Action Steps - The Intersect Fund

Photo courtesy of Joelle Lynn

Action Steps is a series of one-on-one coaching sessions in which we help you get things done in your business.

Each session lasts approximately 90 minutes, and we plan them around your schedule. Feel free to have them in any order, and if you want only one, have only one. It’s up to you. Each session costs $99, but if your household qualifies as “low-income,” they cost only $39. Complete a registration form and we’ll get in touch to determine your price level.

Whether you want to grow your business or launch one, we’re here to help.

Launch your Business

Selling is tough, but until you’ve found your first customer, the business of your dreams will remain an idea. In this session, we will:

Figure out what type of person is most likely to buy from you (your target market) and find the best way to reach them.
Work out why a particular person would buy from you and craft a message that succinctly conveys your business’s benefits.
Develop a sales strategy to turn potential customers into a lucrative following

With great business comes great responsibility. Learn how to:

Set yours up the right way
Protect yourself from liability
Buy the right insurance
Make sure tax time goes as smoothly as possible.

Finding your first customer is great. Finding your next hundred is even better. In this session, we:

Analyze the customers who have already bought from you and come up with a way to find more like them
Review several marketing tools, including social media, networking events, blogging and print advertising
Develop a marketing plan and set sales goals

Business ownership can lead to untold wealth or crushing financial pain. In this session, we:

Develop your financial goals and determine how your business fits into the picture (is it a full-time job, a part-time gig, a seasonal operation, etc.)
Set profitability goals for your business and set up a way to measure the business’s performance
Determine the major purchases your business will require
Develop a strategy to ensure your credit and personal savings are healthy enough to make those purchases

Grow your Business

Finding your first customer is great. Finding your next hundred is even better. In this session, we:

Analyze the customers who have already bought from you and come up with a way to find more like them
Review several marketing tools, including social media, networking events, blogging and print advertising
Develop a marketing plan and set sales goals

Shouldn’t you make sure your hard work is paying off? In this session, we will:

Develop an effective bookkeeping system that will put your business’s profits, expenses and yearly revenues at your fingertips
Review the best ways to keep your business’s books, giving you the peace of mind to focus on running your business, not worrying about it.

Sometimes, you have to spend money to make money. But if your credit is poor or your financial situation bleak, borrowing for business expenses can be costly if not impossible. In this session, we will>

Review your credit history and suggest ways to improve your score
Assess your financial circumstances to and develop a strategy to help you grow your savings while running your business

You would be wise to make sure the store of your dreams doesn’t drag you into a nightmare. In this session, we will:

Determine at what point you should seek a retail space, what price you should pay, where you should look, and what questions to ask the potential landlord
Draft a timeline that will help transition from home-based business to storefront success

Photo by Brendan McInerney

What is ETPU?

ETPU is Entrepreneurial Training for the Unemployed.

It’s a program sponsored by the State of New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development, and it’s geared toward individuals who struggle to find employment but seek to start a business.

Through ETPU, the Intersect Fund offers six-week, sixty-hour training programs to help you create a successful small business. Our expert instructors show you how to find customers, keep track of your cash, and crank up your profits, and much more. Our training will help make you a confident entrepreneur: ambitious but realistic, intense but effective, and ready to hit the ground running.

The program is designed for individuals who have been collecting unemployment benefits for 26 weeks or who have exhausted their benefits. The Intersect Fund offers this course in New Brunswick. Organizations such as IFEL, the New Jersey Small Business Development Centers, and various community colleges offer it elsewhere.

What will I learn?
Throughout the course, you will learn about topics such as:

Crafting a mission statement
Analyzing a Business Opportunity
Finding your target customer
Sizing up your competition
Research and Marketing
Cost Structure Development and Pricing Strategies
Registering a Business and Business Structures

Want us to let you know when our next round of ETPU will take place? Fill out this short form and we’ll get in touch.

Entrepreneurs

Talk to us about how we can help you start or grow your business. Call (732) 447-1324 Ext. 705 or e-mail .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Students

To learn about becoming an Intersect Fund staff member, call (732) 447-1324 Ext. 703, or e-mail .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Partners

To find out how you can work with us to empower entrepreneurs, e-mail .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Media

To receive a press kit or learn more about who we are and what we do, call (732) 447-1324 Ext. 704, or e-mail .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

At biweekly Center meetings clients repay outstanding loans, network with other entrepreneurs, and participate in expert seminars. We invite individuals from diverse fields to conduct a Center lesson lasting an hour and a half about some topic related to running a small business. Speakers get to work closely with our clients and share valuable knowledge that entrepreneurs can immediately apply to their own businesses.

Some sample topics include:

Accounting and tax preparation

Insurance

Hiring

Bookkeeping

Maintaining a healthy work/life balance

Please contact us if you have experience in the fields of finance, insurance, or accounting, or think that you have something helpful to teach at a Center meeting. We look forward to working with you as we strive to empower entrepreneurs.

Joining the staff of the Intersect Fund is a unique opportunity for university students. Working with us, you will deal with real people, real businesses and real money. You will use the skills you have acquired in class and in life to make a substantive difference in the community. You will help change people’s lives.

It is a valuable and extremely rewarding pursuit, but it requires a significant commitment of time and effort. We expect a lot from our staff, and we hold them accountable to their responsibilities. At the end of the day, we work for our clients. And we owe them the best service we can provide.

If you’re not scared away yet, you might be a great fit for our staff.

Before we proceed, you should know about our prerequisites. To join our staff, you must:

Possess excellent interpersonal skills
Demonstrate confidence in interacting with clients significantly older than you
Be able to commit at least 10 hours per week working for the Intersect Fund

We would prefer that you possess at least one of the following:

Excellent writing skills
Fluency in Spanish
Proficiency in accounting
Experience running or helping to run a small business
Have a car on campus

Feel free to look at the job descriptions on the website to get a taste of what our staff members do. If you feel you have what it takes to join the ranks of the Intersect Fund, please fill out an application (make sure your pop-up blocker is disabled).

Once you submit your application, we will review it and contact you.

Good luck!

The key to the Intersect Fund’s mission is working at the crossroads of campus and community: we provide valuable business services to low-income entrepreneurs through a dedicated staff of student volunteers. Helping our clients succeed in business is our primary goal, but we have noticed a welcome side effect: Students find their work with the Intersect Fund to be enriching and valuable. They say it broadens their horizons and builds on their skills in a way that they expect will yield a valuable return down the road.

In June, we conducted a survey of our staff, and the results were encouraging:

Student staff members commit a significant amount of time to working with us, devoting an average of 11 hours per week to the Intersect Fund
Our staff is dedicated to service, with 90% saying they plan to volunteer in the future.
The Intersect Fund’s value proposition to students is strong: 86% say working with us will help them in their careers.
Our staff members’ commitment to helping others is strong: 81% say they would consider a career in public service.
The students who dedicate the most time and effort to the Intersect Fund get a great deal out of it: 52% of our staff say working with us has been one of the most impactful experiences of their lives.

The Intersect Fund offers a wide range of services to our clients. In order to effectively serve them, the specific positions and responsibilities for our staff are outlined below:

Program Director, Graduate Services
(Approx. 10 hrs per week)

The Graduate Services Program Director is responsible for our post-graduation services. The job will involve finding expert speakers and occasionally teaching advanced business topics to entrepreneurs.

Organizing expert speakers for seminars/center meetings
Preparing materials for center when there is no expert seminar (Due 1 week prior to center meeting)
Event Planning for events paid through Rutgers Budget
Event Planning for Entrepreneur Showcase
Newsletter

Program Director, Build Your Business
(Approx. 10 hrs per week)

The Build Your Business Program Director is responsible for coordinating our primary service - the BYOB course. The job will involve securing locations to hold the class and finding clients to take it.

Secure Training Sites
Conduct Client Outreach for BYOB Sessions
Manage Client RSVPs and Registrations
Schedule Teachers for BYOB Cycles

Public Relations Director
(Approx.10 hrs per week)

The Public Relations Director is responsible for promoting The Intersect Fund on the Rutgers-New Brunswick campus to students and professors. The job will also include implementing strategies to achieve marketing goals.

Support the production and distribution of promotional materials
Develop media lists and pitch stories to appropriate outlets and journalists
Manages marketing budget

Tax Prep, Program Director
(Approx. 10 hrs per week)

The Tax Prep Program Director is responsible for launching our Tax Prep for the entrepreneurs program. The job will involve finding student volunteers, securing a site, and marketing the service to entrepreneurs.

Manage Tax Prep Program
Coordinate with community partners to hold tax prep training for student volunteers
Organize Tax prep sites
Conduct client outreach for free Tax Prep

Creative Director
(Approx. 15 hrs per week)

The Creative Director will design Intersect Fund materials and materials for our clients as well as assist in updating out website.

Design all marketing materials
Design logos, brochures, etc for clients

Tax Preparer
(Approx. 5 hrs per week during tax season)

The Tax Preparer is a temporary position and involves doing Schedule C tax preparation.

Take tax prep course
Prepare tax returns for low income entrpreneurs

A session from the Intersect Fund’s first training cycle, held at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church

The Intersect Fund’s table at Rutgers Day on April 25, 2009

Joe Shure, Rutgers President Richard L. McCormick, and Rohan Mathew at Rutgers Day

Zakiyia Forbes sells merchandise at the first annual Entrepreneur Showcase

Intersect Fund clients at the Entrepreneur Showcase

The Intersect Fund staff at the Entrepreneur Showcase

Guests browse client tables at the Entrepreneur Showcase

Rohan and Joe with Entrepreneur of the Year Pearl Thompson and Zakiyia Forbes, winner of the Social Impact Award

Board Chair

Joan Barry McCormick is the President of Joan McCormick Fundraising, LLC. A development professional, McCormick has led fundraising efforts at organizations in Florida, New Jersey and New York. Before founding Joan McCormick Fundraising, McCormick served as the Director of Principal Gifts at the Rutgers University Foundation and Vice President of Special Initiatives at Saint Peter’s Healthcare System. She began her career at the South Street Seaport Museum in New York City. McCormick is married to Dr. Richard L. McCormick, the 19th President of Rutgers University. She holds a B.A. from Rutgers University and an M.P.A. from Kean University.

Vice Chair

Nancy Finn has led nonprofits helping underserved populations in New York and New Jersey for more than 30 years. Most recently, she served as program manager for the Unity Square Partnership, a Catholic Charities-sponsored neighborhood revitalization project in New Brunswick. The project has generated more than $3 million for housing, economic development and social programs in the area. Prior to leading Unity Square, Finn worked directed the development efforts of Outreach Project, a Queens, NY-based drug and alcohol treatment program.

Directors

James Decker, a certified public accountant, is a partner with the New Brunswick-based firm WithumSmith+Brown, PC. Decker specializes in assisting closely held businesses and nonprofit organizations. In addition to working for WithumSmith+Brown and serving on the Intersect Fund’s board of directors, Decker serves as treasurer for the Katelyn Schwenzer Foundation, a nonprofit he developed for children in need of liver transplants. Decker also sits on the board of the New Brunswick Ronald McDonaled House.

Alan Dolnick is a Vice President and Commercial Loan Fund Officer at Magyar Bank. During his time at the bank, he has earned titles such as IRA Specialist, Security Officer and Branch Administrator. Dolnick served as the Retail Branch Manager for the Magyar Bank’s Kendall Park Branch Office. The branch’s deposits doubled during his tenure. Dolnick serves on the board of South Brunswick Citizens for Independent Living and for the past 15 years has served as a trustee of the South Brunswick Family YMCA. Dolnick graduated from Rutgers University.

David Finegold is the Senior Vice President of Lifelong Learning and Strategic Growth Initiatives at Rutgers University. Before taking this role, he served as Dean of Rutgers’ School of Management and Labor Relations. Prior to joining Rutgers, Finegold was a professor at the Keck Graduate Institute in Claremont, CA and at USC’s Marshall School of Business. Finegold graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University and studied as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University.

Christopher J. Paladino is the President of New Brunswick Development Corporation, known also as Devco. During Paladino’s tenure, Devco has initiated and managed more than $250 million of residential, commercial and institutional development activity in New Brunswick. He oversees approximately 2.5 million square feet of redevelopment projects, representing an investment of nearly $450 million. He is a graduate of Rutgers University and Rutgers School of Law.

Paul V. Profeta is the president and owner of Paul V. Profeta and Associates, Inc., which has been involved in real estate investment, management and leasing throughout the country. From 1980 until 1989, Profeta served as an Adjunct Professor at Columbia Graduate School of Business. In 2008, he founded the Profeta Urban Investment Foundation at the Rutgers Business School, which provides seed capital for minority owned businesses in Newark, N.J. Profeta holds a B.A. from Harvard College and an M.B.A. from the Harvard Graduate School of Business.

David Verderami is a Senior Manager at Ernst & Young, L.L.P. He joined the firm in 2000 as a staff accountant and has since acquired nine years of assurance and advisory business experience. He specializes in distribution and manufacturing companies, as well as a waste-to-energy company. In addition, Verderami has specialized in audits of S.E.C. registrants that have been acquisitive and completed initial public offerings. Verderami graduated from Rutgers University.

Stories About the Intersect Fund

Intersect Fund Provides Small Business Owners With Seed Money and Support
New Brunswick Patch, November 22, 2011

Interview with Intersect Fund Co-Founder Joseph Shure
Adam Bierman, November 14, 2011

New Brunswick-Based Intersect Fund Helps Low-Income Entrepreneurs
The Home News Trubine, Oct. 25, 2011

Getting On Track
Black Enterprise, Oct. 21, 2011

How to Buy Local
New Brunswick Patch, September 12, 2011

A Wealth of Options: Intersect Fund Intern Featured on Rutgers Homepage
Rutgers Today, March 4, 2011

College-based Programs Spark New Era in Microenterprise
The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, January 25, 2011

Intersect Fund Helps to Launch Business Ventures
The Daily Targum, October 4, 2010

Students Learn to Make a Difference and Make a LIving
Rutgers Focus, March 24, 2010

Crossroads of Commerce
Rutgers Today, March 6, 2010

Small Business Workshops Come To Carteret
NJ Today, January 27, 2010

Intersect Fund feeds the regional economy, from the roots up
Highland Park Mirror, January 2, 2010

Intersect Fund Helps Small Businesses
Rutgers Today, December 16, 2009

Where hope and opportunity intersect
Common Good, October/November 2009

Intersect Fund Grows Strong with New Classes
The Daily Targum, September 22, 2009

Market Harvests Sense of Community
The Daily Targum, September 10, 2009

Entrepreneurial Experts Help Train, Finance Small Start-Ups
NJBIZ, August 24, 2009

The Intersect Fund Helps Startups Get Off Their Feet
Business Opportunities Weblog Network, June 10, 2009

Winning student teams receive $25,000 to launch and grow new businesses
Rutgers Media Relations, June 8, 2009

A Look at the Educational Intersect Fund
The Home News Tribune, June 2, 2009

Intersect Fund trains business owners at affordable prices
The Daily Targum, March 30, 2009

A Student-Run Fund Based on Nobel-prize winning Concept
The Rutgers Focus, January 21, 2009

Group attempts to aid city economic climate
The Daily Targum, October 23, 2008

Get in Touch

If you are interested in covering the Intersect Fund, contact Joe Shure at (609) 558-7956 or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). We would be glad to send you a press kit and put you in contact with our clients, donors and partners.

Photo by Nick Romanenko

The Intersect Fund grew out of a desire to bring the campus to the community. When Rohan Mathew and Joe Shure were editors at The Daily Targum — Rutgers University’s student-run newspaper — they saw two sides of New Brunswick, N.J.

While new hotels, restaurants and high-rise apartments dot the skyline, there are also a lot of low-income residents struggling to make ends meet. These are often the busboys and dishwashers in the upscale businesses downtown, but they had little to show for the economic revitalization they helped bring about. They were immigrants working in factories through temp agencies, longtime residents left unemployed by recession, and a host of others who have the drive but lack the luck to succeed.

In thinking about how university students could help these people, Mathew and Shure found that many of them run small businesses on the side as a way to generate extra income. It became clear that although many of these low-income entrepreneurs have quality business ideas and a lot of motivation, they often lack the business knowledge and seed capital they to get the most out of their enterprises.

Each year, we survey all of our clients to learn what affect our programs have had on their businesses and financial lives.

Our most recent survey data show that of all the clients we served in 2009,

61 percent of those who entered the program without a business started one
78 percent of existing businesses whose owners enrolled in the program survived
96 percent of Fund graduates were employed or in business within 12 months
15 jobs were created by Intersect Fund clients

The State of New Jersey requires charities of our size to undergo an audit each year. Click here to see our Fiscal Year 2011 audit.

To see our most recent tax return, click here.

Creating opportunities for students

In June, we conducted a survey of our staff, and the results were encouraging:

11 hours

90%

86%

81%

52%

Donors

The Intersect Fund depends on support from a variety of corporate, foundation and government partners. Below are some of the institutions that help us fulfill our mission:

The Profeta Urban Investment Foundation
The Schoenfeld Foundation
The Retired Sales Executives Club of Northern New Jersey
The Henry E. Niles Foundation
The JP Morgan Chase Foundation
Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Newark
The Charles Engelhard Foundation
The Association for Enterprise Opportunity
The Credit Builders Alliance

What our current clients have to say

On the last day of our Build Your Business course, we have clients complete a survey to tell us what they thought of the program. To ensure unbiased responses, we tell them to leave their surveys anonymous. Here is what some clients had to say about the course:

“I was thrilled with the level of support and genuine interest the staff displayed. It always felt like staff members were thinking of ways to help us succeed – even when class was over.”

“There was a very high level of comfort established throughout the training course which led to an increased amount of interest in the course as well as the course material. It also made it very easy to learn.”

“Me ayudó a tener una idea major para desarrollar un negocio. Ahora tengo muy en claro qué hacer para empezar.”

In May, we held our 1st Annual Entrepreneur Showcase at New Brunswick’s Heldrich Hotel. At the event, clients mingled with some of the Intersect Fund’s friends and partners. We asked some of our clients to give speeches telling us about the Intersect Fund has made a difference in their businesses and their lives.

Alexandra Medina, who took our first Build Your Business course at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in November, had this to say: Intersect impacts our life, our community, and I really, really expect that we’ll all grow with this.”

Zakiyia Forbes, who enrolled in the course we held at the New Brunswick Free Public Library in March, remarked on the program’s larger impact, saying: You guys are really changing lives, one community, one person, one idea at a time, and there are no words that could ever really encompass how grateful we are for that.”

Pearl Thompson, who took our course at Elijah’s Promise Culinary Arts School, values the opportunity to put her ideas to paper, saying, “I’m so glad that they have given me the tools I need to begin to formalize [my business], to put he structure in place to create a real solid business in this community.”

Over the past two years, the Intersect Fund has grown from an idea into fully functioning microenterprise development group. Our corps of student volunteers has helped over 30 low-income entrepreneurs in New Brunswick come closer to making their dreams of financial self-sufficiency a reality.

Thanks to the generous support from a variety of donors, word of the Intersect Fund is spreading throughout the New Brunswick community. Our business development course is booked weeks in advance and our most promising clients are working toward creating successful, self-sustaining community businesses.

It is now time to plan for our next big steps: Expanding the services we offer in New Brunswick while fostering a network of student-run microfinance groups based in urban campuses throughout the region. We seek to raise $200,000 over the next eight months to accomplish these goals. This support will help us remain a source of valuable and innovative services to New Brunswick entrepreneurs while expanding the reach of microenterprise development throughout the nation.

Branching Out

Students at nearly a dozen colleges in the U.S. have started microenterprise development groups on their respective campuses. Like the Intersect Fund, these groups leverage the resources of universities — from borrowed office space to students’ technical savvy — to help low-income entrepreneurs. All of them do good work, but they face pervasive challenges. Raising funds, developing a working knowledge of a community, and training staff members are constant roadblocks to groups that could otherwise achieve success and scale.

We believe a formal, centralized network is the key to unlocking the potential of student-run microenterprise development. Through such an arrangement, students at various campuses could learn from one another, compare performance metrics, and receive standardized training in both adult education and business fundamentals.

Strengthening the relationship between these groups would carry tremendous benefits for both staff and clients, and the Intersect Fund is in the process of convening a summit of the highest performing student micro groups in an effort to forge a national network. We envision our national office becoming the nexus — appropriately located in the “Hub City” — of student-run social enterprise, coordinating the distribution of resources and providing necessary training and consulting services to student groups.

Strengthening Our Roots

Though we have hatched a formidable plan for expanding our influence, we are also beefing up our presence here in New Brunswick. We have embarked on a number of projects that will expand the suite of services we offer our clients while becoming a partner in their success.

In July of 2009, we began work on our first Entrepreneur Directory. This publication will feature two-dozen entrepreneurs in the New Brunswick area. It will detail not only the name and location of their businesses, but will illuminate the city’s small business landscape by offering insight into what motivates these entrepreneurs — where they came from, why they opened their businesses, and what motivates them to open up every morning. The Directory is a crucial step in connecting qualified entrepreneurs to the markets they seek to serve.

The needs of our clients grow as they expand their businesses, and we will continue to adapt by expanding our services. The Intersect Fund was conceived as an organization that would offer small loans to low-income entrepreneurs. We soon added business training to our roster of services to respond to a growing demand among the clients we served. As we began to serve more experienced business owners, we introduced one-on-one consulting services as well as assistance with graphic and web design. To increase the scope of our training while enhancing networking opportunities for our clients, we created business development centers, which function as mini-chambers of commerce. Entrepreneurs who have graduated from our training program gather for lessons from experts in fields such as accounting, insurance and tax law.

For clients who have completed our course and are ready to launch or grow their businesses, we offer small loans to cover the costs of expansion and working capital. Our one-one-one consulting and graphic design services help our entrepreneurs strategize and spread the word about their businesses.

Meeting the needs of the Market

To ensure the Intersect Fund remains a valuable resource to local entrepreneurs, we will continue to expand our services to meet our clients’ needs. We are exploring ways to help our clients acquire health insurance (which half of them lack at the moment). We also plan to develop a mobile system that will allow those of our clients who sell merchandise at a variety of locations to process credit card orders on the go.

We are also looking to increase our physical presence in the community. In 2010, we plant to acquire a retail space in downtown New Brunswick that will provide low-income entrepreneurs a point of access to markets while providing an enhanced training experience for our clients.

Mission Statement

The Intersect Fund is a student-run non-profit organization that empowers entrepreneurs to start businesses, generate income, build assets and spark dramatic social change.

Our Founding Principles

TRANSPARENCY—We believe donors and clients alike want to work with well-managed, financially stable organizations. To inspire confidence with our partners, we are transparent with our programs, operating procedures, results, and finances.
ACCOUNTABILITY—We think nonprofits should be held accountable for demonstrating measurable results. All of our programs have mechanisms to measure their impact toward our mission and our organization proactively evaluates their effectiveness
PARTNERSHIP—The nation has too many nonprofits to consider duplicating services that already exist. We seek partnerships with other organizations to add leverage to our services and serve our clients better.
MUTUAL RESPECT—We provide critical training and seed capital to our clients, who are not charity cases. In all aspects of the organization, from publications to staff meetings, we treat them with commensurate respect.

The State of New Jersey requires charities of our size to undergo an audit each year. Click here to see our Fiscal Year 2011 audit.

To see our most recent tax return, click here.

Starting a strong business takes a big investment of time, patience, and money. The Intersect Fund offers small loans (from $500 to $10,000) to help you start or grow your business.

To learn more about our loan program or apply for a loan, call Luis De La Hoz at (732) 917-0814, or e-mail him at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

Below are interviews with three of the more than 80 entrepreneurs who have received Intersect Fund loans since 2009. Our clients use their loan dollars for things like equipment, insurance, and supplies.

In March of this year, Virginia Sanchez received an Intersect Fund loan to buy a new refrigerator for Danny’s Grocery and Deli, her store. The business is located at 240 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ.

Maximino Rodriguez is a barber looking to open his own shop.

Fernando Gutierrez, also a barber, owners Ferdy’s Barber Shop, located at 412 Kearny Ave., Kearny, NJ.