Growing from a fledgling social enterprise with an initial revenue of $75,000 to a multimillion-dollar document management business, eDocNY has moved to bigger quarters to continue its mission of providing work for those with developmental disabilities.
Westchester Arc”™s for-profit document management business recently moved to a 9,000-square-foot site at 10 County Center Road in Greenburgh after outgrowing its 6,000-square-foot office at 388 Tarrytown Road.
At the ribbon-cutting ceremony, two area businesses donated checks: Genesis Property Group contributed $50,000 and Croton Auto Park owner Lou Giordano gave $1,500. The businessmen shared their belief in partnering with a company that provides job opportunities and removes barriers for persons with disabilities who want to earn a living.
“We”™re all about the triple bottom line: people, planet and profit,” said Saeed Coates from Genesis Property Group. “eDocNY is doing a good job of accomplishing all three. It starts from the top with the leadership and goes down to the organization, and we”™re glad to empower it.”
Launched by Westchester Arc in 2005, the company this year said it has a revenue of $2 million. The company, which has 60 workers, is looking to hire up to 25 more people within the next year, said Kevin Hansan, acting director of eDocNY.
Hansan said the company is using 80 percent of its new facility and plans to fill out the space by hiring more people and installing more equipment, including computers. Some of the existing technology in the facility includes 14 high-speed Canon color scanners, 11 video cameras, one Vidar scanner for digitizing maps and blueprints, blade servers to temporarily house client”™s digital images and secured file transferring systems.
Arc of Westchester President Anthony Assalone, said the company started as a dream to create a business where people with developmental disabilities could work alongside people in the general population.
Assalone and his team originally submitted their project idea for eDocNY to a national business plan competition organized by the Yale School of Management and the Goldman Sachs Foundation for a chance to win a $10,000 grant from the investment company. Even though eDocNY didn”™t win, Assalone and his team decided to find an alternative source of funding for the enterprise.
“I thought to myself why don”™t we create a company of our own and see what business plan would work for us?” Assalone said.
The aim of eDocNY is to become an independent business or a B corporation, which is a certification for companies wanting to do social good.
The company hires mostly disabled persons for jobs, including removing staples from clients”™ documents, scanning them, indexing the scanned files, digitally transmitting the records back to the company and storing them in boxes to be destroyed or sent out to its storage facility in Mount Kisco.
Among the employees with disabilities, Shelley Cantor, who eDocNY hired six years ago, said she had difficulty finding a job for most of her life. But with her position at the company as a veteran document prepper, she said she found something she enjoys doing.
“I take staples out of the papers, and I get the big paychecks,” Cantor said. “I was unemployed and didn”™t have any help. But they found a job for me here, and I enjoy it.”
