Arc of triumph - Westfair Communications

Keeping pace with the digital age and a growing entrepreneurial trend among nonprofits, officials at Westchester Arc have launched a for-profit business that provides electronic scanning services to public entities and private firms and jobs for persons with developmental disabilities and other county residents.

Arc officials plan to channel future profits from their start-up business, eDocNY, into the nonprofit agency”™s programs that are either underfunded or receive no public funding. With headquarters in White Plains, the agency has more than 600 employees and serves more than 1,600 children and adults with disabilities and their families.

Since launching its document management business a year ago, Arc already has more than two dozen government agencies and corporations on its client list. They include the City of New Rochelle; Dutchess County Surrogate Court; Nassau County District and Surrogate”™s courts; Westchester County Medical Center; state Division of Housing and Community Renewal and MasterCard International.

“That”™s our marketplace, the tri-state area,” said Kevin Hansan, acting director of eDocNy. The business, though does not yet have New Jersey clients. “Give us a year,” he said.

“Our biggest challenge is getting the service known in the geographic here,” said Hansan, owner of Imagework in White Plains. “We don”™t advertise right now. It”™s mostly word of mouth. It”™s sort of going after the low-hanging fruit first.”

The agency”™s digital imaging service expands upon its long-established contract work in microfilming and complements its records storage and document destruction services at facilities in Mount Kisco and Millwood. Westchester Arc”™s micrographics department, which employs 22 people and is equipped with 17 cameras, billed $166,000 last year, said Linda Warner, Arc director of career development and business opportunities. Its record storage business billed $148,000.

Since its May start-up, eDocNY billed almost $77,000 in services last year, Warner said. In the first quarter this year, the business already has billed $56,500, she said.

With $410,000 in projected expenses this year, eDoc is still in the red. Warner said the business should show a profit in three years.

Three years ago, Warner said, Arc”™s board president urged vocational services staff to develop a new, profit-making business within the agency. The document-scanning service, whereby Arc workers would capture and digitize printed information for retrieval on clients”™ computer systems, was the result of that initiative.

The agency hired Hansan to develop a business plan, which was entered in a competition for non-profit agencies at the Yale School of Management sponsored by the Partnership on Nonprofit Ventures. Funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts and The Goldman Sachs Foundation, the partnership grew out of the partners”™ concern that nonprofits increasingly need to enter the marketplace to generate revenue beyond their philanthropic activities, and need guidance and resources to do so.

Westchester Arc”™s business model did not win the $100,000 prize, but the eDocNY business concept was launched.

“eDoc”™s first goal is to generate dollars that can assist us in supporting programs that are underfunded or non-funded,” Warner said. “We really want to generate money to contribute to the social stability of the agency.” With $43 million in revenues and $29 million in net assets at the start of 2006, “We”™re a very stable agency, but this takes it to another level,” she said.

“The byproduct is that eDoc creates additional employment opportunities not only for people with disabilities but in the general population.”

Six or seven disabled adults work regularly at the painstaking task of preparing documents for digital scanning. The business this month had 12 employees overall, Warner said. For ARC to be awarded contracts as a preferred source, primarily for government agencies, 51% of labor hours must be performed by persons with disabilities, she said.

Working at the ARC office or in clients”™ offices, eDocNY workers each can sort through about 2,500 images a day, said ARC document services manager Natalie Davis.

For the City of New Rochelle, a crew of ARC workers set up shop in the assessor and buildings department offices last year to prepare and digitally scan onto hard drives more than 30,000 property cards, some dating to 1930, and make the archival information more accessible to city officials.

“”It”™s a great, great asset for everybody,” Peter Campone, the city”™s information systems director, said of the Arc service. “They do a great job.”

At Maier, Markey and Menashi, a White Plains accounting firm, eDocNY workers have scanned about 150,000 archived documents, said Mark Lacerra, the firm”™s information technology director. He and corporate partner Peter Markey were both impressed with the even more time-consuming labor of Arc”™s wage-earning consumers.

“The amazing thing was the document preparation and their accuracy,” Lacerra said. “It was very, very surprising.”

“There”™s a very strict discipline and manner in which they do their work,” Markey said. “You and I could not sit there all day and do this work.”

What began as a pilot project at the accounting firm, said Markey, “has been so fantastic that we now use them on a continuous basis.”
”They”™re doing something which we consider is very positive and productive for the community. This is a way for us to give back in a very meaningful way that is beneficial to Arc and is valuable to our clients and customers,” Markey said.

”What they”™re doing is a true success story.”

On a recent weekday at the Arc office, Shelley Cantor sat at a table with three other disabled workers and briskly removed staples and paper clips from court documents.

“I love my job,” said the town of Greenburgh resident. “I find the work interesting.”

“I like doing the work, but I also like when payday comes,” she said. Her co-workers laughed and nodded.