Urban Solutions – Small Business Services Fall 2012

Urban Solutions helps entrepreneurs start or grow their businesses, secure financing and create jobs.  Urban Solutions’ mission is to strengthen underserved neighborhoods by supporting small businesses, job creation, diversity and sustainability.  The organization has been working in San Francisco’s Western Addition neighborhood since 2004 helping to build a diverse small business community.  Small Business owners rely on effective marketing techniques, that won’t break the budget, to create awareness for their businesses and create overall success.

The Small Business Services Program is seeking an Intern to help support the creation of The Fillmore Business Group.  The purpose of the Business Group is to help identify and recommend innovative marketing and promotional strategies that will preserve and invigorate the Historic Fillmore Music District. This may consist of a variety of fun and entertaining events and sales in participating businesses along the corridor. The Intern will assist with outreach to the business owners, assist with creating and administering a survey to collect information from business owners where appropriate, organize the information collected, present findings to the Business Group, send out e-blasts to encourage and ensure active attendance to meetings, prepare meeting agendas, and support overall administrative efforts as needed.  There may be other duties assigned as needed. Candidate will be self-motivated and flexible individual interested in small businesses and community economic development. The Intern will be supervised by the Director of Small Business Services.

Public Service Internship Program (PSIP) Internship summary 2012 

Organization: Urban Solutions – Small Business Services

Supervisor: Helen Branham

Task: Help support the creation of The Fillmore Group

Date: November 20, 2012

My name is Jonathan Yi and I am a senior at the University of San Francisco’s McLaren School of Business majoring in finance. Hailing from Princeton, New Jersey, I have been given the opportunity to intern at Urban Solutions, which is a non-profit organization that aids to local and small businesses.

During my tenure at Urban Solution, I have been working under Helen Branham and focusing our efforts on the Western Addition and Fillmore districts of San Francisco. So far I was given the opportunity to construct a survey for local businesses and how they have been utilizing marketing techniques. Our overall goal with this survey is to increase foot traffic in the community. We are living in a rapidly changing world and small businesses are having trouble to keep up with general information and knowledge of basic marketing techniques. A major focus with current marketing strategies is with social media and many of these businesses do not apply Facebook, Yelp, or even a common website for their business. This is crucial in our digital world and hopefully by the end of the semester, we will be able to help everyone to instill these strategies to businesses in the Fillmore and Western Addition.

Another project we are working on is the Fillmore Holiday Marketplace and is hosting local clothing, jewelry, greeting cards, and gift vendors. I was given the responsibility to construct an email template to reach out to local merchants to ask them if they are able to give out gift certificates, discounts, and coupons during the fair. Even though these respected merchants are not the main attraction to the fair, we are trying to use our resources to promote their business. The fair will be held on November 29 from 4:00 PM to 10:00 PM on 1307 Fillmore Street at the corner of Eddy Street.

The reason I enjoy being a part of Urban Solution is working besides Helen. I have a lot of say over the focus on projects we are currently working on and she is open to all my opinions. To listen to your co-workers, whether at a junior or senior position, is an important aspect to being a great boss. Common trends with internships are focused on administrative work, which lacks creative and critical processes of thinking.  However with Urban Solution, I have been working on my writing, business development, and communication skills. The primary goal with working with Urban Solution is to revitalize a community by emphasizing on their strong assets and help the community grow. This is my third internship experience as an undergraduate student and this has been the most rewarding experience yet. I truly feel that I have a strong and direct impact on the community’s efforts and will continue do so.

Sincerly,

Jonathan Yi