Eva's Phoenix Print Shop

 
Eva’s Phoenix Print Shop is arguably one of the most successful social purpose enterprises in Toronto – having achieved an enviable balance of its blended value proposition: sustainable business results, remarkable social outcomes, and environmental responsibility.
 
Opened in 2002, the Eva’s Phoenix Print Shop is a socially and environmentally responsible commercial printer that supports the award-winning Foundations of Print training program for youth who are homeless or at risk of homelessness.  Print services are competitively priced and on-time delivery is guaranteed.  Customers include Toronto Hydro, TD Bank, Bombardier, PwC, the Toronto Training Board, and Eva’s Initiatives.  The Print Shop is powered with green electricity, and is in the process of becoming Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC) certified.
 
The Print Shop recruits participants from shelters and employment programs across Toronto. Once they pass an initial screening, they go through a three-month training program, called Foundations of Print, to learn the basics of the print business including the operation of equipment and machinery. Upon completion of the Foundations of Print program, the trainees apply for work with the support of Print Shop staff, accessing a broad network of employer-contacts that Eva’s has established over the years in the print industry. The Print Shop employs one graduate as a production assistant for a year, and hires other graduates when business volume allows.
 
Foundations of Print has had significant success over the years. Changes to the structure of training and work placements – separating training from production, shortening but intensifying training from 6 months to 3 months – has enabled the Print Shop to double the number of youth who participate in the enterprise each year. Since 2002, 63 youth have graduated, most (57%) to full-time progressive jobs at an average wage of $12 per hour. Many (16%) return to school, some with the assistance of a bursary from Eva’s Phoenix. Others have started their own businesses or part-time jobs. More than half of all the youth who have joined the Print Shop have improved their housing, moving out of a shelter or marginal housing into independent or better accommodation. In 2007 the Phoenix Print Shop received a Toronto Community Foundation Vital Ideas Award for experience, expertise and ingenuity in providing practical solutions to challenging social issues.
 
Since 2002, the Print Shop has evolved its business model through several phases. In the early years, the business focused on “low-hanging fruit”, pursuing print jobs from its “friends” in the non-profit sector. It soon found that this market niche was not sustainable, and has applied its efforts to developing substantial contracts with corporations and institutions that can offer regular business with reasonable deadlines. While these relationships took several years to build, they are now the mainstay of the Print Shop’s business, helping sales double from 2006 to 2007. The enterprise’s Business Cost Recovery (the ratio of sales to business costs) has risen from 48% in 2004 to 86% in 2007 – a level at which it is almost sustainable (the Toronto Enterprise Fund considers that a social purpose enterprise is sustainable when it attains 100% Business Cost Recovery). The Print Shop’s network of contacts in the industry has been crucial to their business achievements as well as their success with participants. Many of these contacts sit on a 12-person Advisory Board that provides strategic direction and helps with sales leads. Much of the Print Shop’s equipment has been donated through these connections, as well as creative solutions, such as the loan of two Heidelberg presses.