How can my parents make a drug-rehab non-profit financially self-sufficient?

November 14, 2004 7:03 PM

My parents recently started a drug-rehab-type non-profit, they're looking for money making ventures that could help them become self-sufficient. Things my father mentioned to me are things like pallet building, assembly line-repackaging, he's asked me to help him investigate options. The signal-to-noise ratio on Google for these types of things is very high.... can anyone help me, either by suggesting things they've done, or people they know have done, or helping me with google terms that could help me find these types of ventures.
posted by TuxHeDoh to work & money (5 comments total)

Sorry, can't help you with your question, but you must mean that the signal to noise ratio is very low. If it was very high, there would be a lot of useful information.
posted by Caviar at 7:18 PM on November 14, 2004

Thanks for clarifying Caviar. yes that's correct.
posted by TuxHeDoh at 7:28 PM on November 14, 2004

Tux, I don't think I'm clear on what kind of business you'd be looking to do. What's the input, what's the output? Are you taking things in in bulk, repackaging them for individual resale, and then shipping them out? I'm not sure that's a market I'd get into if I were you; all of the major package carriers just started doing it (UPS, DHL, FedEx) within the past year, and since most big businesses already have contracts with the major package carriers, customers are more likely to do that unless you batter the door down in some other way. And your costs would be higher since you don't have the capital to soak up all of the many thousands of dollars of equipment that'd be required.

Totaly off-topic:
Recently, I've found that googling something isn't very helpful for any reason unless you already know specifically what you're looking for. I can't find information, I can only find people who want to sell me stuff. *sigh* Maybe Google's jumped the shark...
posted by SpecialK at 10:14 PM on November 14, 2004

Tux, look into what Kandu Industries does for the developmentally disabled. (It isn't national, but there are similar organizations, such as this Chicago agency.) One thing that Kandu does here is a catering business. It works very well in terms of training and turnover. You could also do outplacement. Contact your local United Way and you'll probably easily find an opening into a network of such opportunities (and mentors/competitors). Look into what your community does for criminal restitution; my mother ran such a program and placed juveniles in jobs all around the county, but finding employers was a pain.

Another long-term option would be investing in the technology to create a remote call center. It's likely this isn't as big a money pile as a few years ago, though (what with offshoring, general economic slowdown, and competition from former telemarketers).
posted by dhartung at 11:47 PM on November 14, 2004

This is actually going to be a halfway-house type operation.... except some of the people aren't ready yet to handle a full-time job with he responsibility of a full-time pay check. Or need the supervision, so they know that they can't go out and get high, when they go off to work. They're looking for the "work-at-home" types of jobs that they could possibly setup, assembly line type of work, if addressing envelopes and sending out information was legitimate, that's just the type of stuff that would be excellent.

SpecialK: The repackaging thing my dad told me about, had to do with getting a shipment of "widgets" made-in-china, and taking them out of their packages, affixing a new label, repackaging for re-sale as a "New Widget". He knows of a program like this, just doesn't know the contact info, and it's obscure enough that it's difficult to figure out by searching google for it.
posted by TuxHeDoh at 5:54 AM on November 15, 2004