Warehouses- Storage Units, Bulk warehouse, heavy machinery, etc. 

Leonardo DaVinci said “Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophistication”.

When I was 10 years old, my father would get a visit one week from the seed salesman and the next week from the farm machinery salesman.

Its high level info from very sophisticated investors. its called cash flow connections. 

As to protecting that valued relationship with your friend, know that technologies used in downloadable forms just are not sophisticated enough (yet) to get you to think through the kinds of critical  "what-if" scenarios that typically don't get asked without the prodding of an attorney.  

Here some of the top 3 take aways from investing in this asset class.Pros Yearly lease escalations is really nice.The tenant base is more sophisticated.Persistence in a good trait to have.Having a good team makes a big difference.Cons It costs money to bring in new tenantsThe competition has lots of capital, but nothing beats knowing your turf very wellAlways read the details of leases (the tenant base is quite sophisticated)

I imagine many non-profit leaders don't have the training and sophistication to put their money toward syndication deals, so they go with the first financial advisor they know.

Excel tends to be considered less sophisticated than other software platforms but it can actually be extremely powerful and you can customize and program it to fit your exact needs. 

Unless you are doing large industrial machinery there is NO other way to do that maneuver.   

Ask if they ever lost money and how they handled it.Ask for contact information of current and past investors and talk to them about their experience but also pay attention to their level of sophistication.