Our History

Our founders connected the dots: small businesses are the engine of job creation in America, the heartbeat and character of our communities. The bakery that makes your favorite muffins, the store that sells those one-of-a-kind-shirts you love, the coffee shop you go to every weekend. That list goes on and on. Small businesses make your neighborhood, town, or city unique, but too many of them fail because they can’t access the resources they need to succeed. Pacific Community Ventures was an innovation that provided venture capital, mentorship, and networks to Main Street businesses looking to grow and create jobs.

Pacific Community Ventures was one of America’s first impact investors, insisting that you could invest in businesses in lower-income neighborhoods to generate positive social and environmental impact while also making a financial return. Over the last two decades we helped shepherd the growing impact investing movement, launching the Impact Investing Policy Collaborative, advising the GIIN on the first and subsequent sets of IRIS impact metrics, and in providing research support to the U.S. National Advisory Board on Impact Investing, the G8 Social Impact Investment Task Force, and the White House Impact Economy Summit.

Since our start, we’ve helped thousands of the small businesses who are the heartbeat and character of their communities grow and create tens of thousands of jobs in neighborhoods that need them most. We’ve worked with dozens of impact investors to use their dollars to re-shape investment markets and create supportive policies to better serve working families, our environment, and our local communities.