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♪ Opening Music ♪
So today, we're here with Beth Sirull who's the
CEO of Pacific Community Ventures. Welcome Beth.
Pacific Community Ventures is an innovative enterprise
run out of San Francisco that invests in businesses
throughout California and increasingly the United States,
that are creating jobs in their local communities.
Pacific Community Ventures has also been a leader in developing
the policy frameworks and thought leadership and
measurement to support the development of investments
that have a social outcome, as well as a financial return,
and today we want to talk to Beth about that work.
Beth, for a small organisation, an investment in policy
and in thought leadership is a big commitment.
Can you talk to us about why PCV has made that commitment?
Well first of all Rosemary I want to thank you for having me.
It's just a pleasure to be down here in Australia with you.
So thanks so very much for arranging for PCV to come, learn
and share from our work. You know, PCV believes really
strongly in the importance of systemic change.
You know, we do work on the ground to create jobs,
to ameliorate the problem of unemployment in low
income communities, right now, here today. But we also
understand that just ameliorating the effects
of the problem right now, doesn't solve the problem.
Systemic change is what solves the problem,
and our thought leadership work is about
looking at ways to drive capital and resources and
investment to these kinds of communities in ways
that make market sense, and that is - you know -
that solves the problem in the long term. And so
we feel that it is critical to work on both levels.
On the systemic level and the on-the-ground level,
and indeed, each learns from the other.
There's a couple of aspects of PCV's work in this
area I'd love to explore with you. Can you talk
to us a bit about PCV's approach to measurement which I
know has now been taken up by a number of organisations.
I really have to credit our founder, Penelope Douglas,
here who said from the very beginning, in the late '90s
and early 2000s, that Pacific Community Ventures would always
measure and openly talk about the impact of its work.
Both its work in non-profit activities and its - and the
investments that it made, and that we would talk
about our successes and our failures. And out of
that commitment was born methodologies that
particularly address what happens and how you
track the impacts of capital being invested in
double bottom line vehicles; how you look at that
social impact of a dollar invested in a small business.
We have to stretch every dollar. And so we've become -
you know - very understanding of the idea that we had to be
credible and rigorous at the same time that we were
practical and affordable. And so we started to look at
"Okay, what kinds of data could we readily collect from
the businesses that we invest in, or the businesses that
we advise, that would be data they could provide?"
because don't forget, these are small business owners and their
time is constrained also. And we came up with understanding
where businesses are located, the kinds of jobs that
they have, what they're paying their workers, where their
workers live and how much capital is going in, how that's
flowing through the economy, what kinds of multiplier
effects and we've developed an expertise in that area.
And as you said, we've been fortunate to see
that adopted by a number of institutional investors -
banks, insurance companies and pension funds who are
interested in looking at the impacts of their work,
as well as by some foundations, and we're quite proud
of the impact assessment work that we do, and we refine
it every year and are committed to improving it.
Can you give us an example of just a couple
of organisations that you do impact measurement
for and why they value that from PCV?
So, we have been looking at the impact of a portion of the
California Public Employees' Retirement System
portfolio on the economy of California, on job
creation in low income communities, wages to low
income communities and the like. And - you know -
the California Public Employees' Retirement System,
it's one of the largest pension funds - public pension
funds in the world. It's tax payer dollars,
and so it's important that even though CalPERS' primary
responsibility is absolutely to yield a financial return on
their investments that enables them to pay the pensions for
California's public workers, doing that in a way that has a
positive impact on California today, is certainly
within CalPERS' mission and we help them do that.
We also help a couple foundations. We have a
foundation in the United States called the
Northwest Area Foundation that has made some investments,
or has an investment fund with the idea of supporting
economic development in the rural and underserved areas
of its service area, and we do some very in-depth work for
them on where those investments are and how they are having
an impact on rural communities and the reverberations
of their investments, both direct and indirect.
And we've talked a bit about the importance of
sharing learning, both the positives about what's
worked and also learning where things haven't
worked as well. That's also a theme in your policy work of
creating the opportunities for people to share across
organisations and across jurisdictions increasingly,
including with the initiative that you have spearheaded
in the Impact Investment Policy Collaborative.
Can you tell us a little bit about that.
Happy to. So we set out to say "Wow, people are doing
things all over the world." Governments all over the
world are looking at how they can help leverage their
limited capital by drawing in private capital to have
a positive financial return as well as a social impact.
And so the Impact Investing Policy Collaborative was
formed as a clearing house, a learning place, a sharing, and
there's tremendous materials online, but we also have
webinars and we meet annually to share case studies of things
that various governments are trying in terms of
reforming regulation or providing loan guarantees
or changing what it means to be a fiduciary or a director.
All kinds of roles and actions that governments are taking
around the world and the Impact Investing Policy Collaborative
is a place for researchers, investors, policy makers and
advocates to learn from each other with an eye to
advancing the harnessing of private capital to
address the world's most pressing social problems.
And can you tell us a couple of ways in which the work of
InSight at PCV and of the Impact Investment Policy Collaborative
have identified that government can have that effect,
that government can use its dollars to be attracting
the leverage of private capital that is intending
to have a social purpose as well as a financial outcome.
And I would call your attention to the leading or the
framework report on impact investing policy that's
available on the site that really sets a framework
for the way that government should think about this.
That it's very important that we drive capital to this space,
but it's equally important that we build the capacity of the
appropriate kinds of vehicles so that there's a place to
deploy this capital. So it is, like so many economic
problems in the world, it's a function of supply and
demand and matching the two. And the whole point of
our thought leadership work is to bring together these policies
and follow up and say "Well what happened?" and you know,
"Did it really work?" and "If not, why not?" and
"If yes, how can we help other countries," - you know -
"do that?" And of course, let's not forget that government
has a bully pulpit like no one else and just to shine the
light on some of these successes and to publicise them such that
they get picked up by media and their examples are shared, that
has a tremendous impact and government has an ability to
help make that happen in ways that are virtually free,
and so that can make a huge difference in bringing
in supports from outside government, in terms of
media and donors and investors and the like.
Well Beth, congratulations on the launch of the
Impact Investing Policy Collaborative this year
and on Pacific Community Ventures taking such a
leadership role, and thank you for joining us here today.
Well thank you Rosemary and thank you for your support
of the IIPC and for your advice in establishing it and
in your continued participation in making it
such a valuable international clearing house.