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PHILANTHROPY NEWS DIGEST
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| Name: | Goodwill Industries International |
| Founded: | 1902 |
| President & CEO: | Fred Grandy |
| Address: | 9200 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, Maryland 20814 |
| Phone: | 301.530.6500 |
| E-mail: | Goodwill@goodwill.org |
| URL: | http://www.goodwill.org/ |
| Mission: | Goodwill Industries International is a network of 181 local, autonomous member organizations in the United States and Canada, and 45 international associate members in 34 countries. Each organization serves people with disabilities and other disadvantages, such as welfare dependency, homelessness and lack of education and work experience, by providing job training and employment programs, as well as job placement opportunities and post-employment support. Through its services, the network helps people overcome barriers to employment and become independent, tax-paying members of their communities. In 1999, Goodwill served over 373,000 individuals and reported $1.65 billion in revenue. This year the organization celebrates Goodwill Industries Week May 7-13.
To fund its mission, Goodwill collects donated clothing and household goods and then sells these items in 1,800 retail stores throughout North America and on its Internet auction site, shopgoodwill.com. It also earns money by providing industrial services to businesses. Many Goodwill stores serve as a training ground for clients of Goodwill's employment services. The organization channels 84 percent of its revenues into job training, placement programs, and other critical community services. |
| Background: | Reverend Edgar Helms, a Methodist minister, founded Goodwill in Boston in 1902. Helms collected used household goods and clothing in wealthier areas of the city, then trained and hired poor people and immigrants to mend and repair the used goods. The goods were resold or given to the people who repaired them. The system worked, and the Goodwill philosophy of "a hand up, not a hand out" was born.
The organization, formally incorporated in 1910 and housed in Boston's Morgan Memorial Chapel, became known as Morgan Memorial Cooperative Industries and Stores, Inc. In its early years, it provided job skills training programs and even a rudimentary placement service. The name "Goodwill Industries" was later adopted after employees at a workshop in Brooklyn, New York, coined the phrase. Helms described Goodwill Industries as both an "industrial program as well as a social service enterprise...a provider of employment, training and rehabilitation for people of limited employability, and a source of temporary assistance for individuals whose resources were depleted." |
| Current Programs: | Goodwill Industries provides a broad range of training courses for jobs in fields such as computer programming, health care, financial services, and hospitality. Life skills training and counseling help to prepare individuals for the work force, and job coaches provide post-employment support. Many Goodwill agencies provide ancillary services such as childcare and wheels-to-work programs to support these individuals.
More than 116,000 individuals served by Goodwill in 1999 were welfare recipients. The organization provides welfare-to-work services nationally with the help of government grants exceeding $300 million. This year, Goodwill is honoring Bank of America for its work in developing training programs for Goodwill clients in four major cities. Goodwill job placement programs across the U.S. and Canada have resulted in 66,136 individuals with disabilities and other disadvantages being placed in competitive employment, where they earned $916 million in salary and wages. In 1999, the organization earned over $304 million through its industrial services, creating jobs for nearly 20,000 individuals. These contracts provide opportunities for people to develop necessary job skills while earning a paycheck and helping businesses meet their labor needs. From packaging and assembly to janitorial and hospitality services, Goodwill clients fulfill a broad variety of jobs, including salvaging nuts and bolts for American Airlines, manufacturing camouflage pants for the U.S. Marine Corps and the Army, refurbishing seats for Los Angeles Metrolink trains, and preparing breakfast — all 13,000 pounds of flour, 4,176 pounds of bacon, 6,240 dozen eggs, and 35,747 cups of coffee of it — for Coast Guard personnel in Oakland, California. |
| Recent Successes: | The U.S. Department of Education awarded a $750,000 grant to Goodwill Industries International in April. The grant will be used to expand an existing neighborhood-accessible community technology center (CTC) in Astoria, New York, and replicate its success with a similar center in Rockford, Illinois. The CTCs are modeled after the Family Learning Center developed by Goodwill Industries of Greater New York and Northern New Jersey. That center serves a low-income, ethnically diverse and under-educated community in the borough of Queens.
In September 1999, the U.S. Department of Labor awarded a $20 million grant to Goodwill to provide training and support to place welfare-to-work eligible TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) recipients in Census 2000 jobs and competitive employment once the census is completed. Under the grant, Goodwill will place 5,120 individuals in permanent, competitive employment by March 2001. shopgoodwill.com, Goodwill's Internet auction site, has earned more than $250,000 in revenue for the agency in just eight months of operation. Launched on August 31, 1999, by Goodwill Industries of Orange County (CA), shopgoodwill.com is the first Internet auction site operated by a nonprofit organization. Items up for auction through the site are selected from the more than one billion pounds of goods donated to Goodwill annually. Among the 10,000-plus items sold on the site to date have been an original, signed Picasso etching; two 1958 Barbie dolls complete with original case and clothes; a Chinese secretary desk; and a Victorian-era cameo pendant. |
| Web Site: | The Goodwill Industries International Web site provides general program information, answers to frequently asked questions, links to local Goodwill agencies, hints on how and what to donate to the organization, and information about becoming a Goodwill volunteer. The organization's Internet auction site, shopgoodwill.com, offers an eclectic selection of merchandise. Currently, some 30 Goodwill agencies are selling items on the site, with another 40 preparing to come online. |
| Funding Needs: | The sale of donated goods in Goodwill stores and on shopgoodwill.com generates over half the organization's operating revenue. Government and private grants as well as cash and stock donations help enhance Goodwill programs and create new ones. The organization also seeks business partnership opportunities that create work opportunities for Goodwill trainees and graduates.
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Last Week National Center for Policy Research for Women and Families
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Every week, the NPO Spotlight in Philanthropy News Digest highlights the activities of a nonprofit organization; periodically, we shift the focus to an NGO in a country other than the U.S. Organizations are selected, using a range of criteria, to ensure the broadest possible representation of the nonprofit sector, both in the U.S. and abroad.
If you'd like to have your NPO or NGO appear in the "Spotlight," e-mail a profile of your organization (using the format above) to spotlight@fdncenter.org, or send a hard copy via snail mail to: NPO Spotlight(The editors of Philanthropy News Digest reserve the right to edit submissions.) |
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