About Us
Our Mission
PACE Business Development Center is a local, non-profit organization that aims to facilitate the start-up and expansion of businesses in Los Angeles, by providing its clients with business training, capital acquisition, market development, and technical assistance.
Our History
PACE Business Development Center aspires to develop the potential of the diverse Los Angeles community by empowering small business owners with the knowledge, tools and resources necessary to successfully tap the market and achieve their dreams. Although initially launched to provide entrepreneurship training classes for low-income individuals, PACE BDC has since recognized the growing need to serve a broad spectrum of business owners in the market. To this end, we currently provide a variety of services for low-moderate small business owners and minority communities, to not only start up, but also expand, their businesses.
Read on to learn a little more about why our Center was established and how it has grown…
The Business Development Center was launched in 1992 by the Pacific Asian Consortium in Employment (PACE), which has addressed the employment needs of the Asian Pacific Islander communities since 1976. In the aftermath of the Los Angeles riots, PACE was active in packaging SBA disaster loans for affected businesses and afterwards received a federal grant from the Department of Health and Human Services’s JOLI program (Job Opportunities for Low Income Individuals), serving as the launching pad for the Business Development Center.
Under this program, PACE BDC operated entrepreneurial training classes for low-income individuals, producing a total of 80 businesses and over 250 jobs in its first three years. As the JOLI program continued, PACE BDC’s reputation for delivering down-to-earth business fundamentals training and technical assistance also grew.
After the Northridge Earthquake devastated a number of areas and small businesses in 1994, the BDC began a Disaster Business Assistance Program using grants from Kaiser Permanente and the City of Los Angeles. This program combined loan packaging and technical assistance to area businesses. During the three-year duration of the program, PACE BDC packaged over 500 loans for a total amount of approximately $10 million, squarely placing PACE BDC on the map.
In 1996, PACE BDC was awarded funding from the City of Los Angeles to become a Los Angeles Business Assistance Center (LABAC) and run entrepreneurial and micro-enterprise training programs for Los Angeles residents and small businesses. Under this funding, the BDC operated within the Metro Central region, which contained mostly low-income census tracts, but enabled the BDC to serve both micro-businesses and larger companies until the City revamped its program in 2000.
At the same time, PACE BDC began operating many other programs, including an $80,000 subcontract with the University of Southern California’s Business Expansion Network; the creation of the Asian Pacific Revolving Loan Fund of Los Angeles in consortium with the Asian Pacific Legal Center and the Korean Youth Community Center; and a grant from Merrill Lynch under their California Partnership program. The latter spurred the development of a two-year program that trained ethnic professionals how to teach business principles to small business owners of their own ethnic group, and presented key concepts in both English and the students’ native language.
From 2000, PACE BDC began operating programs increasingly targeted toward existing micro-enterprises, and saw an increase in the proportion of funding coming from micro-enterprise grantors. This included the Los Angeles Business Assistance Program (LABAP, a revised structure from the previous LABAC), the City’s Welfare-to-Work program, the SBA’s Project for Investment in Entrepreneurship (PRIME), and the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) for refugee micro-enterprise development in the San Gabriel Valley.
In October 2004, PACE BDC was awarded a five-year grant from the U.S. Small Business Administration to operate a Women’s Business Center (WBC) with no limitations on the size of the business served, enabling the BDC to again serve larger businesses. Complementing the SBA Women’s Center was the creation of the Computer Learning Center via a $275,000 grant from Hewlett Packard in 2003, which consisted of 35 computers, printers and other equipment for staff and clients of the BDC.
In 2005, under the Wells Fargo Technical Assistance Initiative, PACE BDC continued its work in procurement assistance and provided procurement certification services (SBA 8A, MBE/WBE/DBE) to area businesses. As an additional service, the BDC also coached several entrepreneurs to pitch their services to large corporations and government agencies at the SBA Business Matchmaking conference.
PACE BDC Today
PACE BDC continues to operate programs that inspire and serve aspiring entrepreneurs, small business owners, and refugees & asylees in Los Angeles County. Currently we operate two Los Angeles Business Assistance Programs (East & West) which allowed our Center to expand our services to cover a larger area of the City; in 2009 we renewed the funding for our Women’s Business Center program so that we can continue to offer programs and services targeted to women entrepreneurs; and we received funding from the SBA’s Project for Investment in Entrepreneurship in order to continue to serve the needs of entrepreneurs and small business owners in the San Gabriel Valley. Furthermore, after recognizing the importance that personal finances and credit have on the success of a business, the BDC established our Asset Building Center in 2005 and have continued to expand the services offered with the support of HSBC and the United Way of Los Angeles. The Asset Building Center provides financial education training, credit counseling, homebuyer education and tax preparation services to the low-to-moderate income communities that we serve. Finally, our most recent development is the establishment of the PACE SBA Micro-Loan Program, which enables us to make loans from $500 to $15,000 to our own clients. This is a very exciting and important addition to our services as we are now able to train, counsel, and finance the businesses that come through our doors.
Regardless of your needs or your stage of business, PACE BDC is proud to say that we have developed the resources to be able to address your concerns.
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