Pacific Community Ventures

PCV 15th Anniversary Celebration @ Julia Morgan Ballroom

May 22nd 5:30-8:30pm

Beth Sirull, President of PCV

Pacific Community Ventures is on a mission: To create jobs and economic opportunities in low income communities through the direct support of small business and entrepreneurship as well as by promoting policies that drive investment in underserved communities. I crashed this anniversary party to figure out what that mouthful of a mission statement really meant.

PCV's advising program now provides support to businesses in poor communities throughout the Bay Area and San Diego. PCV is an impact investor providing capital directly to small businesses. The organization also works to build the capacity of these small companies to accept and deploy impact capital effectively. PCV has supported over 3,000 entrepreneurs and small business owners, providing critical advice and capital that has created and maintained nearly 30,000 jobs, most of them in the Bay Area's lower income communities, with a model that's proven to be successful.

I joined the top Bay Area businesses and civic leaders to celebrate this past 15 years and how far they've come. Recently they were awarded $120,000 to take it's popular advising program beyond California, from the Blackstone Organizational Grants Program, which is an annual $1 million program targeting organizations that focus on entrepreneurship and innovation to spur business and job growth. The remote program will use the phone and internet to connect with business leaders in need across the country to advise on a number of issues entrepreneuers typically face, like marketing questions, supply chain issues, figuring out margin, etc. As for a question about business in different parts of the country dealing with different issues, Beth Sirull said that business advisors usually deal with the same type of problems, and if they can't help on that specific problem they'll help you figure out how to get the answer.

Ultimately, creating jobs is one of the today's most pressing issues and that's how PCV began, and here it is in a two minute animation. http://vimeo.com/66591891