Nonprofit Talk: Sunnyside Shines adapts to serve small businesses during a pandemic

Jaime-Faye Bean is executive director of Sunnyside Shines. Photos courtesy of Sunnyside Shines

By Jaime-Faye Bean, as told to the Eagle

Jaime-Faye Bean is executive director of Sunnyside Shines, the non-profit Business Improvement District for Sunnyside. The organization, based in 2008, provides supplemental sanitation, beautification, public events, and small business development services to a District covering Queens Boulevard and Greenpoint Avenue. 

We are now about six months since the pandemic essentially shut down most of New York City. How has your organization adapted during this time?

In “normal times”, most of our efforts, especially in the spring and summer, are public-facing events that enliven and attract visitors to our public plazas and parks, and that market our remarkable, global small business community and its services to Sunnysiders and other New Yorkers. 

Prior to COVID, we had already made the decision to direct more of our resources to direct merchant services to help build resilience in our small business community; COVID radically accelerated that process and we find that 90% of our efforts during this time have been directed to providing direct assistance to a small business community in crisis. 

How are you now adjusted in serving your constituents?

We identified early on that WhatsApp was the best way to stay in contact with our constituents, many of whom are immigrants and use the app for international communications, and we have maintained two WhatsApp chat groups since March (in English and Spanish.) Through these we have provided hundreds of merchants with day-to-day information on changing mandates, grant/loan/relief opportunities, marketing programs, and other relevant neighborhood news. 

We are also working one-on-one with merchants to develop their online presence — businesses that had a strong social media or online presence prior to COVID have generally been more resilient through the crisis, so are working hard to help all of our businesses catch up.

How are you balancing the needs of your clients with the level of risk to your employees?

We have re-opened our office to ensure onsite support for businesses and residents who seek it, but the office is staffed by one person at a time on a rotating schedule that allows us to maintain social distancing. We also provide our employees with PPE, sanitation solutions, and daily cleaning protocol, strictly limit access to our indoor office space, and track visitors to our office to ensure employee safety. 

We also canvas our corridor regularly, maintaining social distancing and mask wearing. Many of our businesses have put themselves at risk since the beginning of this pandemic to serve our neighborhood, so we are dedicated to being consistently prepared to safely serve them.

Some organizations are hiring based on new needs. How has the pandemic affected your staffing and are you hiring?

At the beginning of this crisis, I was adamant about retaining our employees and maintaining our full supplemental sanitation schedule; we are a tight knit group providing some very critical services to small businesses, and I knew that remaining at full capacity was a matter of survival for not only our immediate circle of employees but those we serve. 

At the moment, we are not hiring new employees, but all of us at Sunnyside Shines have had to learn new skills in order to fully meet the needs of our constituents. I think we all have experienced a great deal of professional growth during this period as a result. 

As you look the remaining part of 2020, what are your expectations and hopes?

My greatest hope is that our small businesses will receive some definitive relief—rent (back rent in most cases) is a major concern, as is insurance and capacity challenges posed by our (necessary!) safety measures. 

On a larger scale, I hope that we all will come to a much greater appreciation for the foundational role that small business play in our neighborhoods, especially immigrant-owned businesses that are so often a frontline resource for our most vulnerable residents. I hope that our elected officials will recognize that small businesses are the key to nourishing our communities and enhancing neighborhood resilience, and start fighting for the protection and support they deserve.

How have you personally been impacted by COVID-19?

Very early on in this crisis, I began receiving calls from residents facing food insecurity. At the same time, working on business survival, I saw the opportunity to fund some of our local emergency needs through our small businesses that were struggling for a lifeline. 

Together with my friend Jonathan Forgash, I established Queens Together, which is now a registered 501(c)3 non-profit that has put over $100,000 back into our local small business economy to fund food relief. We have our own pantry in Astoria and supply a borough-wide pantry network that supplies 1,600 Queens families each week with fresh produce. The experience of working directly with so many struggling neighbors has deeply changed how I see the urgency of the needed changes in our society and systems. 

What do you think the future holds for your sector as a result of the pandemic?

Because we are seeing cuts and slow-downs in so many of our city services, I think neighborhood residents have a greater appreciation of the value of the supplemental sanitation and graffiti removal we provide to Sunnyside, and I believe the same is true in many neighborhoods across the City. 

I am also hopeful that within the wider sector of Business Improvement Districts, the role of supporting small business in the way that community-based BIDs like ours have done prior to and throughout this crisis will become a much greater sector-wide priority.  

Learn more at www.sunnysideshines.org.