For years, I’ve considered the most unique aspect of Goodwill to be the way and the extent to which we blend business and a social mission. More recently, though, perhaps equally unique is the extent to which we are leveraging our resources and capabilities with those of others to create new opportunities that benefit people and communities. I’ll explain.

A lot of social problems have become worse over the last forty years despite massive increases in public spending and a huge proliferation of not-for-profit organizations. Part of the problem lies in the “silo” structure of the public sector and the fragmented nature of the not-for-profit sector. In many cases, organizations are doing very good work addressing pieces of a larger problem, but seldom have we been connecting the pieces well. As a result, we have not been solving the big problems.

A lot of our work at Goodwill is now focused on connecting pieces. Some of those exist within our own organization and some involve other organizations that have complementary capabilities. We see numerous examples of this, as Goodwill retail employees and Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP) moms enroll in an Excel Center or begin working toward a certification through a class taught by Ivy Tech or Vincennes University.

More examples: We have Eskenazi Health referring expectant mothers to NFP and also hiring graduates of The Excel Centers. We see Indianapolis Day Nursery Association offering employment to NFP moms, helping them work toward certifications, and providing high quality care for their children. And we see graduates of Goodwill-operated schools becoming employed with help from TalentSource, Goodwill’s job preparation and placement service.

The extent to which Goodwill is evolving into an array of networks that link services across organizational boundaries in a holistic, often whole family manner is unique. This approach brings high quality services together to make more effective use of existing community resources and result in greater lasting impact. With sufficient scale, this approach can play a role in reducing generational poverty.

The way we are evolving into this array of networks is not the result of a brilliant grand plan. Rather, it’s an organic process that is ongoing, and it’s largely a product of three primary factors:

• A lot of smart, talented people who bring to their work not just their knowledge and skills, but also a strong commitment to what we are about – in other words, they bring their heads and their hearts.
• A culture characterized, in part, by a constant desire to find ways to improve and further increase our long term impact in the lives of people and the communities where we operate. It’s also a culture in which people generally work well with each other.
• Strong relationships with a lot of people in a lot of other fine organizations across all the sectors.

It’s also important to note that everything we do is built on a solid financial foundation that depends largely on the oldest part of Goodwill – our retail system, which provides jobs for 1300 people whose options are limited by disability or other significant barrier and that is, in turn, dependent on donations of used goods from and purchases by hundreds of thousands of central Indiana residents.

This organic evolutionary process results in a Goodwill that is constantly changing. We try things, we learn, we adapt as the world around us changes, and we evolve as an organization. It’s the approach we take to continue increasing long term impact and help reverse some of the negative trends we’ve seen in our society over the last forty years.