Non-profit of the Week: Goodwill Industries

By Dan Estabrook - July 8, 2008 (TNN) One of the great things about editing a blog is a concept known as editor's prerogative.  I will exercise my right today with a new TNN feature I am pleased to debut: non-profit of the week. What constitutes our non-profit of the week?  I look at criteria including community impact, eco-friendliness, Charity Navigator rating, and personal testimonials from you (send me recommendations at dan@tonicgen.com). With this criteria in mind, I am pleased to announce that Goodwill Industries is our non-profit of the week. Many of us only think of thrift shops when we think of Goodwill.  In fact, Goodwill is a major player in both job training and recycling our household junk.  Recently, I volunteered at the Goodwill warehouse in San Francisco, helping to sort all incoming donations from all over the Bay Area.  I was amazed at Goodwill's ability to sort every piece of "junk" (and some of it really is - I swear that some people unloaded garbage cans right into the donation buckets) and classify it as sellable or recyclable.  In fact, very few items or donations actually made it into the trash bin! In 2007, Goodwill handled over 23 million pounds of computers. According to National Safety Council, about 63 million computers become obsolete every year.  So, with all our attics and basements full of these old PCs, monitors, and printers, many of us haul this e-junk right to the nearest Goodwill. According to Goodwill's website, most of these donated items were unusable and not able to be recycled, so the organization has trained workers to de-manufacture the equipment and to resell systems and components, thus avoiding high disposal costs (and avoiding landfills completely).  Goodwill actively participates in E-bay's Rethink Initiative, an effort that brings together industry, government and environmental organizations to tackle the challenge of e-waste. Speaking of job training, Goodwill actively trains people for the workforce and their programs are geared to meet the needs of local businesses.  In 2005, Goodwill placed 130,000 people in competitive jobs.  I met many of these folks when I volunteered, and I can tell you they were capable and eager with many learning work skills for the first time. Next time you haul a car-load of your old clothes, TVs, computers, toys, and other household junk to your local Goodwill, think of all the people you are helping.  You can also feel good about completing another green activity to keep our landfills just a bit smaller. And check out our featured video about Goodwill: Federal contracts helps Goodwill Trainees