30 years of being bold

In a back room, green boxes dyed for a St. Patrick's Day theme dried on a bench.

"We're trying to evolve into the next whatever-comes-along," Executive Director Dan O'Shea said during a tour.

The Nezinscot Guild has to evolve.

The nonprofit -- sales go toward hiring people with developmental disabilities to do the work -- may be cut off from direct state help as budgets tighten. O'Shea says he's seen it coming; aid dropped from $145,000 last year to $50,000 this year. To support itself, the guild has started selling on its Web site and made a first retail foray into theme-products, hoping to grow business in an economy that's not so inviting.

He believes they can do it.

"We've been bold for 30 years," O'Shea said. "We've been striving for self-sufficiency for 30 years. ... We've been trying to save taxpayer money. Now we're finding we don't have a choice."

In a beige building tucked in the Turner Business Park, the Nezinscot Guild employs 30 people, 17 or 18 of whom have developmental disabilities that can make it tough to find work. Its specialties have been wholesale gift crates and boxes and repackaging.

Customers include IDEXX, gourmet food's Dean & DeLuca and Raye's Mustard. All the pine comes from Robbins Lumber in Searsmont.

Retail products

With a launch for Valentine's Day, and now, as a push for St. Patrick's, the guild has started making wood designs for retail sales, products like a green Gaelic welcome box.

Valentine's Day netted a few hundred dollars, O'Shea said. It's a start.

Up next is a nod to spring: Planters and engraved lobster boxes with claw crackers inside.

The nonprofit had more than $1 million in gross sales last year and operational costs of more than $1 million, "It's a very fine line," he said. O'Shea estimated that the nonprofit is at 90 or 92 percent self-sufficiency, close to breaking even. Workers are paid either by the piece or the hour based on ability and speed.

Rusty Souther used to work in a bakery before he found the guild. The Livermore Falls man has epilepsy. Because of his seizures, being around that machinery didn't work out, he said.

He's been here 15 years and says he can count for hours, no problem.

"It's what I've always done," said Souther, 36. "If I wasn't doing this, I'd be doing nothing."

Sally Mitchell from Jay said she likes to have goals, and her supervisor sets one each day. She's counted out blue vials, pipettes, sample cups.

"It's a safe place. Having a disability or a handicap, it makes you feel I can do a job, there's a job out there for me to do," said Mitchell, 51.

O'Shea said he's trying to get word out that the nonprofit can adapt to different sorts of jobs, and trying to get word out within Maine. Currently, a number of sales are to the Midwest and out of state.

On Monday, he received a Chicago company's order of barbecue sauce gift-set boxes, work that will keep people busy for weeks.

"Work is a thread of life. Everybody we have working here really wants to be here," he said. "It's as important to people with a disability as anybody else."

FMI: www.thenezinscotguild.com

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