The Coast Foundation’s Landscaping with Heart provides flexible employment and psychosocial rehabilitation to individuals who suffer from mental illness. Coast Foundation had a formidable challenge: to transform a successful landscaping employment rehabilitation program into a self-sufficient business. Strong roots in a social service organization can lead to some common challenges in a social enterprise. While the social mission of the enterprise is generally supported by a strong skill set and programming expertise, the skill set and attention to the tandem business mission are often lacking. For the Landscaping with Heart team, bids on contracts were too low, projects took longer to complete than estimated, and business was turned away and large contracts were lost due to inadequate equipment capacity.

The Landscaping with Heart team began by developing a business plan. Coast established a separate Coast Social Enterprise Foundation (CSEF), designed to replicate the landscaping model of numerous social enterprises such as a catering and sewing. With a strong structure in place, Landscaping with Heart hired a Landscaping Manager with experience running a landscaping business. This addition to the team had immediately helped with managing work flow, negotiating budgets, costing projects, managing clients and change orders, projecting capital needs, adapting a quality control mechanism, and setting up an appropriate accounting system. To accompany new managerial resources, Landscaping with Heart purchased new equipment and a new truck to ensure that they could accommodate larger contracts and an increased client base. As the rehabilitation focus of the organization moved toward a business model, landscaping crew members were placed on jobs too early and lacked the required skills to work on commercial projects. The problem was rectified by developing a program to train people prior to their employment in the landscaping enterprise.

Over a three-year period, Landscaping with Heart increased revenues six fold. In addition the number of people employed with mental illness increased from three to 20 and now distributes nearly $7,456 each month in income to people living below the poverty line on disability benefits.

http://coastmentalhealth.com/landscaping.html