As news broke of the philanthropic donations made by MacKenzie Scott, former wife of Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, local Goodwill Industries of Michiana went on a “Listening Tour '' to hear how best to use its generous 10-million-dollar gift from Scott.
For some backstory, Scott, one of the wealthiest women alive, divorced Jeff Bezos in 2019 and received about $38 billion in the settlement. She has, in the short time since, stunned the world with her unique philanthropic tactics, giving away extraordinary amounts of money without the typical guidelines and restriction donors often require from recipients. In less than a year, Scott has given away more than $8.5 billion, stating that the money will help people who have been historically underfunded and overlooked.
About 40 United States Goodwill organizations received some form of donation from Scott, including Goodwill Industries of Michiana.
“As we started learning more about the story, we found that MacKenzie Scott was interested in food insecurity, job training, education, working with some diverse groups, impacting areas that typically didn't have a lot of philanthropic support already dedicated to them,” said Guy Fisher, Vice President of Community Engagement at Goodwill Industries of Michiana.
Scott and her team researched and narrowed down which nonprofit organizations would know how to effectively manage and use substantial gifts.
“They looked at what agencies and organizations are already out doing this work and doing it effectively. Are they capable of handling a gift of this magnitude? Are good decisions being made with what they already have? And so, we were blessed to be in that final round, and yes, $10 million was to go to Goodwill of Michiana,” Fisher said.
Goodwill Industries of Michiana operates all of the Goodwill stores and community programs in Southeast Illinois, Northern Indiana, and Southwest Michigan.
Goodwill retail centers are operated as a means to support numerous incredible programs that Goodwill runs within its communities, most of which people are unaware of.
“We weren’t going to go out and build more stores, because it’s a $10 million gift, and we weren’t going to put anything into that side of the operation,” Fisher said. “It was all going to be about strengthening our humanities programs - the things we’re doing that, if we just had a bit more resources, this would be an amazing opportunity. So in doing that, we decided that this gift was a reflection of our communities and the opportunities in our communities. We were simply given this huge stewardship responsibility.”
“When it came to how do you take $10 million and impact where you’re at?” Fisher continued. “We began what we call ‘Listening Tours,’ and it was really an opportunity for us to talk to other partners in our area, private and public, nonprofit partners with different community groups and different agencies to say what are the needs? What are the opportunities? What are the challenges? We sat down with about 17 or so different groups throughout our 16 counties that we serve, and just listened to them. What are some of the things that make sense for us to work together on?”
With the Listening Tour, Fisher and his colleagues found that many of the organizations they spoke to throughout all the 16 counties had very similar areas of concern, making it more apparent what opportunities Goodwill should invest in. One of those ventures is a new technical training center in South Bend.
“One of the neat things about Goodwill is that we’ve always focused on soft skills for employees: the get up, dress up, and show up conversations that every employer is looking for. But we’ve also heard from employers that it would be great if there were some hard skills that were present, Fisher said.
With that, Goodwill Industries of Michiana has developed a career technical education track, where certifications are offered in many in demand jobs, such as forklift and welding training.
“This career and technical center in South Bend is going to have things like CNC operations and automotive tech and other kinds of applications that we know are career pathways but are also hard skills that can be translated into other industries’ applications. So, some of the Scott gifts are being used to develop that space and build out that curriculum and that's not just going to impact it as well, but other agencies can get folks over our way to get training in those spaces for their people,” said Fisher.
In Lake County, a new program will be rolling out in 2022 that partners Goodwill of Michiana with Ivy Tech to provide more training for trade certifications.
“Ivy Tech came to us and said, 'Hey, let’s partner together on this and let’s run some of the training down at some of the Goodwill campuses in our area,'” said Fisher.
Because Goodwill is already working with a population that would really benefit from the program Ivy Tech was proposing, this partnership made perfect sense.
Fisher stated they are also searching for partnership opportunities with local businesses to better connect the people in the industries with those people who could use training and employment.
“Connecting the dots between those businesses and the populations that we’re serving is all part of this, too. A business may have a machine operator that they can release to us to help teach these skill sets that we’re looking for. That’s all the things we are focusing on with this Scott gift,” Fisher said.
Teaming up with other nonprofits is something Goodwill has always practiced.
“If it makes sense for us to partner up with an agency that's already doing that work, then let's double the output of working together on it,” said Fisher.
Scott has made no mistake in choosing Goodwill Industries of Michiana as one of her donation recipients. The company knows exactly how to put the dollars to work for the communities and has always had the objective of providing resources and tools to teach people how to become self-sufficient.
People are then empowered and ready to better their situations, with new skills and confidence to take on new tasks. The mindset for Goodwill has always been to teach people how to fish instead of fishing for them, a biblical analogy much needed in today’s times.
While much of the public has no idea what Goodwill is really doing behind the curtain, Fisher explains again that the more publicly known thrift stores are there to fund all of the other wonderful work that is the true purpose of the organization.
“We do operate these thrift stores. But those thrift stores serve several purposes for us” Fisher said. “They are a source of revenue. Our donations flow is not people necessarily writing us checks. It is folks giving us items that we turn around and sell and then we take the proceeds from that sale and put them into the Nurse Family Partnership Program that we work with first time moms, or the Excel Center High School Programs that we operate across our our 16 counties for adults to finish their Indiana core 40 diploma, or the people that we work with in different kinds of training programs coming out of incarceration or folks with mental challenges.
“All this stuff that Goodwill does behind the scenes that no one really gets, because all they see are the stores. And those doors are also training grounds for folks who are working in the stores.”
Many store employees are actually people who have completed job training programs and are then ready to move on to putting those lessons into real life applications.
“It's an experience that eventually leads to that next job in the community. Goodwill's never been about hanging on to you. It's about helping you move to the next thing, and so we often talk about turnover. That's actually a good thing for us. We celebrate when we can help upskill somebody and they leave our employment and move onto what's next. That’s a win for us, because that's what we do,” said Fisher.
To find out more about Goodwill’s locations and programs, visit https://Goodwill-NI.org/
