Major inroads have been made into Cargill Enterprises' $80,000-a-year shortfall in response to an article in The Star last month.
Suppliers, customers and complete strangers have offered ideas and given donations and discounts to help the Disabled Citizens Society-owned workplace break even.
The organisation gives people with disabilities the chance to work and while many of the jobs they do make a profit, others are less kind to the bottom line.
Chief executive Geoff Kemp said a woman walked in off the street on Monday last week and donated $2000, saying she thought Cargill Enterprises was important to the community.
''It is a real encouragement for someone to just come in and say that.''
He said some customers had volunteered to pay more for their products and some suppliers had agreed to provide their services for free or at cost.
One of the biggest contributions had come from Foote Haulage which had offered to buy sawdust from Cargill's timber manufacturing operation.
Mr Kemp said they produced more than 3 tonnes of sawdust a fortnight, which they had been dumping. The new deal would be worth more than $10,000 a year.
Cleaning company Rentokil Initial and Health and Safety Compliance New Zealand both offered their services at cost for a year, saving thousands of dollars, Mr Kemp said.
Even the electrician had come to the party with Mainline Electrical Security and Comms offering to provide up to $300 of work a month for free.
''The business community is supporting us and partnering with us. It feels like we are being supported and that is pretty important,'' Mr Kemp said.
He said the savings, donations and free services easily amounted to $20,000 so far, which was about a quarter of the deficit taken care of for this year.
