An informal group of approximately 20 families in Somerville is directing newfound wealth into an initiative to invest locally, seeking to blunt some effects of gentrification and ensure that properties and businesses remain in community hands.

Angel investor and Somerville resident John Bonham-Carter (no relation to the actors, despite the British accent) described the group as friends and acquaintances in the city for 20 to 30 years who have made a “sufficient amount of money” and are looking to invest in local businesses.

For now there’s no group name, website or offices, but the project may become more formalized in the next year, and within five to seven years emerge as a full-fledged “local venture capital” firm that expands beyond the original families to welcome all, Bonham-Carter said.

“If we can get lots of local people investing, not only do we get control of the community, but we’ll actually enrich the people of the community,” he said. Part of his vision, which he said he’s grateful to have the power to put into action, is as a corrective to “being part of a change – gentrification, really.”

Inspiration came from Local Return, a nonprofit in Rhode Island that focuses on building community wealth “through ownership and investment.” Like that nonprofit, “we would set it up with banks and lawyers, all the resources, so that we could systemize setting up local businesses,” Bonham-Carter said of the so-far unnamed Somerville group.

Entrepreneurs in Somerville who have vision and aspirations but are unsure of direction could find resources and mentorship from the group, which has an interest in nurturing businesses too small for the attention of bigger investment groups, Bonham-Carter said.

Different lenses

Greg Nadeau, who separately directs philanthropic investment through The Somerville Foundation, is part of the group – “I play poker with them; I barbecue with them” – and calls Bonham-Carter “a fantastic person and a very generous sponsor of community.” The foundation and investment group have related missions.

“The thing that is most compelling to me is taking the new wealth of Somerville and reinvesting it in the young people of Somerville,” Nadeau said.

Bonham-Carter’s vision includes youth in a more general way – for instance, the future head of his group is probably someone in their early 20s who lives here now and will get financial experience to help apply that local knowledge – but his investments so far involve revitalizing the arts. He wants to give artists “a place where they can hone [their] craft,” he said, mentioning gallery exhibits, improv comedy and even magic. He wants live-music nights to be profitable too.

“I appreciate that lens and being able to play that role,” fellow local investor and group member Marcie Campbell said, referring to using investment to ease the effects of gentrification. But just as the 30-year resident is less directly focused on the arts than Bonham-Carter, she would phrase it differently: “It’s more about supporting the fabric of the community.”

Empty storefronts

Investing locally leads to increased recirculation of money within the community, Campbell noted. According to the American Independent Business Alliance, money spent within the local economy recirculates two to four times more than funds expended non-locally.

She has taken direct action to prevent gentrification, helping buy a building on her street that was in the crosshairs of a developer to instead keep its current tenants in place, but said she became activated more broadly by community meetings about giant developments in Davis Square by the North Carolina firm Asana Partners and the international firm Scape. Both are frozen midway, leaving empty storefronts as evidence of the disruption.

“We have all these empty storefronts because they can afford to wait out the market,” Campbell said, while even in the best examples the focused corporate benevolence of an Asana or Scape won’t come close to what a small business does for the local economy and their community. “Local businesses are supporters of everything.”

“Giving businesses a chance, especially in Davis Square where these big developers are buying properties” is a priority for Campbell. She’d like to see a program that guarantees affordable leases for small, local shops, but for now feels she can help by playing a role with Bonham-Carter. “Creating a crowdfunding situation seems to be what we need.”

First investment

In contrast to a background of biotech-venture sales to large multinational companies in the high eight-figure range, Bonham-Carter said, his first locally focused transaction was investing in The Comedy Studio as it reopens its doors in May or June in Cambridge’s Harvard Square. Four families wound up contributing to the project.

“The future of the comedy club is great,” Comedy Studio owner Rick Jenkins said. Investment from the group makes good business sense and “gives me the freedom to do what I want to do, which is to develop new talent to be more of a creative community.”

Success at the Studio is a “must” to get to looking at a more formal group investment structure around September, Bonham-Carter said. “If this works after two or three investment rounds, then I think people will have confidence and will say this is fairly done. When we’ve got a bit more of a track record, people will be more likely to invest in that local structure.”

“The best way to do this is just to do it,” Bonham-Carter said.

Next moves

Still, Bonham-Carter already has a next potential venture, a project outside Davis Square that is expected to take into October to November to firm up. Details were necessarily scant; he could say only that the owner of the property is keen to avoid a sale to a large corporation, and instead sought a buyer committed to running a business that community members want. Bonham-Carter said the project is supposed to end up under community management as well.

The group is looking at an investment in Malden as well, he said.

Local investment is a model “where we might be able to buy the building or buy the business and enable a business to occur,” Bonham-Carter said. “Pooling resources means that it can happen. And even if that individual business doesn’t work, at least we’ve tried.”

Investments from individual families can range from $10,000 to several hundred thousand dollars after a majority vote on whether the group chooses to invest.

Bonham-Carter is for now the face of the group and the person finding potential projects. Eventually that will be handled by that young fund manager he mentioned, the one with the deep local roots.

“I may be the wrong person to manage this, but I am the right person to start it,” Bonham-Carter said.