The Sustainable Economies Law Center has worked to pass legislation to make it easier for small businesses, cooperatives, farms, and renewable energy projects to raise money from local investors and to enable California residents to move their money from Wall Street to their local community.

UPDATE:

AB 2751 stalled in the legislature in 2016. We faced numerous obstacles to passing the bill, including a lack of understanding about securities law  and about small businesses' financing needs among lawmakers. After debriefing the situation with our allies in the campaign, we decided not to pursue another bill around local investing in 2017 because we predicted that we would face the same obstacles. We are shifting gears to instead provide more direct legal support to small business and organizations in utilizing existing community capital legal strategies available now, and to educating investors more on possibilities for local investing under our current regulatory landscape. We are open to working on future legislation to make local investing even more prevalent, but we have no immediate plans to do so. Read more about the work we are doing to help make more local investing happen in California on our Grassroots Finance program page here.

Learn more about the Local Economies Securities Act:

Click here to read a summary of the bill, background info, FAQs, and more.

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Please email [email protected] if you want to get more involved in advocating for local investing legislation or if you have questions or feedback about the legislation.