Business during the pandemic and building back green (Q3, 2020)
Nearly 8 months ago, I came to you with an update about how we got ready and planned to face the coming months. In a nutshell here is what we did:
- Contacted all our promoters to learn about their expectations and financial condition for the following months.
- Offered the introduction of a 6-month grace period and loan extension to those whose activity was going to be affected the most.
- Monitored the development of the outbreak in all the markets our promoters had operations in.
- Validated all the contractual arrangements with our community of investors (getting over 96% rate of approval) and did our best to protect the interest of both sides.
I hope GoParity team is doing well and I would like to congratulate you for your hard work and for, as always, finding sustainable projects during this time and being able to renegotiate those which were affected by Covid-10.
A GoParity investor
GoParity during the pandemics
Managing in times of Covid-19
In early March we launched the first fundraiser in Portugal together with other startups with whom we co-founded the Tech4Covid19 movement. We raised more than 200.000€ from over 7.000 donors and learned some valuable lessons.
In total, 8 promoters asked for the introduction of a grace period and of a loan extension. Of those, only one has not been able to go back to regular payments, due to the severe consequences of the pandemics in its activity, being our only loan in arrears at the moment.
Alongside several other organizations on the green side of the economy, we have been advocating for a green economic recovery. It is not yet a mainstream discourse but it keeps gaining strength and I was very pleased to read this piece by the recently appointed European Commissioner for Financial Services Mairead McGuiness.
In fact, our community of investors seems to be very well aligned with the need to use money for good, and thus September and October consecutively were our best months ever in user growth and investment volume.
In March, we launched our first international project, something we were aiming for since we started, and we now have projects and/or promoters in 9 countries worldwide, with more to come very soon!
These months were also technologically very intensive (thumbs up for our development team, Beatriz, Ben, and Bernardo, our CTO) with the launch of several features of which I’d highlight our Green Savings Plan and the creation of an IBAN account for every user.
Continuing to build back green 🌱
As impact investors, we have the power to choose where our money is going.
We are happy about our accomplishments but we are aware that much more still needs to be done! And, as such, we have much more coming your way.
From today until the 15th of January we will be lowering the minimum investment on GoParity to 5€. We are committed to providing as many people and companies as possible the possibility to become impact investors. This will be a test period after which we will evaluate the extension or adoption of the new rule.
With Christmas approaching, our Christmas Gift Card is coming back so you can offer your friends and family the gift of impact investing and sustainable savings. The minimum gift card value will also be lowered to 5€ so that more people can offer and enjoy it. You can buy yours here.
In the meantime, we will keep bringing some of the best sustainable projects to the platform. We will have more blue economy and solar power, a new country in Africa, regeneration projects, and even digital education and the gamification of learning.
We hope we can continue to count on you and many more like you that want to use “business as a force for good” (the claim of B-corps, a certification we should also be getting in the very near future).
We want to hear from you.
We want to grow with you.
As always we remain at your disposal for any questions or clarifications as usual. Please make sure you, your family, and friends continue to stay safe over the coming months.
Sincerely yours,
Nuno
