The Cerebral Palsy Associations of New York State (CPofNYS) is a multi-service organization with 24 affiliates and a long-time client of NESC. Its mission is to advocate and provide direct services with and for people with cerebral palsy and other developmental disabilities. A staff of 17,000 employees provides services to over 85,000 disabled people, and their families, across New York State.
As a key part of its services, CPofNYS trains people with developmental disabilities and prepares them for meaningful employment in its own business ventures as well those in the business community. NESC was engaged to examine possibilities for the enhancement of this vital social enterprise activity.
The focus would be particularly upon an existing start-up, a document management service for CPofNYS itself and for outside business organizations. The enterprise, headquartered in Staten Island, provides employment and a work environment for people it has trained. It has piloted digitizing documents with the thought of expanding that capability to other aspects of document management. As an initial business client was serviced at its own site, the mobility inherent in the organization’s ability to “go to the work” could prove a key competitive advantage.
NESC prepared a three-year business plan for this enterprise which led to a series of discussions with management. Given the CPofNYS’s limited marketing expertise, NESC was asked to propose ways in which it could provide guidance and hands-on support to the unit’s staff in marketing and developing this new business. We recommended and led regular preplanned monthly structured and interactive sessions over a year’s time. Starting with the basics of marketing, the process moved into client identification, proposal development, client tracking, branding and communications. Successively, it led to product-line expansions and other long-term strategic considerations of document management.
During the course of these sessions, specific actions and tactics were developed and implemented. Service offerings expanded to include shredding, file classification and indexing. Branding developments included the new name, “Secur-E-doc”, logo and tag-line: “Your Mobile Document Solution.” The planned “launch day” on Staten Island attracted new potential customers as well as local dignitaries and the press.
According to Jerry Schiller, President of NESC’s Healthcare Consulting Group, “This process of empowering the CPofNYS staff is what stands out about this Social Enterprise project. NESC was able to benefit our client significantly by facilitating the implementation of this project.”
Joseph M. Pancari, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of CPofNYS, writing to NESC on March 4, stated “I would like to thank the NESC team for helping us bring our ideas about Secur-E-doc social enterprise project to fruition… You effectively helped us break down the many tasks that were necessary to create our business into concrete and measureable outcomes… You provided us with great feedback on marketing and sales initiatives that helped shape our message to prospective customers. We consistently left our meetings with new ideas and a sharper focus of what needed to be done to grow our business.”
At NESC’s invitation, CPofNYS President Susan Constantino was a panelist at the May 22 Baruch College seminar on Social Impact Investing. Find the featured article in this link.
