Looking to the Future: Goodwill & eLearning

Background & History 

Goodwill Industries Vocational Enterprises was established in 1919 to help unemployed immigrants, World War I veterans, and people with disabilities find meaningful work within the Duluth, MN area. Last year we celebrated 100 years in business as the 10th ever Goodwill in the nation, changing lives through the power of work. Our organization’s mission and purpose today is much the same as it was nearly 100 years ago. As a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit organization Goodwill’s mission is to provide employment and employment services to people with disabilities or other barriers to employment, to help them reach their highest level of vocational achievement and independence. Our Goodwill territory reaches across Northern MN & WI through 12 locations, our headquarters based in Duluth, MN. 

Goodwill's Mission 

Goodwill’s mission service recipients include people with developmental disabilities, hearing or vision impairment, mental illness, traumatic brain injury or similar disabling conditions. Other common employment barriers may include limited work history and/or education and training, age, a criminal record, and previous drug/alcohol dependency. Each fiscal year Goodwill creates jobs for between 50-100 people through our employment programs. Mission service recipients are employed at our headquarters in Duluth, MN, one of our area retail stores, or at a community employment site; in all cases receiving continual follow-up support from a Goodwill case manager and or job coach. 

Fundraiser Purpose & Overview 

Goodwill has identified one of our greatest opportunities for improvement as offering technology support for those seeking jobs in our community and training and development to our team members. There are a wide variety of job roles and positions within our organization, across a large geographical territory, which in turn presents a unique learning challenge.  Our primary goals are to develop a computer lab for job seekers and a robust library of training courses and materials that integrates eLearning with hands on coaching and scenarios.  

Through research and communication with other Goodwill organizations, including Goodwill Industries International (our parent organization) we have identified and been recommended to Brainshark , a learning management system and software company, as the next step in moving towards execution of this goal. The primary benefits of this learning management system include:

• Organization of eLearning content in one location
• Access to and development of eLearning materials
• Easily tracks learning progress and performance
• Reduces learning and development costs

The greatest challenges and issues Goodwill faces as an organization are decreased funding from the State of MN, increasing costs of operations, and declining brick and mortar retail sales across the nation and our region. Overall, Goodwill’s retail sales have been in a downward trend over the past five years and the number of our transactions has dropped. Within the past two years we have made the difficult, but necessary, decision to close three outlying retail stores. We are currently in a battle to remain financially healthy and relevant to customers and donors. 

With this being our financial state, we are continually re-examining the way we do business, including becoming more innovative with mission services, streamlining our donation processing system, and elevating the level of customer service and merchandising in our retail stores. One of the most vital components of making these changes is the effective training and development of Goodwill team members. 

Conclusion

The primary goal of this objective is to provide the technology and training and development needed for all Goodwill employees, both upon new hire and ongoing throughout their time with the organization. To this end we help to fulfill our mission of providing employment and employment services to people with disabilities or other barriers to employment.

Thank you kindly once again for your support and consideration.