Surdna Foundation

Services: Field-Building Research
Client Type: Foundation
Geography: United States

The Objective

Pacific Community Ventures received a grant from the Surdna Foundation to conduct field-building research that would support investors and small businesses to create quality jobs in economically distressed communities across the U.S.

The Approach

Pacific Community Ventures conducted extensive research and in-depth interviews with foundations, CDFIs, fund managers, researchers, and other impact investing intermediaries focused on the issue of job quality:

• We leveraged this research to produce Moving Beyond Job Creation: Defining and Measuring the Creation of Quality Jobs, to answer two important questions central to the creation of quality jobs, 1) What is a quality job, and 2) How can impact investors measure job quality? The research identified five core dimensions of quality job and offered a measurement approach for assessing job quality.
• Building on our initial research, we published Public Policy and Investments in Quality Jobs: Ideas for Policy Change, to explore the potential for smart, targeted federal policies that would encourage private sector investments in quality job creation and support small businesses and employees in economically distressed communities

The Results

Our research and reports provide impact investors, researchers, policymakers, and other social sector organizations with actionable recommendations to effectively support the creation of quality jobs. Our quality jobs research also informs lending and business advising programs, as well as our consulting clients to make more effective, data-driven investment decisions as they target quality job creation in underserved communities.

This initial research has also led Pacific Community Ventures to undertake a two-year project, in collaboration with the Aspen Institute, to develop and pilot a quality jobs toolkit for retail small business owners, which will empower business owners to take concrete steps to improve job quality as well as business performance.