Green Breakfast Club launched in June of 2011 as a monthly networking event series to grow local green business communities through resource exchange. This grew to Green Cocktail Club, trainings, a completed local prototype and a solid data set. 2012’s expansion will be into a physical space in the heart of the East Village, the launch of the resource exchange technology and the opening up of Green Club Events in new cities. Green Club Events ally entrepreneurs, industries, generations, and regions via resource exchange.
To do so, we will evolve from Green Breakfast Club and Green Cocktail Club into Village Green, which will operate as a hybrid social enterprise with both our current for-profit structure. Our company and soon to be birthed sister hybrid is for the people by the people, built on the premise that we are each other’s greatest resource. This campaign is being launched to form this nonprofit entity and to call upon upon the community to help us in the process.
These steps are already in motion. The founders of Green Breakfast Club have been scouting out a specific ideal building for Village Green since winter of 2011, and are currently working with a wide variety of advisors to secure this very space. The goal is to lease to own this building and to operate it as a community center for sustainable co-creation, with both building and inhabitants pushing the limit on how ‘green’ a building and its inhabitants can be. This will require the formation of a nonprofit and the creation and execution of a complete strategy for establishing a physical space for Village Green to operate of. Both are in the works, and this campaign will provide the funds to begin the execution of this strategy.
Despite Impact investing projected to be a $400 billion to one trillion investment opportunity in the next decade, little investment is made for seed and early-stage startups. Less than 5% of all startups get funded while entrepreneurs have difficulty getting the resources they need. This funding gap in triple bottom line startups is occurring at the same time that climate change is profoundly impacting business and consumerism. Village Green was founded to respond to this crisis and opportunity by collaboratively building out the capacity of green business communities through resource exchange.