Direct loans

With your financial support for the Collegium Academicum, you are promoting a self-managed housing project, creative young people and self-determined learning and living in Heidelberg. This will be more than a home for over 200 young people. We are creating a place to meet, an inspiring environment to unlock potentials, a place for chasing dreams and growing together as a community through concrete projects and living together.

Grant a direct loan

Your direct loan helps to empower young people and enables them to experience that they are able to make a difference and change their environment.

You also support an innovative building project that sets an example in terms of sustainability through its wooden construction. At present, we mainly need direct loans for the two old buildings, which we will renovate as ecologically and cost-effectively as possible in order to convert rooms formerly used by the military into rooms for our orientation year. Especially the shop-café shall enrich the life in the Heidelberg district Rohrbach.

Your help is welcome! Please take a look at our webpages and do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.

Current status

With an incredible 4 million euros, hundreds of people have contributed to the success of our project with direct loans. We are proud of our funding campaign so far and grateful for the enormous support.

Old building

Currently, we need your financial support for the renovation of the old buildings and are grateful if you participate in this way in the joint implementation of the project. According to current estimates, we will need up to 1.9 million euros in direct loans, of which we have already raised more than 1.2 million euros (as of February 2023).

New building

We have managed to raise approx. 2.8 million euros (February 2023) in direct loans to fund the New House! Thank you! We are grateful to everyone whose financial contribution has helped us and is still helping to realize this project. In order to compensate for increases in construction costs, we currently still need about 500,000 euros for the new building and therefore urgently need your support!

Here you can read why we need direct loans and how they work.

Why do we need direct loans?

Direct loans are a key part of the funding and the most important precondition for it to work. Why? Because direct loans form the basis for our two other financing sources, government grants and bank loans. Direct loans finance our planning, so that we can make use of the approved grants, and they form our equity substitution to enable us to get future bank loans. Direct loans are granted directly to us, without any bank participating in the process. You will conclude a contract with our Collegium Academicum GmbH, where it is stipulated when and how the money lent will be repaid. Your direct loan makes it possible to realise our project and to secure affordable rents in the long term. With a direct loan you have the chance to invest your money into a social, meaningful and ecological way.

How safe is a direct loan?

It is true that we cannot guarantee the same kind of security as a bank loan. In the case of serious financial constraints, it is possible that direct loans cannot be repaid, if the project would become insolvent otherwise. In such case we will have to find alternate funding first, before we can repay the loans. In the extreme case of an insolvency, the first creditors to be repaid are creditors such as banks. This means that in the worst case you might lose the totality of your invested capital.

What are the legal regulations?

By obtaining direct loans (subordinated loans) the CA is subjected to the rules of the German Asset Investment Act. In accordance with these rules, the supporting organisation (GmbH) offers multiple asset investments with different interest rates. Within one single asset investment, no more than a total of € 100,000 or a maximum of 20 direct loans will be accepted within 12 months. Therefore, we have no obligation to draw up a prospectus according to the German Asset Investment Act (statutory minimum limit).

Grant a direct loan