we may focus on to continue to help so just a little bit for those that don't know about us. we are celebrating our 25th anniversary. we have been providing high potential low income women with business training and funding and on going support to start and actually expand their businesses and become economically self sufficient. a little bit about who we serve. we've actually served over 26,000 women since we began in 1988. 700 women will be served this year in san francisco alone. 99% of our women are low income or extremely low income. fort% are latina. 13% have a documented disability. 23% are over 50 years old and we see women with 15 kinds of barriers as sail

ebb talked about. >> >> . women come in with isolation, with domestic violence situations and language barriers and limited education. the average education is 11th grade of our women and many have poor or limited or no credit at all, but really i think the bullet point that is not on here is the lack of self esteem and lack of confidence that our women come into the program with, and it's something that makes our program so special is what we're doing is not just providing the business assistance but also the personal development skills that are so critical to be able to succeed at running a business. so very quickly -- i'm not going over this in detail. you can look at this yourself. it's a three step approach that we have perfected over the 25 years. we train, fund and provide on

going support. the training -- the core training program is an 11 week 22 session course where women emerge with a business plan so they do everything from market research to cash flow in addition to developing a personal development skills like i mentioned and learning to present elevator pitches and develop a community and network which is so critical. that's the training. we then offer access to micro-loans and up to $50,000 and we estimate about 20% of the women that go through the program needs capital so it's not everybody but it's some and the on going support. we launched that program six years ago and it has become the key to our success. this is you have a business, you have a business plan. you may have a business loan but you're back on your own so we continue to provide this on going support through what we call success link and in

spanish it's called. [speaking spanish] . i think i didn't mention we teach our classes in english and spanish and we have been like that since the beginning of the organization. this is a three legged stool to help our women succeed. we know it works. this is just 2012 for most of the statistics. women served in 2012 were 868. seals revenue generated is enormous is this is incredible ripple effect and women that went through the program in the last five years. we have touched a lot of lives you can see and jobs in 2012 from the women that we reached in 2012 and 2008 jobs retained and business expansion. can you see all the numbers and that is just for 2012 and you can imagine what is happening after you accumulate all of the years and the women. also -- thank you for noting the statistic.

70% are still in business five years after going through the program and we know it's due to the technical assistance and the personal support networks that the women gain going through the program. annual income almost doubles one year after training and our women are providing jobs far above minimum wage and $22 on average and our statistic -- one of the statistics that we love the most is 1 dollar invested 30 goes back into the community and sales and job creation and sale tax revenues spent locally and in the packet we have a paper on economic inpact that goes into depth about the ripple effect of this return on investment. why do women enroll in women initiatives? they want to be their own boss, self sufficient and independent. they want to give back to the community.

they want to fill full their dreams and passions and a role model for their namly. you may know nancy there and went through the program 10 years ago. she has a beautiful shop that sells traditional mexican hand crafts. she employs five single women from the neighborhood all of whom are immigrants. she has a thriving online business as well so really a welcome success story. the top businesses that the clients start in order of popularity food which is why the partnership with la cocina is critical and food and personal services and this is in order of the businesses that women want to start. the biggest obstacles our clients face certainly economic instability. that is number one. second is lack of business skills, and knowledge, which is again everybody you hear from it's important that

we're here today to provide this assistance. entrepreneurs and business owners that have been through this that know the ropes. lack of basic computer skills. i would say the majority of the latina clients still don't have email. we're not talking about the digital divide but we need to be. it's still an issue and lack of financial literacy so really big obstacles so thinking about the resources needed and potential policy ideas. certainly child care. you will hear it over and geafer. it's a barrier. and taxes and continued access to funding and support, everything that you're going to hear today. free business licenses would be huge. it's hard to imagine that the cost of a license can prevent them from starting their business and this is something that many years ago the city did for lease holder grants. anybody remember these? these

were amazing. they helped women come into the mission district into store fronts where it was vacant and couldn't have done this without the program. many of those businesses are still in the mission district today. i would love to bring that back and some questions for to you consider. thinking about including the tax breaks and supports as you're looking at that what percentage is going to women owned businesses? another area we have been talking about as a group is this funding and this funds work force development but it hasn't been fund whag we do, small business development. we're creating jobs. it should be and we have been working hard as a field to make that happen so something to think about and finally taking a look at what is the comparison from women owned businesses to men owned businesses? and i want to just to finish with a couple things. i'm also the chair of the san francisco economic development alliance and this is amazing alliance of

everyone you will hear about today and plus a few more organizations. we came to advocate together, to partner and make sure the city is gaining access to the businesses -- accesses to the resources that we have to provide. we welcome the opportunity to come back and present to you as the san francisco economic development alliance if that would be helpful for you, and finally i just included -- oh also it's small business week which you named which is great and we will have a happy hour mixer and we invite you to that and i included an overview of job creation and impact and fund businesses that i encourage to you take a look at and enjoy. thank you so much for this opportunity to present to. >>you thank you. >> any questions? >> do we have any commissioner questions or comments? commissioner rodriquez. >> yes. i know you're speaking

about san francisco and you noted the other -- that you served many other communities but can you just mention for a minute the other cities that are now benefiting from this innovation. >> thank you. i appreciate that. so we're in san francisco. we're also in the beast bay and just now as of the end of 2012 in new york city, so we've just become a national organization. very exciting. thank you. >> commissioner dooley. >> i just wanted to thank you for the presentation and say i certainly wish you were around when i opened my business. you certainly described a lot of the pitfalls that i fell right into and i also wanted to mention it's so important for the small businesses to get support. we are constantly being inundated with chain stores, out of area companies, and we need to keep our neighborhood corridors with

our local neighbors and especially as women owners i know that we serve more than just what we're selling. we're there to meet people's children after work. there is a real community feeling that you cannot get any other way, so thank you for working towards that goal in our neighborhoods. >> i have a question. you serve a lot of people, and where is your funding coming from and what's the size of your staff? >> oh great question. where does our funding not come from? we get a little bit of government funding. we get city of san francisco funding. we get funding from san francisco foundation. many corporations and banks in particular have an interest in funding what we do and individuals who are

long-term donors, so our overall staff is 25, and we depend -- that's out all of the our locations so in san francisco we are a staff of seven but that is only because we have lots of volunteers and amazing mentors and people that help us leverage what the work that we do. >> great thank you. >> thank you. >> any other commissioner questions or comments? commissioner shorter. >> thank you so much for your presentation. it's an incredible program, wise and we're very lucky to have you all here in san francisco. i have two questions related to the income increases and also the revenue, sales revenue generated. it's indicated that the sales revenue generated i am presuming wise graduates 85 million. >>i know it sounds crazy and i had to double check that with

the statisticians on staff so that is women in the last five years and it's cumulative and every year plus the second, plus the third, plus the four, plus the fifth and you can see more info about that. >> that is very impressive and 85 million here in the bay area? >> yes just in the bay area. >> great. the next question regarding the annual income increases from less than 13,000 to $25,000 after one year of training so that is the annual income per graduate. that's the average and do you have a sense of what the increases five years after? >> such a great question. >> after graduation. does it increase to $50,000? $100,000? i mean you're generating $85 million of revenue, sales revenue. >> this is a really great question. we are looking at this deeply now. the biggest

increase -- and this is for to you consider and i should have brought this up. the biggest increase happens the first year after they graduate. it's almost double. it continues to go up but not in such a drastic amount and we realize we need to do a better job at supportive services and specialized training and more access to capital to make sure that number keeps going up. it's not where we want it to be so it's where the next work is. >> this raises a question for me so a couple years ago then secretary of state hillary clinton talked at a conference and declared the policy to have more access to capital for women and how have you been working on the federal side and that side to get more capital for women? >> we haven't. we have been working on the local side to do that. i have to tell you we have a lot of things going. we

have fabulous partners. will hear from working solutions. we provide with others that provide advisors and partnering with banks in an innovative way. first public bank has a million dollar fund and increased it and they're waving their under writing criteria for graduates of the program and banks have an interest to lend money. they have to lend money to our population but they don't do a very good job of it so they out source it to us and then get tax credit frs it. that's the federal piece. that the tax credits for the banks have helped us form partnerships like first public bank so they're lending money directly to our clients. does that make sense? >> yeah. but what could we do as government agencies, commissions, to assist you in

increasing that pipeline of capital access? >> well, i think you could actually -- let's see. so you could help spread the word about this to the other banks that maybe unwilling to lend to our population possibly. you could also -- let me think. well, where the sba comes in. are you on the agenda? yeah mark is on the agenda and he can talk best to this. i will pass this to mark. great. >> thank you. >> any other commissioner questions or comments? thank you. it was a very good presentation. >> i really appreciate your interest. >> thank you. >> commissioners next you have the renaissance center presentation by paula conley director of the womens' business center. >> welcome. >> thank you. hi everyone. my

name is paula conley. i'm the director of our womens' business center and the program manager for the south of market location for the center. the reason san center also braiting in bay view sudden fran and we have locations in marin and east palo alto as well. at renaissance we provide comprehensive services that attend to the business needs of entrepreneurs through start ups, launch and growth of their businesses and we do that

through different services. we take a bird eye's approach and offer classes, workshops. we have technical assistance, one-on-one consulting. we own a building in the south of market neighborhood and we rent office space on a sliding scale that comes with supportive services. we're very nice landlords. we don't hook people into long lease focus it's not a good space for them. we let them move out. we have the bay view assistance center and loan packaging. last year through the center reason san packaged 16 loans totaling $591,000. people starting businesses tend to be feel isolated so we provide them with the communities through all these approaches. last year renaissance soma and bay view

searched 800 low to moderate income men and women and start businesses. 576 of those or 72% were women and 442 of those or 75% were women of color. renaissance is a small business administration womens' business center. we get sba funding for a womens' center here in san francisco and allows us to do enhance marketing for women and fashion programs and classes for women with day care and child issues. since its inception in 1999 the womens' center has served 10,000 women including training and classes and workshops. financial resource center, the fashion program and our speaker in women series. it's not like the umbrella organization that has been

around since 1985. some of our recent successful speaker workshops include the fashion designer tory burch and at last we're we had a roundtable with the district supervisor malia cohen. renaissance loves success stories. many of you may know gail [inaudible] and her truck is parked outside of city hall on fridays. she is one of the success stories. i attached three stories to the packet so you can read about them later but gail came to renaissance and wanted to start a food business. didn't have enough money to start a brick and mortar location and she was there and open the truck when it was opportune to do so and she started a second food truck and is employing at least five individuals. another great

success is black jet bakery. i know if you have been there but they came to us. she was originally selling her goods to coffee shops and other commercial retailers throughout the city, and had enough interest in her business. she's been covered on the opera blog and got great reviews and pop tarts and they're delicious and got a loan through one of our resource partners working solutions to open a brick and mortar business so we're excited. we hope it works out for her. she hasn't found a location yet but she is still looking. so the top reasons that women come to renaissance and want to be business owners is -- i think generally 10% of the population is

entrepreneurial so women are naturally that way. women have been starting businesses at a higher rate than men for the last 20 years and tend to have home businesses and small businesses. it's estimate that women will create over half of the small businesses by -- between now and 2018 and that is according to the sba. we deliver high touch services and women can come in the smart phase and vet their idea. they can think about feasibility and scaling. they can grow sustainability and write a business plan and come back as a financial resource center and aid and get access to capital. also women the flexibility of self employment. it allows them to make their own schedules. it allows them to achieve work-life balance that includes their

family and puts them in charge of their economic livelihood. women are able to become self sufficient through self employment when they would otherwise have barriers to keep them from doing so. the top sector that are you clients represent are certainly foods to echo what nicole was saying. food and fashion. many women and people in general are starting service base businesses. a lot of the people come to the center are starting businesses with low capital barriers to entry and a catering service versus a restaurant, a food truck versus a restaurant. growing and sustainability. we

used to work with ex-offenders with a partnership with good will. we are partnering with the fee keys charter schools and offer a program currently in the men's jails of san francisco. we were doing the program in the womens' jail but the five keys recommended that we switch to the men's jails because the population is so much larger -- it's about 100 times larger and also we found that incarcerated women the biggest focus was on the families and the program is really going well in the men's jail. there are additional resources that women can utilize. nicole mentioned the san francisco economic development alliance. renaissance is a partner so if you really plug into the services in the city and

continuum gets larger. we partner with la cocina. we partner with working solutions to get access to capital. we became a trustee for the new keepa zip program so they are having a local program interest free loans that are crowd sourced. people can go on the website and donate $25 and once you have the full amount can you get the interest free loan and doesn't reflect on your considered which is good and a bad thing. >> >> so things that the city can do to improve the environment for women business owners i would say recognize it's job creation. i don't think people think enough of it like that and unemployment is really high on the national agenda and on the city's agenda and thinking of self employment as a remedy to unemployment i think is a really

positive step. small businesses also need incentives. nicole mentioned the grant programs for opening brick and mortars. that was a great program. many women got to start their businesses through these grant programs. another idea would be to increase city purchasing from small businesses and women owned businesses. i know there are some competitive contracts that are offered to small businesses but a lot of our clients are too small to compete for the contracts so finding a way to make the contracts smaller would really increase our client's ability to access them and that's i think that's all the slides i have. something additional there could be transgender individuals which are being left out of this conversation about under served communities. transgender

people face economic disadvantages and doubled unemployment rate and we serve a couple of clients and it really makes a difference to have access to this type of training. >> great thank you. do we have any commissioner questions? >> i have a question on the city contracting aspect, and i know it's very difficult for a lot of small businesses to compete with the large businesses. have we advocated to have the formula where we see 1 dollar invested into creating a small business and having $30 generated back locally? it seems to make sense if we're looking at city contracting we should look at that overall part as the formula because if we were contracting with some bigger chain where the -- the city -- we're not keeping that income within local

jurisdiction. >> certainly. another component of that is the contractor is actually too big so it's too big to scale to compete for them so let's say there is a million dollars catering contract for a city agency because they use catering and our client vs to grow to support that or they're out of business and that is the risk competing for the large business. if it was a $10,000 contract they maybe could fill it and grow the business but competing on the large scale it's really risky for them. >> is there a way we could group some of the small caters together? >> sure. i think so. >> commissioner rodriquez. >> my question is just how do individuals really find out about your services? and this really goes for all of the

different organizations, but -- >> our best advertising is word of mouth. we have been around for 28 years. word of mouth recommendation goes a lot father than any billboard you would see. we're very grass roots in our outreach efforts. we stay in touch of all of the partners and if our services can't meet their needs but another can we work with the office of small business and they refer people to us and we do outreaching, tabling, community events, that kind of thing. >> thank you. >> i think that one of the other great things about renaissance like she said is almost 30 years old. correct? >>i was doing the math the other day. >> right. hi a -- i had a

terrific experience working on the board and moving people from welfare to work and that had implications on the federal level and the local level and making sure that we had the right partners on the table and clearly one of the central partners at the table. can you speak very briefly to the role of renaissance in moving folks from -- because my understanding is renaissance as the other programs do deal with women in low income situations but you're also dealing with folks as i still understand it that are some type of public assistance, and moving them from public assistance to a chance at greater self sufficiency through self employment. is -- can you comment on that in any regard? is that a focus of renaissance? >> it is a focus of renaissance

and it's why we have so many types of services because people come to us at different phases. when we do work in eeft palo alto or bay view we change our approach. we have different types of training. work with people one-on-one. our east palo alto location has spanish classes. our bay view location works with people on starting on the 3rd street corridor and we help people have access to voice mail and technology and those types of things, so we try to get people access to whatever they need along the way whether it's technology -- straight up access to a computer, a voice mail, an address to make it seem professional to get started. in terms of public assistance -- again self employment is not recognized as employment so