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Suz Mac Cormac and Linda Arnsbarger will join the next DAF Salon on December 8 to explore the legal issues for donors and their DAF sponsors to consider when directing DAF capital into investments. 

Suz Mac Cormac and Linda Arnsbarger will join the next DAF Salon on December 8 to explore the legal issues for donors and their DAF sponsors to consider when directing DAF capital into investments. They will also discuss creative structures that have the opportunity to open up more capital to flow into impact investments and how to turn this year’s momentum behind the use of DAFs into capacity-building across the entire DAF community.The DAF Salons are a series of small gatherings that convene donors with thought leaders to explore how to direct investments from donor-advised funds to amplify giving. The DAF Salon brings a new perspective to the DAF conversation. Rather than focus on the philanthropic side of DAFs, the Salon showcases how DAF investments can align donor values to amplify impact.<hr>

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Linda Arnsbarger advises nonprofits and businesses on a wide range of issues relating to the regulation of exempt organizations and the unique issues raised in doing business with them.Ms. Arnsbarger’s clients include private foundations, community foundations, public charities, colleges, universities, and private schools, trade associations, state instrumentalities, foreign charities and their U.S. affiliates, and pension funds and their advisors. Private foundation issues include private foundation excise tax issues relating to grantmaking and impact investments. Community foundation matters include donor-advised funds and supporting organizations. She advises charities and universities regarding structuring charities and related entities, minimizing taxable unrelated business income, fundraising, international grantmaking, anti-terrorism guidelines, governance, compensation arrangements, regulation of lobbying and political campaign activities, and clean energy tax benefits. She has worked with clients on issues relating to complex corporate structuring, conversions, technology transfer, joint ventures and strategic alliances, venture philanthropy, and intellectual property.She also advises charitable donors, companies engaged in corporate philanthropy or doing business with nonprofits, impact investors, a wide range of social enterprises, including social investing funds, other investment funds with nonprofit investors, and hybrid models of philanthropy. Linda is also a member of our global Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) steering committee.Her state practice includes charitable solicitation and Internet solicitation, charitable gaming, unrelated business taxable income, and excise and sales tax issues, including taxation of electronic commerce transactions.Representative clients include the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation, Ashoka, Brigham Young University, Business For Social Responsibility, Calvert Foundation, Capricorn Investment Group, CIGNA, Common Sense Media, Cornell University, Facebook, Goodwill Industries, iMentor, Johns Hopkins University, Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, Kaiser Permanente, Kepler’s 2020, Medicines360, Moody’s, Nature Conservancy, Omidyar Network, Pacific Community Ventures, The Paley Center for Media, Regents of the University of California, Revolution Foods, RSF Social Finance, Salesforce.com, Sierra Pacific Foundation, Starlight Children’s Foundation, Sunkist Foundation, Twentieth Century Fox, Universities Space Research Association, University of Colorado Foundation, Verisign, VISA, and Vision Ridge Partners.

Linda Arnsbarger

Of Counsel

Susan (“Suz”) co-chairs the ESG + Sustainability and Social Enterprise + Impact Investing practices. Her practice focuses on late-stage financings, secondaries, and other corporate transactions for investors, such as SoftBank and Temasek, and on investments for some of the top investors dedicated to impact, from “impact first” foundations to family offices to private equity funds. She co-led the drafting group for the first of the new corporate forms (the Social Purpose Corporation in California), has created hybrid/tandem corporate structures and crafted debt and equity instruments that blend impact with traditional financial terms, and has used corporate law to develop creative capital market solutions to pressing environmental problems. She also advises the boards of public and private companies on corporate governance and fiduciary duties as applied to sustainability and climate change.She was named a California Lawyer Attorney of the Year (CLAY) in 2012 and 2016 by Daily Journal and the Most Innovative Lawyer in North America in 2015 by the Financial Times.Leading Business AdvisorA powerhouse negotiator, clients note that “you cannot get a better corporate counsel” and that Suz “understands the big picture, could not be more responsive, and understands the business” (The Legal 500 US). She has extensive experience providing corporate and finance advice to companies and investors in connection with growth equity financings and secondaries, with particular experience in late-stage investments that have come to rival traditional strategic acquisitions in size and significance. Her experience includes leading some of the highest-profile late-stage investments over the past few years, including notable transactions for SoftBank Group (in the two largest private tender offers in history) in its $7.7 billion investment in Uber, $4.4 billion investment in WeWork, further $10 billion investment in WeWork, $1 billion investment in SoFi, and $250 million investment in Kabbage. She has also advised Temasek on its $800 million investment in Verily Life Sciences, Intel on its equity investment in Cloudera, and each of Fortress, TPG Rise, Vision Ridge Partners, Generation Investment Management, and Pontifax AgTech in numerous mid- to late-stage investments in clean technology, sustainability, education, food, and agriculture technology.Social Enterprise and Impact InvestingSuz is the go-to legal resource for social enterprises (for-profit and non-profit companies focused on social or environmental purpose), impact investors (investors interested in social or environmental returns), and mainstream companies developing environmental, social, and corporate governance policies. With deep expertise in the impact investing model, institutional investors exploring the space turn to her for creative solutions and her ability to structure both investments and companies to emphasize impact and returns.She represents a wide range of investors who are focused on impact, from foundations like the Gates Foundation, The Nature Conservancy, and The Rockefeller Foundation, to family offices like Armonia, Cornerstone Capital, Emerson Collective, New Island Capital, and Omidyar Network, to private equity funds like Goldman Sachs, TPG Rise, Vision Ridge Partners, and Generation Investment Management, in their equity investments in companies and projects that are focused on generating impact and returns for investors. She has deep experience and expertise ensuring energy, sustainability, and other investments have positive impact through the use of new corporate forms, hybrid or “tandem” structures with non-profits and for-profits, and alternative debt and equity instruments.Notable work in this space includes the establishment of a tandem structure, The Carbon Endowment, to retire coal assets at scale while securing a revenue stream for community reinvestment and job training in coal communities. Suz also advised on the structuring of Common Sense Growth as an extension of the non-profit Common Sense Media (to invest in companies that address issues related to children, education, and technology), the establishment of a fund for TPG Rise to provide debt financing to Echoing Green fellows, the spin-out of PRX from Public Radio International (to generate new revenue flows up to the non-profit), the establishment of a for-profit joint venture with non-profit Medicines360 (to allow the non-profit to distribute its healthcare products to women in the developing world), and the structuring of a for-profit evergreen fund that allows The Nature Conservancy to aggregate return-seeking and donor capital in order to invest in preserving our natural resources. She has also advised numerous clients on converting to a public benefit corporation or social purpose corporation model (which requires balancing traditional fiduciary duties against a social or environmental purpose), including This American Life, Revolution Foods, Rise Labs, and Beneficial State Bancorp.Suz also regularly advises boards of directors of private and public companies, special committees, and CEOs on corporate governance, particularly the intersection of fiduciary duties with sustainability, and focuses on environmental, social, and governance issues.Unmatched Cleantech and Renewable Energy ExperienceIn addition to founding and chairing the firm’s Social Enterprise and Impact Investing Group, Suz serves as Chair of Morrison & Foerster’s Energy Group and has extensive experience representing start-up to late stage private companies in the clean technology or sustainability space. She provides corporate and finance advice in connection with equity and debt financings, mergers, acquisitions, asset purchases and sales, reorganizations, and joint ventures. She has experience working with renewable energy start-up companies and renewable energy developers in the solar, wind, and biofuels industries. Suz has assisted renewable energy start up companies with raising venture capital and has advised renewable energy developers on project acquisitions.Suz’s representative renewable energy, cleantech, sustainable, and social enterprise clients include Anaergia, Change.org, EDF Renewables, E.ON, Etsy, First Look, OneSun, Planet Labs, Rising Sun Energy, RSF Social Finance, SustainBio, Trelys, Inc., Wikipedia, and Xpansiv.Board Activity and Thought LeadershipMs. Mac Cormac was a founding board member of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), is a member of the board of directors of Business for Social Responsibility (BSR), the Ceres President’s Council, and the Earth Genome Project, and is an advising board member of the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy’s Strategic Investor Initiative.She has joined the faculty (teaching on the intersection of sustainability and fiduciary duties) at both the Stanford Director’s College and the Northwestern Corporate Counsel Institute and is an adjunct professor at UC Berkeley School of Law, teaching a course on Social Enterprise.

Susan Mac Cormac

Partner

Private Funds

Social Enterprise + Impact Investing

DAF Salon

08 Dec 2020 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM PST