Driving Communities Forward with Jenais Zarlin

Meet Jenais Zarlin, co-founder & chief impact officer at the small business-focused nonprofit SF New Deal. SF New Deal is dedicated to providing financial opportunities and supportive services to under-resourced small businesses in San Francisco. Under the leadership of Jenais and her team, the organization has disbursed over $35 million to more than 650 San Francisco businesses.?

SF New Deal was also one of Cruise ’s very first social impact (and delivery) partners, and we’re honored to have her sit on our social impact advisory council. Over the past three years, I have been inspired by Jenais’ work, expertise and true spirit of collaboration, and hope you are too.

What gets you up in the morning?

Everyday our organization, SF New Deal, has the opportunity to make San Francisco’s neighborhoods stronger and more interconnected. It’s incredibly compelling, challenging, and a unique position to be in. What gets me out of bed is the deep sense of accountability I feel towards our incredibly committed team, and to the trusted partnerships we’ve built over the last three years.?

We’re a team of optimists, working toward a vision of San Francisco with diverse, vibrant and thriving small businesses and neighborhoods. To make it possible will require a lot of collaboration and system change but it’s our collective responsibility to build together toward that vision. To me, it really feels like it’s an opportunity of a lifetime to be able to contribute to that vision and to invite the community to join us.?

What is a typical day like for you?

During the first quarter of this year, we’ve been undergoing a strategic planning process which means that recently, more of my day-to-day is spent reflecting on where we’ve been as an organization, and where we want to go. To answer that question, I’ve been doing research to understand, outside of our own data, the experience of small business owners locally and nationally.?In a more practical sense, my role interacts with many departments across our organization. In a typical day, I’m constantly switching between things, juggling meetings with our program, development, marketing, and finance teams. I try to frame my work relative to how effectively I’m removing obstacles to support our team to be able to do their best work in service of our organizational values being empathetic, responsive, collaborative, accountable, and centering the community.?

Who inspires you?

Over the past several years I’ve had the opportunity to get to know so many small business owners who have consistently demonstrated resilience, dedication and grit in the face of overwhelming adversity. Despite the considerable challenge of opening and operating a small business, the entrepreneurs I’ve gotten to work with as partners while growing SF New Deal have catalyzed the evolution of the organization, and personally inspired me with their stories.?

Small business ownership inherently requires a sense of optimism and a willingness to show up everyday and offer something unique. In San Francisco, systemic inequity and a complex regulatory landscape make it quite challenging to be successful, so when I hear the stories of the small business owners we work with, and understand how committed they are to their neighborhoods and communities, it’s genuinely inspiring.?

What do you wish people knew about your work?

A lot of us take for granted the tremendous contribution that small businesses make to the cultural identities of the communities they’re a part of. I wish people more fully understood and appreciated the monumental impact that small businesses have in shaping our neighborhoods. Particularly in San Francisco, small businesses are vital cultural institutions which make up the social fabric of our city.?

Often investment and support for small business owners and entrepreneurs is housed under the umbrella of economic development, which inadequately captures the tremendous social and cultural value that small businesses create and provide. Our collective support and investment in local businesses is an investment in the entirety of our communities. The success of our small businesses, and the success of our communities, are one in the same.?

It’s our belief that by making San Francisco a place where diverse small businesses can thrive, we’ll be creating a city that is more resilient and better for everybody.

What is your vision for the future of social impact?

At SF New Deal, we take a community-centered approach to launching pilot programs that seek to address the core challenges faced by small businesses. We create open feedback channels and rapidly iterate our program design based on experience.?

In our area of supporting small businesses, there is a disconnect between the decades of policies and systems that have yielded the complex operational landscape for small businesses today, and expectations from funders to run pilots on short time horizons (three months, six months, 12 months) that create immediate and measurable impact. Meaningfully measuring and understanding impact takes time, and I’d like to see a shift in longer timelines for expected returns and outcomes.?

I would also like to see greater collaboration and open sharing of data. Public-private partnerships are powerful funding models and I’d like to see more cross-sector collaboration. Right now there is so much data being collected and it’s often quite redundant. It can be challenging to find and access existing data.There is survey fatigue on all sides and data living in silos that don’t readily inform other work being done. Greater collaboration and more open data sharing would be exciting.

How can we support your work?

At SF New Deal we believe that it’s our collective responsibility to build the communities and cities we want to be a part of. By supporting the local small businesses in your community, and encouraging your community to do the same, you will be supporting our mission and impact.?

If you’re inspired to do more, reach out to your elected officials and ask what their plans are to resource and cultivate small businesses locally. Fostering a robust and sustainable small business ecosystem depends on our social, economic and political investment.??

If SF New Deal’s mission resonates with you, we always welcome tax deductible contributions which directly support our pilots and programs that work to strengthen neighborhoods and support under-resourced business owners here in San Francisco.?