch was conceived in response to big social issues happening right here in our own backyard. With 29% of Kiwi kids living in poverty and thousands going to school everyday without food, we decided to use our corporate experience to do something that really mattered. We believe that clever business solutions can help solve social issues, so we created an innovative business model that intrinsically links a social objective into the heart of a for-profit business. The model is sustainable, scalable and enables Kiwis to help other Kiwis.”
Founder of Eat My Lunch, Lisa King, previously stated:
“Eat my Lunch has made a large impact in a short amount of time with over 180,000 lunches gifted. But, with 29% of Kiwi kids living in poverty, we have only scratched the surface. We need money to grow to do more good. We are heavily reliant on manual processes at the moment to organise ordering and logistics, we think with a more robust technical platform we’ll be able to scale and service more cities and towns. Wellington makes sense as the next city to expand to because it has a strong community focus. We have already received support from local businesses and the council to launch there.”
The campaign is set to close mid-July.
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