The social purpose enterprise that we call The Nezinscot Guild has a powerful MISSION  We provide employment to people with disabilities.  Our employees are  like everyone else in their humanity, but they have some innate challenges in their functionality to be normal and employed.

We have chosen light manufacturing as the framework of our enterprise.  We manufacture quality wood products and we do a variety of repackaging services and all sorts of fulfillment and kitting.  We have had public partnerships to promote our social service MISSION  financially and we have had many strong private partnerships over the years to promote our MISSION commercially.  The stronger these relationships are and their resulting financial support, the stronger is our ability to impact on the lives of our target group, people with a broad range of life altering disabilities.

The Perfect Storm started around 2005 when our state government in Maine started to pull public support toward community service providers.  State bureaucrats adopted a medical model policy(MaineCare).  It became a competition for dollars between the state beauracracy and the private community non-profit sectors,  and unfortunately,  innovative ways to service our needy got lost in the struggle for dollars.  Both sectors share the blame but the state beauracrats controlled the purse strings.

In 2008, the independent commercial enterprise framework at The Nezinscot Guild started to fall apart because of the Great Recession, and again because of state and federal resources cutting .    Our social enterprise, once very promising at being a self-sustaining entity, started to commercially  flounder with the rest of the country’s enterprises because the economy was sinking at a rate never before experienced in modern times.

This was bad, bad enough to drive our social purpose into the ground. But  it got worse.  Our strongest private sector partner, an international pharmaceutical  supplier,  left us.  They left,  as they had entered, based on a sound business decision.  They replaced our quality hand labor with quality automation.  For us it was a huge loss for our MISSION.  For them it made sense to grow their prosperity and business.  We accept and respect good business decisions.  We are, after all, a social purpose ENTERPRISE.

So this was the perfect storm that hit our good ship, “The USS  Social Purpose Enterprise”( The Nezinsot Guild ).  Public support fled, the spectre of a devastating recession squeezed our retail ambitions and our best private sector partner made a business decision that didn’t include our social purpose.  Wounded, dazed,  and scrambled,down and financially hemorrhaging, in a donor fatigued society and a terribly depressed economy, our non-profit, 501 (c) (3) should be dead.

But, good intentions lead to good outcomes, even in the face of the Perfect Storm of  bad circumstances.  The MISSION of a small and dynamic group of very talented people to help their neighbors with disabilities work, despite their  personal obstacles to employment, is a valuable thing.  It’s a MISSION.  It’s for the common good.  It is powerful.

The Nezinscot Guild has a renewed determination.  We have new commercial,  private sector partners.  We hope to re-partner with the new Maine state administration.  We hope to gain a wider following of private citizen supporters who see our MISSION as their own, to support their neighbors with disabilities gain employment success.

 It was sad and invigorating at the same time. Sad, because I’ve been working in community social services long enough to remember when we were all working together toward the same goals.   The  ”system” was a collaboration of cooperation to make disadvantaged people’s lives better between state and community service providers.  The thought of removing people for political reasons was unheard of.  Back than, you were good, and effective at improving disadvantaged people’s lives or you did something else for a living or were encouraged to do something else by a perceptive and dedicated supervisor.  

The beauracracy has become obese and lost its way.  Too many people stayed in the field for the wrong reasons.  This includes community providers, as well as the state employee side of social services.  It became more about maintenance than development.  It became more about jobs security for the providers than providing services to the people with disadvantages. 

The bottom line is it became a competition for money between the providers and the people in need and the people in need didn’t even have a voice in the discussion.  As time passed, the bureaucrats were the holders of the purse strings and given unsupervised reign of how funds would be spent.   As a result, some community services were frivolously devalued in an effort to cut state financial support. These cuts weren’t  based on the merit of community services and practical reality but rather the cuts were  decided by elitist philosophy .

Well,  the “Purge”  is also invigorating because those who felt dedicated to the services of collaboration of cooperation and were devalued by the those in charge have renewed hope that differences of philosophy can exist and create a hybrid of services that really support people with real disadvantages.

The “Purge” was necessary because the “system” lost its purpose.   It was a bold move by the LePage administration.  I wish them well in this upheaval and hope they don’t lose their purpose in the politics.

Did you know that MaineCare regulations don’t financially support any community based employment facilities (what they call sheltered shops), but it does financially support people with disabilities working as volunteers for no pay in the community. There are a lot of these folks with obvious motivation cleaning out poop from animal cages and doing janitorial services for free on MaineCare’s (taxpayers) dime.  Hey, what’s not to like about cleaning up other people’s ‘”stuff” for free? 

Do you know the term “Van 101″?  This is a billable activity under MaineCare.  People with disabilities get up early in the morning to drive long distances to a day care center (funded agency) get out of that vehicle briefly to be assigned a community integration activity.  After the long drive to the center their community integration activity is to get on a van with several others with disabilities and usually one staff.  They will drive to the nearest retail center or animal shelter and socially integrate by walking around in a cluster of disability.  Have you ever been to the mall or Wal-Mart and seen the cluster of disability walking around?  Maybe you saw two or three clusters as there seems to be more agencies utilizing “Van 101″ than there are retail centers or animal shelters.   Maybe you waited in line behind eight or ten people in one of these clusters so that one of them ( usually the solo staff driver) could make a purchase. Take heart, these are your MaineCare dollars at work.  This activity of community integration is a very popular way for administrators of “ support” agencies to manage their “client” population.  Let’s see, 8 passengers, one staff, a couple of hours in the van, walk around the mall, Wal-Mart, or clean out dog poop at the animal shelter…..all billable stuff under MaineCare and people are learning a skill!???

Did you know people with disabilities who work are in jeopardy of loosing their special needs housing?  They will have to choose between a job or  their home if they live in a MaineCare funded housing facility.

Did you know there is a movement to eliminate the sub-minimum wage and hour law?  This movement thinks it would be better for people with disabilities to experience “Van 101″ and to work as  volunteers for free than to work in a structured employment setting learning work culture, manufacturing skills and, oh yes, getting paid for what they produce.

 Its’s been perceived as a way for previous  Maine state governments to tell their tax payers that the money coming from the federal government is , “like  free money“, so let’s really run it up!   In place of fiscal  responsibility, we , as a state, chose to  conform to the model that pays us back  more than we invest whether it’s truely cost-effective or not!

Unfortunately, that medical model (MaineCare)  doesn’t pay us back enough for the necessary efforts to encourage work and  for  motivating  and training people to work.  It  discourages it!  It’s a bad resource match to get people working.

 Actually,  there are other misconceptions assumed,  that these   entitlement guarantees will always be there and that the federal government will always pick up the increased costs.    We pay taxes to the feds, too!  So,  there had been  a previous mind-set in Augusta,  that asserts,  ”let’s run up our Maine care (medicare /Medicaid) billings to make the darn feds pay!”.    Guess what!   We’re paying twice.  And the ultimate irony is after we created a bloated system,  the federal government is going to cut the overwhelming increase of  services anyway.   Why did we go this route?

 Providing quality services with fewer dollars will be our measures of  success   as social purpose entrepeneurs.  Can we maintain the dignity of the individual in need and dramatically decrease the expense of the current  ”delivery system”? 

Point is, don’t live beyond your means because you think someone else( the Fed Gov.) is paying for it.   Provide Maine services to people  because they really need it and  make sure of the best per dollar ratio goes to the people in need, not to the state beauracracy or top heavy non profits operating under the current system.

The private sector must share in this responsibility to make this new service delivery system work.  It will be higher taxes  or calculated altruism, the for profit private sector has to make the difference.  Our experience is they will, given incentives from service delivery professionals and basic good will to give back to their Maine communities.

   We employ people with disabilities, who otherwise wouldn’t have options provided by the public sector. We do this without any public support.  Our mantra has been self-sufficiency for the last 33 years.  We have tried , failed and succeeded at many different small business endeavors but the mission always shined bright, ” to employ people with developmental disabilities, mental illnesss, autism and traumatic brain injuries in a successful small business”.  We currently manufacture nationally renowned wood products, industrial fulfillment services and a wide variety of convenience services to industry.

  So what’s the problem?  Well, we have great customers and some great corporate business partners that we provide quality products and services to.  We also have a work force that is eager, dedicated and grateful.  Frankly speaking, to tap into this unique work force pool of people with disabilities, sometime requires extra effort, team work and cost beyond that required for running a traditional small business.  There are extra costs and obstacles to profitable productivity when employing people with disabilities.  We don’t shun people with lower capabilities, we embrace their effort.  We do what we do for this group of citizens because they deserve our efforts and the social rewards are great.

This fiscal year (July 2010-June 2011), after two quarters of business, our social purpose is 4% in the red from an accountant’s point of view.  From our point of view we, as a social purpose enterprise, and 501 ( c) (3) non-profit corporation, that receives no tax payer support, are 96% self-sufficient through our commercial enterprises.

To the point,  we are doing great work, manufacturing great products and providing great industrial services.  Most importantly we are providing real meaningful work to people with disabilities that the public sector simply can’t duplicate because of  its sheltered bureaucratic reference point.

We have great business partners that appreciate our efforts to employ hard-to- employ people. We are always seeking other long-term business relationships.  We have a dedicated workforce of all abilities that treat our customers’ interests as if they were their own.

We seek silent or vocal financial backers to help us with the social purpose etched into our business enterprise.  We need help with our successful 96% self-sufficiency.  Please help us continue with this very worthy endeavor in these difficult times.  Donations can be sent from our website, www.thenezinscotguild.com or sent vis U.S. Postal Service to The Nezinscot Guild, P.O. Box 121 , Turner , Maine 04282.  Make a difference, please, if you support our mission,  act now,  before these employment options for people with disabilities are lost.

We do real manufacturing at The Nezinscot Guild and employ several people with disabilities and people without disabilities.  To put it into perspective we employ 16-20 people with disabilities in a small social purpose enterprise that has a total payroll of about 33 to 38 people on any average pay week.

It is a very structured and stable environment, perhaps a little more employee supportive, than an average small business.  Our social purpose enterprise competes in the market place like any other small business, since we get no state or federal support.  The only difference is, we have a mission,  and that mission is to employ people with a wide scope of  disabilities.   Our products and services stand on 30 years of reputation.  There is no government support for this kind of initiative in our home state of Maine or at the national level.

In Maine, there has been a reversal in policy in the rights of people with disabilities  to work.  The bureaucratic line is, work can only have value if it meets a minimum standard, minimum wage, regardless of productivity.  Business as a rule, uses productivity predictability and profit as its rule.  Hourly standards for manufacturing are critical to business success and business success is the base of the American culture.  Bureaucrats, as a rule, think commerce grows on trees.

So, current bureaucratic trending for employment for people with disabilities,  is they should be paid minimum wage regardless of their productivity.  This implies that if you had the misfortune of being born with a disability that effects your productivity, you have a Maine government decree that you should be paid for 100 % productivity even though you produce at 15 %to 50 %.  

 So basically,  what our Maine State Government is telling its disabled citizens is, it doesn’t support their work aspirations unless they are commercially productive.  This, in fact, has a  direct effect in the state’s premise of meeting Peoples needs.  There is a federal law that supports sub minimum wages for people with obstacles to employment,  a clearly supportive way to make people with severe disabilities productive at work and give them a chance to improve their competitiveness in the future.  This law also gives profit motivated employers an opportunity to participate in placing people who have risks to profitability.

How many companies, in the best of times, can support employment at normal pay rates for a dedicated but slower worker force. 

Another major flaw with the current Maine (progressive?!!)  government policy is it neglects opportunities for people get the training to work.  The current policy assumes people are work-ready by the nature of their disability.  It assumes that because someone has a developmental disability and are human beings, they should have a free pass at whatever work is availible…..manufacturing, production, service, accounting, brain surgery, whatever…..after all, they are developmentally disabled human beings and are entitled.    If you mandate that they should receive nothing less than minimum wage, aren’t you in fact mandating that they won’t have access to work at all.

I am totally committed to providing job opportunities for people with disabilities.  I totally endorse people having minimum wage employment despite their difficulties.  I am totally against limiting the avenues that allow people with disabilities to have choices. Choices are opportunities to develop work skills and be able to better themselves with opportunities toward experience in the work place,  at a sub minimum wage.  We all did it. We all washed dishes and mowed grass, cleaned out garages and basements,  were servers in restaurants and bars, worked for sub-minimum wages early in our work lives.  This helped us adapt to a culture of reimbursement and how to improve our position.  Work experience is the key.  By requiring minimum wage for disabled, inexperienced people, you take them out of the employment race.

The bureaucrats don’t have bad intent (I hope!).  They just don’t seem to have a clue on how private sector business works.  We all want the best for our Maine citizens with disabilities, but denying them statutes and opportunities to get into gradual, strategic employment is shortsighted.

Special thanks to Jennifer Boenig for her writing craft and her advocacy for people who need support. The Nezinscot Guild provides employment to local citizens of Androscoggin County with disabilities without any state or federal support.

The Lewiston Auburn Magazine is a great Maine resource.   Kudos to the editor, Joshua Shea, for his entrepreneurial spirit. If you have kids in Maine, read  Leaving the nest, in the November edition.

If you haven’t read this relatively new publication, it’s really full of important, relevant information about the Lewiston Auburn scene.   I am more impressed with each new edition. And I really liked the first one.

It seems that the unemployment figures are a little misleading.  I’ve had numerus conversations with small business owners in my region lately and the common thread is, there are plenty of  jobs.

I’m wondering if the Feds shouldn’t have a new category, “Selective Unemployment”. There are an abundance of entry level jobs in manufacturing, some are temp work, some part time, some full time with benefits but there are jobs and people don’t seem to want them.

Seems that the current endless stream of federal unemployment benefits isn’t building the economy and our work ethic culture, but rather its corrupting it with free money for people who don’t work but want to and a fair amount who don’t want to work at all.

A lot of people aren’t starving, and they are collecting unemployment. In years past,  people used to do whatever it took to be independent.  Today they are collecting unemployment.  This is a major change in Americana culture .

There’s talk of a “new normal” in our economy, and  its based on new reality pay for services rendered in a global economy. People  have to start to realize that they can only afford what they can pay for and nothing more.   The government and credit (leeching) empires have to honor this also.  As the great American “ philosopher” Popeye said,” I am what I am”

   If small business is the backbone of this economy than this economy has to be based on small business wages, not those of Wall Street (unless your want to surtax Wall Street to suplement small business?!!). 

Seems like alot of the  unemployed are holding out for a guaranteed wage income whether they have those higher wage skills and work ethic or not.  And,quite frankly, why shouldn’t they, if that’s what their government is selling.

 Americans used to be proud enough to take any job to pay their way and work their way up the ladder. Today, it would seem Americans expect to live over their means and are willing to be on federal welfare to  do so. 

Forgive, please,  if what I’ve said offends. These are just some random rants from someone trying to compete in the new market place.  We need production workers desperately in this recession to dig our way out to better prosperity.  Wages are globe competitive. 

“Work defines us. It is one of the threads of life”  Dan O’Shea

On May 25, 2010 the view of Pineland, now Pineland Farms, is radically different. The campus houses CMP central offices, Doctors’ offices 5,000 acres of dairy farms that support the Pineland Creamery. It is a rejuvenated pristine combination of business, agriculture and nature.

 The event for my return was the sixth annual Pineland Farms Trail Running Festival. It was two days of races spanning 5K to 50K with some fun eclectic races like a canine 5K and a 5K barefoot race. 

There were training sessions between races and a wonderful beer and cheese event that highlighted Smuttynose Brewing Co. and the Pineland Farm Creamery. This event alone was worth the trip. 

The Pineland Farms Market is a must see. It offers many Maine food products, as well as a wide assortment of products from the Pineland Farms Creamery. There is a place to have lunch and many Maine made products in the gift shop.

 A personal highlight for me was finding wooden gift boxes made by the workers of The Nezinscot Guild. The beautiful irony of our wooden gift boxes being displayed at the Pineland Market is that some of our workers with developmental disabilities were residents of the old institution, Pineland Center. 

Pineland Farms is a wonderful Maine rural phenomenon that really needs to be visited to be appreciated. There are several events throughout the year for varied interests.

 Pineland Farms is the result of the generosity of the Libra Foundation. The Libra Foundation was created by Elizabeth B. Noyce to fund projects that benefit the people of Maine. 

Take the trip to New Gloucester for an event or just swing by for the delicious food at the Pineland Market. 

If you choose the trails festival, which I highly recommend for the ambiance and camaraderie, be ready for the beautiful but rugged terrain. Its not your every day road race.

In our case at The Nezinscot Guild our businesses that support our social mission are directly related to retail commerce.  We make wooden boxes that our customers package their products in and we also do industrial re-packaging for other companies connected to retail .  When those customers stop calling because no one is buying their inventory you start to really understand the cause and effect of things economic.

After balance sheet shock and despair hit you, you methodically proceed to do things you never imagined doing.  You lay off valued staff, you cut the salaries of the lucky(?) ones you kept on.  The lucky ones, by way of circumstance, will now work harder and do more than their original job descriptions ever detailed.  Your selection of people you keep on is easy.  They are the ones that make  your social enterprise work.  They are generally very talented, totally committed to the cause and a little crazy to stick with a very risky concept.  The risky concept is that you can provide a social service without government and bureaucracy.  It’s crazy to think that people you employ in your social enterprise will lend their talents  to a risky cause that offers only one guarantee….. there aren’t going to be  huge financial rewards.  Anyway, holding this group of talented, dedicated people together is critical.

You have to get creative, thinking outside the box, the wholesale wooden box that is!  Your not going to make the mortgage payment on volume like you used to so you better start adding value to your product and your services in hopes of increasing your margins.

You need to diversify your products and services in hopes that a larger customer base at less volume will carry you through.

You remind people (a lot ) that you and your crazy crew of social entrepreneurs are providing services that are usually considered to be the responsibility of government and the taxpayer.  This isn’t to make the government or the tax payer feel guilty, but it is a very rational and effective way to gather benefactor support.  It also makes people feel good about the double value of purchasing your product and services.

You continually lavish sincere praise on your  board of directors.  As a volunteer body, they don’t even get paid to lend themselves to the risk that is social purpose enterprise.  They may be more crazy than the crazy staff entrepeneurs.  I use the word crazy here for the sake of levity.  What I’d really call all the people involved in our social enterprise is dedicated.  They are dedicated to  the mission, no matter how risky or difficult, because it’s the right thing to do.

As a group we seem to have the intestinal fortitude to get through this recession.  We will be stronger and more self sufficient and most importantly, we didn’t compromise our mission.  Wish us luck.  Buy our products and services.

For new readers The Nezinscot Guild employs people with developmental disabilities, traumatic brain injuries, autism and mental illness in a dynamic small business in Turner,  Maine