In a twist on the business adage “doing well by doing good,” John Herron believes you can do good by people with adjustment issues by having them do well in business.
“Our social mission and our business mission overlap completely,” said Herron, president of Baltimore?s Harbor City Services, a commercial moving, warehousing, document shredding and storage nonprofit that hires recovering substance abusers and the mentally ill. “A measure of our success in the social mission is whether or not we?re profitable and serving our customers.”
Founded in 1987, the 50-employee business is a “social enterprise” nonprofit ? one that supports itself through enterprise ? that is self-sufficient and offers its employees a work environment conducive to recovery.
“I thought for a long time that folks with mental illness can get jobs,” said Herron, a psychiatric social worker. “Their problem is that they have trouble keeping them. So what we?ve done here is design a company that tries to make relapse no big deal. It takes away some of the fear.”
The $600,000-a-year nonprofit, which now boasts 180 customers, starts off each workday with an all-hands “morning wake” meeting ? a 10-minute attitude-adjustment period where employees reflect and vent personal problems so as to focus on customer satisfaction. The company also tests randomly for drug use and monitors personnel attendance at off-site recovery sessions.
After the “morning wake,” Herron said, it?s all business, a philosophy that is designed to “help people get back into our capitalistic society.”
Accordingly, the company also opens a savings account for all employees at nearby Municipal Employees Credit Union.
“I?ve been very happy with them,” Andrew Hampton, director of facility management at Baltimore Medical System, said of Harbor City Services. “I?ve used them to do some moving for me. I?ve used them for some storage and they?re timely. They do what they said they?d do. I?d recommend them to anybody.”
Though recently praised by the Wall Street Journal as one of the few solvent social enterprise nonprofits in the country, Herron is having some misgivings about his grant-shunning business plan and the paper?s praise.
“I?m starting to rethink that,” he said. “Now that we?re profitable I realize that our growth is inhibited because we only have access to debt-financing. I think it?s now time for us to grow.”
More information
» Harbor City Services
110 Alco Place, Baltimore
410-737-6701
harborcity.net
