[Interview] How to Provide Solar Financing to Any Non-Profit Solar Project Larger Than 50kW

Lee Barken and his team at Collective Sun have figured out the holy grail of commercial solar financing.

Collective Sun can provide solar financing to non-profit solar projects from 50kW and up. Currently, they’re offering their product in California but are interested in doing the securities and legal work to open up shop in other states, if there is a non-profit that has serious interest in working with them.

Listen to the interview below to learn more about Collective Sun (CS) and how, specifically, their underwriting process is different than a traditional investor. Their key advantage is their unique underwriting process. It’s a really interesting strategy. Their process has more to do with selecting investors that see specific non-profits as low risk, rather than finding the non-profits that meet the stringent constraints of a tradition solar investor’s risk profile.

Why focus on non-profits?

There are several reasons why there has been such focus on non-profit clients.

Non-profits operate on small budgets and they always need cash. Having lower and predictable operating expenses is very valuable to these organizations. It’s an easy sell to get your foot in the door.
Non-profits have a social mission that tends to fit well with solar.
There’s A LOT of non-profits! So the potential target market is huge. According to NCCS, there are 1.4 million non-profits in the US. Figuring this problem out will result in a huge increase in sales for the firms that provide this service.
They can’t purchase a system in cash, because they don’t have a tax appetite, so financing is a natural fit for them.

A few months ago, we did a live Q+A that was specifically on performing due diligence, using crowd-funding,  and finding investors for financing non-profit solar projects. You can see the 50 minutes of video answering 5 question here. If you want to learn how to finance commercial solar projects from start to finish including all of the legal contracts, financial modeling tools, click here to read more about Solar MBA that starts on Monday April 14th. You’ll walk through the financing of a project in 6 weeks.

Listen to the Interview

In this interview, here’s what you’ll learn.

How many projects Collective Sun (CS) has financed.
The types of non-profits that CS is focused on.
The size of non-profit that CollectiveSun will work with.
The spark that made CS decide to focus on financing non-profits.
Lee Barken’s background and how that led him to CS.
Why financing non-profits is more than a tax problem.
How CS deals with non-profit risk by working with a very specific type of investor.

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March 30th, 2014|Categories: Financing, Solar, Solar Design & Installation, Solar Finance|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |

How Do you Handle Your Customers’ Tough Questions About Solar Leases?

This is the third video in a five part series that HeatSpring created with BrightGrid Renewable Energy Finance to help residential solar contractors learn more about solar financing and leases. The goal is simple, we want to help installers to determine if their business will be helped with a solar lease and if it will be, the basics that they need to understand to offer a lease profitably.

In the third part in the series I spoke with Jeanne Rice, Marketing Director at BrightGrid, to learn the most common objections their installation partners are seeing in the field and the tips they use to get around those objections.

You can watch the two previous articles here:

Part 1: What Residential Solar Companies Need to Do to Successfully Offer a Solar Lease
Part 2: How Does a Solar Lease Work and How do You Sell its Value
Watch all 5 videos now in the free course”How to Use Solar Leases to Grow your Solar Business”

Here are the two highlights that stuck out most to me. 

If a customer wants to purchase cash, do not stop them. Selling a lease is all about qualifying and profiling the right customers. You need to be VERY SPECIFIC about who your lease customers are. By qualifying correctly, you will avoid most objections.
Keep the conversion super simple! Do not bring up extremely complicated technical or financial jargon. Lease customers tend to be mainstream customers. This can be hard for many installers because THEY LOVE the technology and want to speak about it. Just remember, talk about what your CUSTOMERS CARE ABOUT, not what you, the installer, cares about.

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What Residential Solar Companies Need to do to Successfully Offer a Solar Lease

According to the State of California Energy Commission, in Q3 of 2011, the majority of residential systems were financed. What does this mean for solar installers? Simple. The solar lease is becoming the industry norm and you need to be offering it if you plan to remain competitive in the solar market place.

We reached out to BrightGrid Renewable Energy Finance, experts in residential solar leases, to answer some of the most common questions we get from solar installers about offering a solar lease. We created a 5 part mini series that answered the most common questions solar integrators have about offering a solar lease. To view all the videos, sign up for HeatSpring’s Free Course: How to Use Solar Leases to grow your Solar business. Here is the outline:

Part 1. Should your Business off a Solar Lease?
Part 2. How does a Solar Lease Work and How do you Sell It’s Value
Part 3. How do you Handle Customers Tough Questions About Solar Leases?
Part 4. What should you business consider when Selecting a Solar Manufacturing Partners?
Part 5. Who is a lease customer and how do you sell the leases value?

In Part 1, I spoke with Roger Franco VP of Sales and Marketing at BrightGrid and we discuss when solar businesses should offer a solar lease. Here’s what we talked about:

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