Pacific Community Ventures is strengthening communities by empowering American small business, by championing higher-quality jobs, by fueling equity and opportunity, and by helping impact investors deploy more capital – more effectively – to economically underserved communities from coast to coast. In 2016, we made progress in all three areas.
So how did we do?
- 2016 was another record-breaking year for our Small Business Advising program. We supported more small businesses than ever before (a 66% jump) and we’re now in all 50 states!
- PCV business advisors volunteered 2600 hours – that’s $520,000 worth of free advice and coaching!
- We expanded our small business “loan + advice” program to include microloans ($10,000–$50,000) and lent $2,000,000 to California small businesses who were turned down by the traditional financial system
- Our InSight team evaluated $30 billion in social impact investments across areas like climate solutions, affordable housing, gender equality, sustainable supply chains and healthy food access
- We provided 379 small businesses with access to capital and mentorship
- The small businesses we worked with created and maintained 2,359 jobs
- Our companies had a staggering 44% job growth — surpassing national (1.7%) and state (2.6%) rates, and an average 20% revenue growth (vs 7% for comparable small businesses)
- Average wages at our small businesses were $32/hour (for full-time workers) and $15/hour (for part-time)
- We launched a first-of-its-kind quality jobs framework, report on common-sense policies to drive quality jobs, and began practical toolkits for small businesses to create quality jobs
- We also focused on equity in opportunity: 63% of the small business owners we work with are female, and 42% of the small business owners we work with are people of color
View our full impact report
Pacific Community Ventures is a nonprofit social enterprise that engages small businesses, investors, and policymakers to build an economy that works for everyone. To achieve our mission we provide small businesses working in underserved communities with access to the capital and expertise needed to successfully grow their businesses and create good jobs, test new business tools and approaches which can be scaled through partnerships, and conduct research and evaluation so that impact investors will deploy more capital more effectively to underserved communities.