Marketing and Communications Intern

Posted on September 22, 2017 by San Francisco Bicycle Coalition

This position has been filled

The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition works to promote bicycling for everyday transportation. Our member-based grassroots organization is considered one of the largest, most active and effective advocacy groups in the country. For more than 45 years, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition has a proven track record of winning better bicycling improvements.

Commitment to Equity and Justice

The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition acknowledges the harms biking culture and unequal access to transportation have inflicted upon underserved communities — especially people of color, folks with disabilities, people from working-class backgrounds, women, and those with LGBTQ+ identities. We believe that these communities must be centered as leaders in the work we do; therefore, we strongly encourage applications from people with these identities

Position description

The Marketing Communications Intern will gain experience in experiential marketing, social media marketing, writing, and building a brand’s presence online. This internship will focus on how we grow and maintain a strong and positive presence online to further our mission of promoting the bicycle for everyday transportation. The Marketing Communications Intern will provide direct support to the Marketing Communications Associate.This internship is eligible for remote applicants.

What you’ll learn:

Social media strategy and content creation
Blog and copywriting
Introductory WordPress
Event promotion and marketing

Essential Roles and Responsibilities:

Creating content for our 53,000-plus followers on social media
Assisting with bi-weekly production of our e-newsletter
Publishing blog posts and creating copy for a variety of media
Maintaining and refreshing website content via WordPress
Assisting with digital asset management
Working on video and photography projects is available for the right candidate

Required skills or abilities:

Strong, concise writing
Ability to multi-task and triage in a busy work environment;
Clear interpersonal communication
Dedication to efficiency and timeliness
Inclination towards collaboration

Desired skills or abilities:

Strong commitment to the mission of the SF Bicycle Coalition
Experience with photography and/or videography, or a strong desire to learn
Experience generating ideas and content for social media (i.e. Instagram, Twitter, Facebook)

Required dates for this internship include:

February 1st – April 30

Compensation:

$16.32 per hour with a 10 – 15 hour/week minimum commitment
One year’s free membership to the SF Bicycle Coalition;
First hand experience in one of the country’s oldest and largest bicycle advocacy organizations
Ongoing professional development opportunities, including:
- Networking with SF Bicycle Coalition staff and professionals in a variety of fields, including but not limited to urban planning, transportation and nonprofits;
- Training on and experience with nonprofit industry-standard software (Salesforce, WordPress, Marketing Cloud, etc.); and
- Presentations and trainings aimed at development of professional workforce skills.
Indoor bike parking provided.

This paid internship offers a flexible schedule with a 10-15 hours/week minimum commitment. This is a Monday through Friday internship, with occasional, infrequent evenings and weekends. Interns are expected to make a three-month commitment, which may be extended.

To Apply:

To apply, please submit a resume and a PDF with your answers to the below three questions. A formal cover letter is not required. Please make your answers roughly one paragraph each:

What makes you excited to intern at the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition?
What does transportation justice mean to you and how do you see it fitting into your career?
What skills and/or experiences do you have that would make you a good fit for this role?

Applications will be considered on a rolling basis until the position is filled. People of color and women are strongly encouraged to apply. The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity, age, religion, gender, sexual orientation or political orientation.

This position has been filled

APPLY HERE

Want More Bike Parking in Parks?

Posted on September 22, 2017 by Janice Li

The local activist spirit has always been strong here in San Francisco. In fact, your San Francisco Bicycle Coalition grew out of a shared desire amongst bike-riding residents and local organizations to take matters into their own hands and advocate together.

We’ve come a long way since 1971, and so has local activism. Take Mark Eliot for instance, a fellow SF Bicycle Coalition member who saw a problem and is now looking for your help fixing it.

Have you ever wondered where to park your bike at a San Francisco park? “You’re not alone,” says Mark. After prompting conversations with the Recreation and Park Department, he realized there was a need to work with their staff to inventory existing bicycle parking facilities to help push for improvements. That’s where you fit in.

“The City has over 200 facilities, so this is a big job. Crowdsourcing will make the job much more tractable,” Mark said. “We’ve already visited about 60 of the 200, but we need volunteers who live near the rest to simply walk around these facilities and report what they discover: how many racks, roughly where they are within the facility, and what type they are.”

Given that bike parking has always been a priority of the SF Bicycle Coalition, we are eager to support Mark in his efforts so that, at the end of the day, our city’s gorgeous parks and open spaces are accessible by bike. Sign up below to join the help survey our parks.

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Introducing our Bike Share for All Partners

Posted on September 21, 2017 by Janice Li

Participants in a Bike it Forwards event organized with Chinese Newcomers Service Center.

We’re already off to a strong start at making bike share work for low-income San Franciscans with over 500 Bike Share for All members signed up for $5 annual memberships. And our engagement work is just beginning.

The goal of community engagement is to be on the ground, talking to local residents about transportation and mobility while also collecting feedback on how the city’s current bike share systems meet people’s needs. Our outreach team will also sign up more eligible Bike Share for All members, and all this work is thanks to funding from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.

We’re proud to announce that two established community organizations are joining the coalition to lead this work in San Francisco: SF Yellow Bike and Chinese Newcomers Service Center (CNSC). To ensure that we’re bringing everyone into the conversation, this program requires multilingual outreach and materials, and earlier this week, we held our first Cantonese-language training for this program with CNSC.

“Chinese Newcomers Service Center has been working to help new immigrants since 1969 to provide communities with social, economic, workforce and business services to transform their lives,” said Wilson Hoang, CNSC program coordinator. “The bike culture in China is massive and for most people it’s their primary mode of transportation but when they arrive in America they find that the streets are dominated by cars.

“We hope that by spreading the word about bike share we can encourage the immigrant population to start biking again and assuage some misconceptions about biking in San Francisco,” Wilson added.

CNSC’s main location is in the heart of Chinatown. With large Chinese immigrant communities there, but also in southeast neighborhoods including Portola and Visitacion Valley, CNSC plans meet people where they’re at with targeted events around the city.

Joining CNSC is our 2015 Golden Wheel Awardee SF Yellow Bike, who describe themselves as a “grassroots, pop-up, do-it-yourself, community-building machine.” Based out of their shop in the Tenderloin — the neighborhood with the lowest car ownership rates in the city — the SF Yellow Bike team are natural ambassadors for biking. With both organizations rearing to go, we will hit the ground soon to begin the conversation over the coming weeks.

Bike Share for All Updates

Want to stay in the loop with Bike Share for All as this program develops? Sign up for updates today as we welcome more people to biking.

Folsom/Howard Project: Near-Term Improvements Up for Approval

Posted on September 19, 2017 by Charles Deffarges

Over the past year, we’ve seen how quickly protected bike lanes can go into the ground. Thanks to Mayor Lee’s 2016 Executive Directive on Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety, three new protected bicycle lanes were built in under nine months. Now, there’s a chance coming to make it happen again.

While the long-term Folsom and Howard Streetscape Project brings exciting designs for protected bike lanes, our members won commitments for near-term improvements, as well. Both Folsom and Howard are on SF’s high-injury network, and you’ve made it clear that safety improvements can’t wait for the longer-term redesign.

Join Us at City Hall

Join us on Oct. 17 to support key approvals for these near-term improvements at the SF Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) Board of Directors meeting. This will be the final approval for the near-term project. We need you there to push the City to deliver protected bike lanes on both Folsom and Howard with urgency.

SFMTA Board of Directors Meeting
Tuesday, Oct. 17 — 1:00 – 3:00 pm
City Hall, Room 400

The Intersection of Biking & Homelessness

Posted on September 15, 2017 by Charles Deffarges

The Hairball, as we call it today, was once known as the Army Street Circle. A popular encampment site even before Army Street became Cesar Chavez, the Hairball persists as an area with no easy solutions.

Over the past year, we’ve heard more and more from our members that the conditions underneath the overpasses have become untenable for all involved. We need urgent action to chip away at the many issues that intersect here, and we are working to to keep pushing this conversation forward.

As a continued commitment to recognizing everyone’s various and unique challenges, our latest Bike Talk brings together experts in homelessness and transportation to provide their different points of view on this issue. To explore compassionate solutions in the Hairball, this will be a space for SF Bicycle Coalition members to hear about what is being done at this difficult location and what more needs doing. Bring your questions so that we can continue to grow the dialog and address potential solutions.

Join us on Wednesday, Oct. 11 at the Episcopal Church of St. John the Evangelist (1661 15th. St.) for an in-depth panel discussion with City staff and homeless advocates. We are lucky to be joined by the following speakers:

Hillary Ronen, District 9 Supervisor
Emily Cohen, SF Department of Homelessness
Kelley Cutler, Coalition on Homelessness
Luis Montoya, SF Municipal Transportation Agency

Bike Talks are a benefit of your SF Bicycle Coalition membership. If you’d like to join for this event, please take a moment to join or renew your membership today here or through the RSVP below.

Golden Gate Park for the People

Posted on September 12, 2017 by Julia Raskin

We know that much more needs to be done to make Golden Gate Park a welcoming place to people walking and biking. This is your chance to move SF’s biggest park towards that.

Parks for People

Now close your eyes and imagine the most perfect day in Golden Gate Park.

There’s a light breeze and the fog hasn’t rolled in yet. Children laugh as they pass on scooters and bikes, ringing a bell. Swing dancers follow an upbeat tune at Lindy in the Park. Music plays from a boombox as the Church of Eight Wheels holds its Sunday service at the roller skating rink. And the Conservatory of Flowers, the California Academy of Sciences and the de Young Museum all tempt you in for a stroll before time comes to meet up with friends picnicking at one of the many grassy lawns.

San Franciscans are lucky to enjoy gorgeous parks throughout our city, and there is something extra special about Golden Gate Park. With over 1,000 acres of open space, making Golden Gate Park truly a place for people to walk, bike and gather means opening up yet more space for people.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of car-free Sundays and the 10th anniversary of Healthy Saturdays on JFK Drive, and it’s time to see the success of this program expand. Over the coming months, your San Francisco Bicycle Coalition will step up our advocacy for more open streets space in Golden Gate Park. Join our mailing list to get the latest updates and opportunities to see more space in Golden Gate Park opened up to people walking and biking.

The first open streets event was on April 2, 1967, kicking off the Summer of Love. Called the People’s Day in the Park, we now celebrate the freedom and joy every Sunday of the year. In 2006, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition led a broad coalition of community advocates to win Healthy Saturdays a year later, which brought more open streets space, albeit for just half of the calendar year.

In a busy, dense city like San Francisco, we cherish open spaces. Take the first step towards helping us open more streets and making parks a place for people first by signing up for updates and action alerts today.

Traffic Diverters: Streets for People, Not for Traffic

Posted on September 8, 2017 by Julia Raskin

How can streets truly prioritize people biking and walking? One simple, low-cost and effective method that we are excited to see come to San Francisco is the traffic diverter. This treatment employs turn restrictions and physical barriers to stop vehicles from entering neighborhood streets. Expect to see one later this month at the intersection of Fell and Scott on the Wiggle and in future plans for the Richmond District on Eighth Avenue at both Balboa and Anza streets.

Traffic diverters can come in many forms. Berkeley employs larger planters along their bicycle boulevards. Portland uses large dirt-filled concrete drums to offer people biking and walking quiet, calm streets with reduced traffic. And Oakland uses concrete curbs, requiring people driving to slow down and turn instead of continuing on at high speeds through neighborhood streets. The new traffic diverter coming to Scott and Fell streets uses a curb extension and signage to divert vehicle traffic and reduce the crossing distance for people walking.

Image courtesy of the SFMTA.

By the end of September, that curb extension traffic diverter is scheduled for completion at the southwest corner of Scott and Fell. This will restrict people driving Fell from turning left onto Scott and also require people driving south on Scott to turn onto Fell instead of continuing straight.
Why traffic diverters are beneficial:

Reduces shortcut and cut through traffic: Diverters redirect traffic away from residential streets and onto thoroughfares.
Reduces traffic speed: Traffic diverters also narrow the road, which reduces crossing distances for people walking while also reducing vehicle speeds
Gives people on bikes a calm route with fewer vehicles: While diverters filter out larger vehicle traffic, they do allow people biking and walking to pass through.
Traffic diverters are inexpensive and easily implemented: Planters, cones or signs can be used as traffic diverters. These are effective yet can be removed by the city very quickly and without much expense.

As a member-powered advocacy organization, we know that block by block improvements are driven by our members. If you want to see more bike-friendly streets with traffic diverters and more, become a member today and join us in advocating for the best street designs to improve your ride in San Francisco. (With a new Dutch-style step-through being raffled off to one lucky new or renewing member, there has never been a better time to join that today!)

Pop-up on Taylor Gives Taste of Improvements to Come

Posted on September 7, 2017 by Charles Deffarges

Last week, Tenderloin residents were able preview something they have fought for for years: a safe Taylor Street. As a part of the Safer Taylor Street project, the SF Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) and community partners set up a working model of a new street layout. (If you missed the fun, sign up for updates here and never miss another chance to shape improvements on Taylor.)

On a regular day, Taylor Street has three lanes of fast-moving traffic and narrow sidewalks. Last Wednesday, though, one of the traffic lanes and one side of parking were repurposed to establish protected bike lanes and more space for people walking. Planters separated the fully functional protected bike lane from car traffic, and people biking cruised along, enjoying the physical protection and slower traffic.

Taking advantage of the new pedestrian space, the SFMTA and community partners conducted outreach and set up a variety of activities. At one end of the event, around 3-D models of different proposed designs for the street, City staff gathered feedback from residents and passerbys. At the other end, people hanging out in the newly created space were able to draw, dance and play chess. Along the whole stretch of this transformative pop up, Taylor Street felt like a place where people wanted to be. Everyone who participated seemed to have a good time, enjoying the new space and each other’s company.

Even though this pop-up only lasted six hours on a Wednesday afternoon, the Safer Taylor Street project will bring similar long-term changes to a large stretch of the street from Market to Sutter. The design that was tested was only one of the variety of options and treatments; other design proposals include a two-way protected bike lane to turn this one-way street into a well-connected and accessible bike route.

This incredibly exciting project is still in its early planning phases, and there will be plenty of opportunities for community input down the line. Please sign up for our Taylor Street updates below to stay in the loop about future meetings and plans.

Keep Me Posted

Supervisors Slashing Safe Routes to School Funding?

Posted on September 7, 2017 by Ana Vasudeo

All children and families in every single San Francisco neighborhood deserve safe, affordable transportation options. Shockingly, that concept is being threatened by some members of the Board of Supervisors, and they need to hear from you.

Schools across San Francisco are bordered with streets identified by the Department of Public Health as high-injury corridors — those 12 percent of our streets where 70 percent of severe collisions occur. This is particularly true in lower-income communities and communities of color. Encouraging walking, biking and taking transit are part of how we transform these streets for the safety of all families.

Safe Routes to School is a vital program helping children get to school safely. Since 2009, the Safe Routes to School partnership has educated thousands of families and students on the importance of carpooling, walking, biking and taking transit for school commutes. The program also works to address violence prevention in neighborhoods such as the Tenderloin and SoMa, where the threat of violence is identified as one of the top reasons why students and caregivers do not walk or bike.

Members of the Board of Supervisors are considering slashing Safe Routes to School funding from $2.8 million to $2.06 million for 2019 through 2021.This substantial reduction in resources would have a dramatic effect on Safe Routes to School outreach, including:

Reducing the number of elementary schools served by Safe Routes to School by nearly 30 percent from at least 35 to 25;
Reducing the number of SF students in a Safe Routes to School campus from 35,000 students to less than 25,000;
Reducing the number of outreach workers from five to just three serving the entire school district;
Limiting funding to groups that work to see children to school safely in areas where families are more vulnerable to street violence and school truancy;
Reducing Safe Routes to School staff at the SF Department of Public Health, the SF Bicycle Coalition, Walk SF and Presidio YMCA; and
Preventing the partnership from conducting the robust, multilingual outreach that is critical to supporting low-income neighborhoods and communities of color seeking to improve public health and safety around their schools.

San Francisco families need you to take action today. Make a difference and see that members of the Board of Supervisors do not harm SF children and families by cutting these critical funds. Email your Supervisor and ask them to advocate for fully funding Safe Routes to School programs and copy our Family & Schools Program Manager Nancy Buffum: nancy@sfbike.org.

If you do not know who your Supervisor is, click the map below to help you find your Supervisor.

Your Supervisor needs to hear from you today before they vote to cut this crucial funding for Safe Routes to School this Tuesday, Sept. 12. Please write a letter of support for SF families and ask your Supervisor to join our efforts to deliver safe and healthy ways for San Francisco’s children to arrive at school.

Amita Amin, Bike Education Outreach Superstar

Posted on September 6, 2017 by Christopher White

Since arriving in San Francisco a mere two years ago, Amita Amin has thrown her passion and tremendous energy into powering the work of your San Francisco Bicycle Coalition in a variety of ways. Her warm, friendly energy and wide smile immediately welcome anyone who encounters her, whether she’s working at Valet Bike Parking or spreading the love as a Bike Ambassador. Most recently, as a Bicycle Education Outreach Specialist she has been connecting the people of SF to the many educational resources we offer. Read on to find out what the experience is like and apply to join Amita and the team today.

SF Bicycle Coalition: How did you first become involved with the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition?
Amita: Two weeks after I arrived in San Francisco in 2015, I attended the Women Bike SF Coffee Club to meet other bicycle enthusiasts, where I signed up for a yearlong membership. I then volunteered at events such as Winterfest and Tour de Fat. Three months later I joined the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition as a Bike Valet Supervisor and later as a Bike Education Outreach Specialist.

What do you do as a Bike Education Outreach Specialist?
We spread the word about the free bicycle education classes that the SF Bicycle Coalition provides. We also interact with people at Sunday Streets and other festivals and events to educate them on benefits of cycling as an alternative transportation. We set up a stall with brochures and other information, and we chat with people about how they get around the city. We also use games to entice the kids and adults to come and learn about the free classes and how to bike safely in the city.

What has been your favorite experience in your time as a Bike Education Outreach Specialist?
What is most fulfilling from this job is interacting with kids and seeing how interested they are in the rules of safe cycling in the city. Our interactive trivia wheel is especially fun and informative. One kid said the questions are tricky but fun. He kept spinning till he answered all the questions. The best was his answer to why we should always wear a helmet — his reply was, “So that we don’t lose our brains.” That made me laugh for the rest of the day. The work is so much fun.

When you’re not being a Bike Education Outreach Specialist, what fills your time?
I have a full-time job in Millbrae, and in my free time I love to take hikes and go for long bike rides. My favorite bike ride is along the Great Highway all the way to Pacifica’s Sweeney Ridge Trail.

Interested in spreading word about our array of free bike education classes open to all people? Check out the job description and apply today to join Amita at upcoming festivals and community events.