InSight

Providing investors, policymakers, companies and other stakeholders with knowledge — and the tools to use it — to build small businesses and increase economic activity in underserved markets

Pacific Community Ventures invests human, intellectual and financial capital in businesses to create opportunity and shared prosperity for economically underserved communities. As part of fulfilling this mission, through InSight, its center for thought leadership, PCV provides research, knowledge and tools to investors, policy makers and other stakeholders. These tools enable investors to allocate capital to earning competitive financial returns while also generating significant social benefits and policy makers to craft innovative policies to influence the flow of capital and other resources to underserved markets.

Over the past ten years, both for our own private equity portfolio and on behalf of client institutions, PCV has developed and implemented data-driven, rigorous and practical tools to enable clients — investors, companies, fund managers, social entrepreneurs, policymakers — to:

• Articulate key social objectives, and develop, prioritize and implement specific metrics to target and track these objectives. Using the knowledge that comes from regularly assessing actual performance against stated objectives, clients can refine their approaches to better meet both financial and social targets.
• Fully understand the economic, social and community impacts of their operations and investments. This knowledge enables clients to articulate and leverage the positive social benefits of their work, both externally and internally.
• Maximize their positive social impact while generating superior financial returns. Using PCV’s social due diligence systems, clients can select from a group of investments with similar financial profiles, the one(s) that will likely produce the greatest social return. PCV’s pre-investment and post-investment tools combine to enable clients to quantify the changes that occur in key social objectives during the period of investment or operation.
• Evaluate social and community impacts to quantify the tradeoffs they may choose to make between social and financial return. Companies can assess a business approach and correct course as appropriate.

PCV’s knowledge of business, investment and community and economic development has enabled us to develop methodologies to collect detailed data without distracting managers from the business of running their businesses. The ability to access this detailed data combined with deep analytical capabilities has enabled PCV to create and implement these pioneering tools that fully amplify the true impact of investments and operations.

In 2009, with these groundbreaking tools, PCV will assess the social impacts of over $1 billion in capital stemming from pension funds, foundation endowments, banks, insurance companies and other institutions.

More info...

Click here to see a list of PCV InSight’s representative clients.

For additional information, please call Ben Thornley, Director, InSight at 415-442-4312 or email bthornley@pcvmail.org.