SunRun teams with Virgance to finance solar for consumers
Hard economic times mean fewer consumers will shell out for expensive solar panels. Also hard hit are startups that offer no-money-down programs to lease panels or buy their power but can’t find banks to partner with. So, teaming with SunRun — one of the few outfits that still has a healthy line of financing — is a minor coup for Virgance, a company that plans to sign up thousands of new solar users.
I’ve written about… Continue Reading
Virgance gets funding, deal to install solar for businesses
Virgance, a San Francisco startup with multiple business lines all focusing on social activism, has scored $750,000 in seed funding and is also unveiling a new deal that should help it install more solar panels on roofs around the Bay Area.
We’ve covered Virgance before, although it’s a difficult company to track given that it has several founder teams, each focused on different ideas. There’s Carrotmob, which just soft-launched today; it organizes groups of consumers to… Continue Reading
Virgance snaps up 1 Block Off the Grid to give solar buyers more power
Social activism startup Virgance is no slow mover. The San Francisco startup, which last month took the wraps off two projects aiming to change the behavior of corporations through consumer buying power and help intelligently distribute philanthropic wealth, has acquired a solar-power cooperative effort called 1 Block Off the Grid (or 1BOG) that will give homeowners in 20 cities leverage to go green.
Like Virgance’s other efforts, 1BOG is all about community effort toward a common… Continue Reading
Will “social capital” be the next big industry to emerge?
It’s new enough that there’s not even a commonly accepted term for it. Some call it “social capital” or “social entrepreneurism”, others “blended value”, and some choose the Starbucksian name “double-triple bottom line.” You might just call it making money from doing good.
Microcredit is the major innovation that popularized the idea of alternatives to traditional philanthropy. An economics professor named Mohammed Yunus famously pioneered giving very small loans to people in developing countries to build… Continue Reading
Virgance gives philanthropy a proletarian twist
For many years, giving large amounts of money to charity, or affecting the moral choices of major companies, has mainly been the province of elite donors and the corporations themselves. Changing this status quo seems difficult — there’s simply a huge divide between those who have money to give away and the power to make decisions, and those who do not.
But a new San Francisco startup called Virgance thinks there’s a way to use social networks… Continue Reading