In the late 1980s, most of the people we worked with were adults with disabilities. We employed several hundred and helped others become employed with other firms. Then we were asked by a state agency if we could help “welfare” recipients find jobs. We found that we could, but only low paying jobs because hardly any of them had high school diplomas. Still, we continued to provide “welfare-to-work” services for 17 years. Meanwhile, we also continued to work with people with disabilities. We had simply expanded our scope to include more people than before.

In the early 1990s, unemployment in the Indianapolis area was very low, and employers were desperate for workers. We responded by aggressively trying to find anyone who was employable, but not working, and helping them find jobs. In addition to persons with disabilities and those on public assistance, we started assisting larger numbers of people coming out of the corrections system and newly-arrived immigrants with poor English language skills.

In the mid-1990s, we became involved in the operation of the one-stop employment service centers in Indianapolis, which were serving an average of 45,000 unemployed people each year. When we started examining demographics, we found that 50% of those individuals did not have high school diplomas.

About the same time we were becoming increasingly aware of the magnitude of the dropout problem in several of the city’s high schools, and we began to wonder if, as an organization, we had anything to offer young people who weren’t headed in a positive direction. We thought that if we could help them stay in school and graduate, they would be less likely to need Goodwill’s services once they became adults. Therefore, our organization’s long term impact would be greater.

We became involved in a number of small scale initiatives with local schools, found that we did have something to offer, and started exploring ways to maximize our impact. That led to a decision to start a charter high school that has now completed its seventh year of operation. The learning from that experience and the relationships that have developed led to our designing and launching a second school, the Excel Center, to provide a diploma option for older youth and adults who had dropped out. The demand for space in the Excel Center has been overwhelming, and we will begin replicating the school this fall.

These and all other major steps we’ve taken during the past twenty-five years have been to increase the organization’s long term impact. A few years ago we articulated the following as the ways Goodwill can add the greatest value in the communities in which we operate. Those are:

• Help young people and adults who have struggled or failed in other educational settings complete high school and attain a post-secondary degree or other recognized credential.
• Employ people whose work options are limited by disability, criminal history, low education level, or other significant barrier to employment.
• Help unemployed people become employed.
• Leverage Goodwill’s resources with those of others to help develop and implement practical, effective approaches to reduce major social problems.

Of those four, only one – providing employment for people with limited options – has been part of the organization since its founding in 1930. The others are a reflection of how we have evolved over time as we’ve learned more, our external environment has changed, and our internal resources have increased.

That process continues.