We work with small business owners who have a dream, but who don’t have big built-in networks or access to enormous sums of capital. For example, the fastest-growing group of Americans starting new ventures is African-American women. But you’d never know that based on where the money is going. Sarah Kersten Studio in Berkeley has been manufacturing heirloom-quality ceramics for Bay Area consumers and restaurants for the past four years. Sales have increased steadily, as has their popularity with major San Francisco restaurants like Frances and Octavia. As a growing small business, owner Sarah was having trouble accessing traditional sources of capital to expand her inventory. Her company didn’t meet the guidelines of most mainstream lenders, so Sarah had to look for an alternative lender. Pacific Community Ventures was able to provide Sarah a loan with an affordable rate. Sarah’s story is the story for thousands of California small businesses. … Read More
Advisor Appreciation and Networking Event
Pacific Community Ventures is excited to invite you to our first Advisor Appreciation & Networking Event! Our advisors are the heart of our small business mentoring program, and all of our program’s success is due to your commitment to see small businesses across America succeed. This night is all about you! We want to show our appreciation for the time and talent you continue to donate, and to provide a long-requested opportunity for our advisors to network with each other. Please join us: Thursday, May 25 5:30 pm – 9:00 pm 25 Lusk 25 Lusk Street, San Francisco, CA 94107 Light fare and drink tickets will be provided We’ll host a brief program sharing the impact your advice made on our small business community in 2016, a raffle featuring products from advised small businesses — and most of the evening is reserved for you to network with each other. Thank … Read More
PCV Receives Grant from Aspen Institute to Create Quality Jobs Toolkits for Retail Small Businesses
The Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program announced today that it has awarded a grant $200,000 to Pacific Community Ventures to take part in Reimagine Retail, a project made possible through a $5.5 million grant awarded by the Walmart Foundation to the Aspen Institute in 2016. Over a two-year period, Pacific Community Ventures will engage retail employers and explore strategies to improve job quality and support advancement for retail workers. Workforce development organizations, retail businesses, and other partners have potential to collaborate to improve the quality of jobs for workers in entry-level positions, create pathways for advancement in retail and related sectors, and increase employee engagement, productivity, and retention. To explore open questions about how to expand opportunities for working people, leaders in these fields will need to build capacity, experiment with new and innovative strategies, and learn from their experiences. Through Reimagine Retail, the Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program (EOP), … Read More
Thriving Small Businesses Means A Thriving Bay Area
Picture a few of your favorite small and independent businesses. Maybe you love stopping by Equator Coffee or Boba Guys on the way into work, shopping at Benny Gold or Heath Ceramics, working out at The Dailey Method, or sitting down at Brown Sugar Kitchen and hoping a few Warriors grab the table next to you. Now what if I told you that without a small handful of government programs, many of your favorite places might not exist? The so-called “Skinny Budget” cuts funding for several successful bi-partisan small business programs that helped launch and grow tens of thousands of small businesses across the Bay Area – and hundreds of thousands across America. It cuts $42 million from Small Business Administration programs aimed at new job creation; $32 million from programs that help people of color start companies and hire more employees; and completely eliminates the Community Development Financial Institution … Read More
Our Business Advising Program Is Now In All 50 States!
We’re thrilled to announce that our BusinessAdvising.org small business mentoring program is now serving small businesses in all 50 states. It’s been an amazing three years, bring small business mentoring from a regional program in San Francisco to every corner of America empowering small business owners to increase their competitiveness while at the same time creating quality jobs and stronger communities. A major thank you to all the advisors who give their time and expertise in our program. With your support, we’ve grown the BusinessAdvising.org program to greater heights that have enabled us to empower small businesses in a plethora of industries and sizes across the country. None of this would be possible without you! We also want to thank our many partners and supporters, like Capital One, The Super Bowl, and Accion. In 2016, the small businesses who worked with a pro bono advisor from BusinessAdvising.org saw their revenues … Read More
PCV President & CEO Mary Jo Cook Awarded 2017 Opportunity Fellow
Congratulations to our own Mary Jo Cook! After an intense competition and rigorous selection process, Opportunity Finance Network has chosen 25 outstanding leaders from CDFIs across the country who will join their inaugural class of Opportunity Fellows. Representing different levels of leadership experience, these Fellows hail from all corners of the country, with one thing very much in common: They are committed to addressing inequities in capital to the underserved community through their work with CDFIs, which are critical engines of opportunity in these communities. The Opportunity Fellows Program is a leadership program for our industry, which will train a diverse cohort of CDFI leaders to lead transformational change and address inequities in access to capital in underserved communities. Through the program, Fellows will develop the skills and perspective to innovate toward the vision of opportunity for all, and facilitate greater equity and inclusion for racially and ethnically diverse communities. “This … Read More
Introducing Our New Advisory Council
Pacific Community Ventures is honored and excited to announce our new advisory council. This diverse group of small business owners, impact investors, community leaders, and professional mentors brings a wealth of skills and experience that will help us innovate our programs, engage our communities, and develop new partnerships. We couldn’t be happier to have each and every one of these extraordinary people on board. By supporting PCV, each Advisory Council member is doing their part to strengthen small businesses, create jobs, and build stronger and healthier communities.
Pacific Community Ventures Working To Make Super Bowl LI A Texas-Sized Local Business Success
Super Bowl LI is more than the NFL’s marquee game of the year – it’s a chance for Greater Houston area’s diverse business community to tap into opportunities for new contracts, work and business growth. To drive that, the Super Bowl LI Host Committee has launched the Business Connect program to work with businesses located in the Houston metro area that are certified as minority-owned, women-owned, LGBTQ-owned, or disabled veteran-owned. Last year in San Francisco we saw how a local business focus for the Super Bowl can have an impact of $200+ million on the regional economies in which the game is played. But, keeping that money in the community has always been a challenge. Super Bowl LI has partnered with Pacific Community Ventures to bring our BusinessAdvising.org program for free to these 400 Business Connect companies. BusinessAdvising.org is providing them with intensive business mentoring to help them grow their business for the Super … Read More
A First-Timer Experiencing Opportunity Finance Network’s 2016 Conference
This piece is from Justin Fier, Managing Director of InSight, our in-house impact investing consulting practice. Last month, multiple PCV colleagues of mine and I attended the CDFI industry’s premiere annual event, the Opportunity Finance Network (OFN) Conference, held this year in Atlanta. As a newcomer to PCV — as well as the CDFI industry — I was excited to meet industry peers and learn more. The conference was attended by over 1,200 individuals, most of whom work for the 1,000+ CDFIs that are scattered across the U.S. As many of our blog readers know, Community Development Financial Institutions, or CDFIs, are not new to the financial world. First introduced by the U.S. government in the early 1990s, the new structure was considered innovative, even though some of these entities had been in operation for decades. In general, a CDFI is a financial institution that provides financial services to … Read More
Get Ready For Small Business Saturday 2016
Now in its seventh year, Small Business Saturday serves as the kickoff to the holiday shopping season for small businesses across the United States. Each year, shoppers spend tens of billions at small businesses on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Focusing on small businesses and local jobs directly combats income inequality. Small businesses create jobs — 70% of the jobs created since the end of the recession came from small businesses, as opposed to zero net new jobs from giant corporations. But simply creating jobs won’t stem the tide of income inequality. The kinds of jobs being created, and where those jobs drive their wealth, matters just as much. Our friends at Fit Small Business recently looked into why Small Business Saturday is so important for these job-creating community businesses: Over half (52%) of consumers plan to shop the weekend following Thanksgiving. 1 in 4 holiday shoppers (24%) are planning to “shop small” and … Read More