Pacific Community Ventures Awarded $165,000 for Job Creation Programs
Hearst Foundation contributes $100,000 for effective business advising model
San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) July 31, 2010
Hundreds of small businesses in California received a boost recently when Pacific Community Ventures www. pacificcommunityventures. org, an economic development nonprofit organization, secured $165,000 for its job creation programs. An award from the Hearst Foundation for $100,000 will bolster Pacific Community Ventures’ Business Advising program. With a $65,000 Community Development Block Grant from the San Francisco Office of Economic and Workforce Development, Pacific Community Ventures and local non-profit SFMade will provide business advising services to San Francisco-based manufacturers.
Pacific Community Ventures’ Business Advising program recruits California’s brightest business minds to volunteer their time to coach small business owners on issues such as human resources, financial management and socially responsible practices. The companies Pacific Community Ventures advises are primarily manufacturing, service, and retail businesses located in or hiring from economically underserved communities.
“When we saw that Pacific Community Ventures’ advised companies were adding jobs at a rate of 3% during the worst economy in a generation,” said Paul "Dino" Dinovitz, Executive Director of the Hearst Foundation, “we knew their approach to job creation was delivering results. We’re pleased to support these effective strategies to help those in lower-income communities find and keep quality jobs.”
The funding from the Office of Economic and Workforce Development establishes a unique partnership for Pacific Community Ventures. With this Community Development Block Grant, the nonprofit is helping to seed SFMade, a new organization that supports small businesses that produce goods in San Francisco. Pacific Community Ventures will offer its Business Advising program to SFMade’s member entrepreneurs, helping these companies to remain in the city, hiring from the local community and contributing to the local economy.
“Between our collaboration with SFMade and our work with entrepreneurs throughout the state, we aim to support more than 200 small companies that, in turn, employ over 4,000 California workers, including 3,000 from lower-income communities,” noted Pacific Community Ventures’ Executive Director Beth Sirull. “Thanks to supporters such as Hearst and the city of San Francisco, Pacific Community Ventures is helping small businesses create jobs and rise up in down times.”
Since its founding twelve years ago, Pacific Community Ventures has created over 5,000 quality jobs. Virtually all of the organization’s companies pay their lower wage workers - workers at the 10th percentile of the company’s wages - a higher wage than companies in the same industry in California. Eighty-one percent of Pacific Community Ventures’ companies offer health insurance to their lower wage workers, compared to 73% of California companies.
ABOUT PACIFIC COMMUNITY VENTURES
Pacific Community Ventures builds responsible small businesses to create jobs and opportunities in lower income communities. We help create quality jobs—cost-effectively—for the people who need them most. Pacific Community Ventures accomplishes this mission through two core nonprofit programs, Business Advising and Insight, and through our affiliated equity funds. To learn more, visit www. pacificcommunityventures. org Pacific Community Ventures is a fiscal sponsor of SFMade; for more information, visit www. sfmade. org
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