Nonprofit’s course shows how to succeed in gig work
“What are the pros and cons of independent work?”
Caleb Jonas threw out that question to six twentysomething students in a Mission District conference room. Answers came quickly: “You work for yourself.” “But there are no benefits.” “You set your own hours and rates.” “No taxes are withheld.” “You choose your own clients.” “There’s no stability.”
It was the final night of a class on how to be a gig worker. With a third of the U.S. workforce now self-employed, San Francisco nonprofit Samaschool has created a program for low-income people on how to start their own businesses and work for companies like TaskRabbit, Handy, Care.com, SitterCity and Field Nation.
Samaschool said it wants to help lift people out of poverty by giving them supplemental income, a way to gain experience that could lead to full-time work, interim work while they’re between other jobs and/or the ability to create their own business.
“Everyone can be their own CEO, and we are giving them tools to be successful in navigating that,” said Lindsey Crumbaugh, Samaschool managing director.
Gig work is controversial. Some say that on-demand companies exploit workers by classifying them as independent contractors, sidestepping the need to provide bene-
fits. Samaschool said it is cognizant of those issues and collects data from its gig-work students to contribute to the national conversation about what supports and benefits workers need.
“We educate our students that the gig economy does not have benefits, is not full employment, and some platforms lack full transparency,” Crumbaugh said. Gig work is often a good stopgap or supplement because it has a lower barrier to entry for individuals who face employment challenges, she said.
Last month, the city of San Francisco partnered with Samaschool on gig-work classes for job seekers through the city’s workforce development programs. Samaschool created a selfpaced online course that the city offers for free. Samaschool also offers some on-site training through nonprofits supported by the city’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development, and will prepare staff at these organizations to provide the same training. Currently the Visitacion Valley Neighborhood Access Point and the Western Addition Neighborhood Access Point are the training sites.
“We created a set of tools to help people leverage the gig economy to advance their career path,” said Todd Rufo, director of the Office of Economic and Workforce Development. “Freelancers are businesses, and our mission is to help small businesses as well as independent workers achieve economic success.”
For people who need help making ends meet, driving for Uber or doing household repairs on Handy can be a good source of extra income, he noted. “We can help them move up the value chain so they can progressively earn more and more money,” Rufo said.
Often the gig work is a way to bridge to full-time jobs. “Our main goal is to get people on a career pathway,” Rufo said. For instance, students training to be medical assistants could work through Care.com as home-health aides, “earn a little income, put some of their skills to work, get a little experience, then get placed in a job and advance their careers,” Rufo said.
NYU business Professor Arun Sundararajan, who studies the ondemand economy and is an unpaid adviser to Samaschool, said the nonprofit’s approach could be a model for other such programs.
“There are a lot of people who could benefit from (gig) work, but there is a gap in being able to conceptualize running a small business, understanding how to manage an online reputation, how to set prices, how to deal with customers,” he said.
Still, courses like those offered by Samaschool are rare.
“We’ve already got very well-developed curricula to prepare people for full-time jobs,” he said. “But the science of education to transition to something other than being a fulltime employee is more nascent. The true promise here is laying the foundation for a much broader audience for this kind of education.”
At the Mission District class, which was hosted by dev/Mission, a nonprofit that trains young adults for STEM jobs, Jonas, Samaschool’s Bay Area director, guided students through a recap of the course, which met for two hours a week over five weeks, and covered topics such as personal branding, customer service, setting price, taxes and finances, and networking.
Students paired off to do role playing on their “personal elevator pitches,” one-minute selfdescriptions so they’d be prepared for impromptu networking opportunities.
“Living in San Francisco, it’s not enough to have one source of income — you need two,” said Juan Cardenas, 24, who works as a backup driver for self-driving cars at Cruise Automation, a division of General Motors. He hopes to find freelance work in information technology, something he has a passion for, but he’s also open to dog walking and driving for Uber or Lyft.
A core part of the training is to help students, many of whom speak English as a second language and don’t have a lot of digital proficiency, learn to navigate new online platforms, Crumbaugh said.
Anthony Khieu, 22, said he appreciated learning basic skills such as how to do taxes and handle customer service. He’s studying computer science and working in retail but hopes to do freelance photography as well as tech work.
Samaschool, which is funded by grants, offers its courses for free. It has trained 3,456 people over the past 18 months, including 559 in the Bay Area. It tracks how they use gig work and whether it leads to a lasting boost in their income, Crumbaugh said. It found that most alumni generate about $400 a month in extra income from gigs.
San Francisco resident Noe Roman, 20, recently completed a 10-hour Samaschool gig course over the course of five weeks. A graphic designer, he said the course helped him understand how to approach finding freelance work, and it has already paid off with some gigs through his personal network, as well as through companies like Fiverr and 99Designs.
“Most of the gig work I’d heard about before was under the table, and that didn’t feel right to me,” he said. “Knowing that you can do this and not get in trouble with taxes was a good plus. I’d always wanted to do gig work, but it seemed scary to approach it on my own because I didn’t know who to talk to or what to do. Samaschool made for a smooth entry.”
“Freelancers are businesses, and our mission is to help small businesses as well as independent workers achieve economic success.” Todd Rufo, director of the S.F. Office of Economic and Workforce Development