EL PAJARO COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT CORP
23 EAST BEACH STREET 209, WATSONVILLE, CA 95076 www.elpajarocdc.org

---

Organizations Filed Purposes: The Organization's mission is to promote community and economic development. The population served is under represented and under served minority small business owners and entrepreneurs seeking technical and business assistance. The focus of the Organization is the expansion of economic opportunities and jobs to benefit the target population.

THE ORGANIZATION'S MISSION IS TO PROMOTE COMMUNITY AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT. THE POPULATION SERVED IS UNDERREPRESENTED AND UNDER SERVED MINORITY SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS AND ENTREPRENEURS SEEKING TECHNICAL AND BUSINESS ASSISTANCE. THE FOCUS OF THE ORGANIZATION IS THE EXPANSION OF ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITIES AND JOBS TO BENEFIT THE TARGET POPULATION.

During fiscal year 2018-2019, El Pajaro CDC provided bilingual (English and Spanish) consulting, trainings and business incubation opportunities to underserved entrepreneurs, farmers and micro-businesses throughout Santa Cruz, Monterey and San Benito Counties. Two hundred and sixty-seven received business coaching services and three hundred twenty-six took part in trainings. Clients were assisted with costing of products and services, new business planning, marketing, loan packaging and other business-related topics. Specialized trainings were provided for family childcare providers, food business entrepreneurs, start-ups, farmers and CalWORKs participants. El Pajaro CDC continued to support Plaza Vigil incubator tenants by providing them with over 353 hours of training, individual business coaching and leadership skills development. During the fiscal year 2018-2019, El Pajaro CDC assisted 40 small business owners in preparing loan packages or to access other types of financial resources to start or expand their businesses. Alternative sources included family investment, owner investment, and community lenders. Of the clients assisted eleven have received over $1,380,000 in capital infusion from banks and other lenders. Several client loans are still in progress at the close of the fiscal year. Because many of our clients have difficulties accessing loans, we are continually looking for alternative sources of financing. For this reason, El Pajaro CDC staff and board are currently working on a plan to increase access to financing resources to local underserved entrepreneurs. El Pajaro CDC 's newest program, the commercial kitchen incubator (CKI) has been serving tri-county entrepreneurs for six years and currently has 34 small food businesses operating in the facility and seven new entrepreneurs are in the licensing process. El Pajaro CDC is proud of creating this community asset and loves to share the facility with the community by hosting events. In October 2019 we celebrated the El Pajaro CDC?s fortieth anniversary with our signature event, Tacos and Tapas. In December 2019 we hosted our sixth, City of Watsonville, Holiday Factory sale. These celebrations have drawn more than 500 visitors to the facility and have become great marketing opportunities for our food entrepreneurs. The kitchen also expanded its program to include an ?access to market? strategy to aid entrepreneurs to find new opportunities to bring their products to consumers. Since the autumn of 2017, we have partnered with the Santa Cruz Community Farmer?s Market. El Pajaro CDC has a booth at 5 different farmers? market sites. This allows kitchen entrepreneurs to sell their products on a rotating basis. This program provides opportunities to perfect sales presentation and pitch and build salesmanship skills. For many this is their first venture into marketing and sales. We encourage our producers to market themselves by taking part in community events and the staff works hard to facilitate these opportunities. In the past year clients have been featured at the Corralito?s Open Farm Tour, pop-up opportunities at local breweries and events, the Capitola art and wine festival and the Fancy Food Show in San Francisco among others. Acquiring county and state licensing has proven a challenge for some of these start-ups; the booth has been a perfect testing ground and launch pad for these very new business. Every new entrepreneur has helped us learn and to become more adept at maneuvering through the system so we may better assist future clients. As a part of the Access to Markets program we are opening a retail outlet for CKI participants. The store, located in our Plaza Vigil Retail Incubator, will also feature products made in the CKI and locally made handicrafts and art. Kitchen participants will sample their products at pop-up events at the storefront. Tenant improvement were completed in January 2020. During the fiscal year ending June 2016, El Pajaro CDC was awarded a five year $799k grant, from the department of children and families, office of community services community economic development programs (CED.) These funds are being used to support and expand the kitchen incubator program including the construction of small batch co-packing line. This co-packing service will serve as a "second layer" of incubation by allowing specialty food entrepreneurs and farmers in developing and producing value added products in larger quantities at a larger scale in a more cost-efficient manner. The main goal of the grant, creating 40 jobs for low-income community members was achieved in 2018. Further grant goals are related to the completion of the Co-Packing Project. To date we have invested countless hours of planning a preparation. We are currently awaiting the final approval of plans from the city of Watsonville and then construction and installation of equipment will begin.

---

---

Data for this page was sourced from XML published by IRS (public 990 form dataset) from: https://s3.amazonaws.com/irs-form-990/202041059349300334_public.xml