After planing our roots in Silicon Valley, our organization’s rapid growth from a local nonprofit community investor to a statewide organization meant that our name needed match our expansive work. Our portfolio has grown to 19 loan and equity companies, and 43 advised companies.
Starting in 2002, PCV was one of the first organizations to actively call itself a “double bottom line investor,”and to focus its investments in companies on the wages they pay and the benefits they offer. We also started doing one of the things we’re most proud of as an organization: building alliances and partnering with like-minded organizations. During this same time, we began working with partners like the Milken Institute, Collective Intelligence, Jed Emerson, SVT, and Trillium Asset Management to create a “road map” tool for assess avenues for double-bottom-line investing.
As we wrote then, “Pacific Community Ventures strives to accelerate the growth of businesses that are based in or near low-income communities and that provide high quality jobs to low-income individuals. The future of community development venture capital requires innovation. Good investments, providing strong financial and social returns, are the key to growth in this industry. Efficient flow of capital to CDVCs, viable exit strategies, and dissemination of intellectual property are critical factors in supporting such investments. We and our colleagues are developing new strategies, tools and networks. Through the RISE Social Investor Survey, Cathy Clark and Columbia Business School are working to describe and define the emerging cadre of double bottom line and social investors. With support from the Ford Foundation, Elyse Cherry and Boston Community Capital are working to develop a practical exit vehicle for community development venture capital funds. As part of the New Horizons Initiative funded by Rockefeller, CDVCA is working with four of its member organizations to identify key strategies for making workforce development an integral part of their investment activities.”