Draft Version of Goodwill Case Study

Introduction: Humanitarian work is associated with receiving charitable donations from members, businesses, and government agencies, to be redistributed to communities in need. Goodwill is an example of a different mission in Humanitarian work. Goodwill is the pioneer organization in branding their humanitarian work and build an international business without compromising their core mission or reputation. Goodwill uses good reputation of its name to generate contributions and donations. The materials donated find its way to the organization's stores, to secure funds for their community based programs. This group case study will discuss Goodwill’s advantages and their success in social services, highlight problems as well as solutions facing the organization, discuss the concept of discrimination and include any personal experiences, and the ability to innovate within organizations.

Advantages of Goodwill:
Since 1902, when Goodwill started its charitable work, the organization maintained a good reputation. Today, the biggest advantage of Goodwill is the good reputation the organization still enjoys. Goodwill success arises from the organization's management ability to focus on their employee’s morale in order to maintain the organization's reputation. Another great advantage of Goodwill is the high rate of satisfaction among their employees. The company hires from the weak sections of the employment market by focusing on the immigrant population, individuals with disability, individuals with criminal background, applicants with no experience, and employees with low English skills. Goodwill succeeded in providing adequate training to its workforce, supporting strong culture of respect, providing employees with a great benefit package, and maintaining a positive work environment, which resulted in high employees' morale and satisfaction rate. Hiring a diverse employee pool was an added advantage to Goodwill. “If you walk into a local Goodwill retail store you are likely to see employees from all walks of life , including differences in gender and race, physical ability, sexual orientation, and age” (Bauer & Erdogan, 2009). The diverse work place allowed Goodwill employees to feel more comfortable when addressing issues related to stereotyping and workplace discrimination (Bauer & Erdogan, 2009).

Success in Social Service: Goodwill success as a social service organization originates from keeping their core mission of providing a “hand up” instead of a “hand out” philosophy. The organization concentrated its efforts in building capable individuals with ability to enter the employment market, instead of providing food and daily necessities. The successful business model adopted by the organization, helped in providing sustainable funding sources for the community based programs established by Goodwill “in 2008 more than 172,000 people obtained employment, earning $ 2.3 billion in wages and gaining tools to be productive members of their community” (Bauer & Erdogan, 2009).

When you think that the global population is about 7 billion while the US population is just over 311 million, it becomes immediately obvious that its level diversity is a very smart approach to combining doing business with being at the forefront of championing social good. The reason is that whatever a 311 million population base can perfect with a diverse workforce and export to a 7 billion population base stands to create value across a larger platform.
What is more, the success Goodwill has recorded in social services (an area that governments often struggle with getting things right and efficient) makes the company a respected partner with government, and often the recipient of funding for doing more good and more efficiently than governments tend to do.
Think about the implicit discrimination in hiring only people with the best education, skills and profiles in a typical company. Think of how much more unemployment and of course social ills society would be grappling with if a major chunk of the least educated population is considered and treated as 'unemployable.' Groups like Goodwill make a huge difference in these areas.
Staying on the right side of the digital divide and also employing such sound management practices as constant skills training, career services and decentralization, while still maintaining cohesion in its core values seems as modern as you would find in the most innovative companies. This is important because it will continue to increase productivity and keep the company relevant in an increasingly competitive world.
I do wonder how much the burden of hiring and training low-skilled workers introduces into the profitability and brand equation. Are there concerning margin pressures on profit? What is the average investment in managing the behavioral issues that are likely to be a challenge with its mix of workforce? Ultimately though, I fine the focus on people, planet and profit both humane and very smart.
Importance of Innovation:
Success has a timeline and if ideas/techniques do not move forward to keep up with the times, success can quickly fade. The good fortune of Goodwill Industries International “can be attributed to its ability to innovate” (Bauer & Erdogan, 2009, p.29). By practicing 21st Century applications such as social media (Twitter, FaceBook, YouTube), and updating training programs to incorporate digital technology that demand these skills, Goodwill Industries successfully provided “1.5 million people with job training”. (Bauer & Erdogan, 2009, p.29) Also, the company took note of the “eco-friendly/green” initiative and began training programs to equip individuals with the knowledge and skill set that green companies require. Innovation is a major element in a successful business and Goodwill Industries approach to continually redesign its business practices is one of the reasons it has remained successful for over a century. Innovation may be defined as exploiting new ideas leading to the creation of a new product, process or service. It is not just the invention of a new idea that is important, but it is actually “bringing it to market”, putting into practice and exploiting it in a manner that leads to new products, services or systems that add value or improve quality. It possibly involves technological transformation and management restructuring. Innovation also means exploiting new technology and employing out-of-the-box thinking to generate new value and to bring about significant changes in society.

Ref: http://www.paggu.com/getting-into-roots/what-is-innovation-why-innovation-is-important/

Statistics show that failure to be innovative/comply with the demands evolution of time/society can lead to financial disaster, case in point: Blockbuster Video. During the end of the 20th Century, Blockbuster was the champion source of rental videos. However, as the internet expanded and streaming video advanced, business executives saw the opportunity to combine convenience and the digital world. The birth of Netflix crushed Blockbuster and eventually put the former movie giant out of business. Another example is online shopping. Retail stores such as Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Target lose millions of dollars to its competitor Amazon. Amazon.com redefined the shopping experience by using technology. In short, people want to feel more comfortable doing business with a company that is fresh and current; the masses demand it.
Concept of discrimination:
Discrimination refers to the treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favor of or against, a person or thing based on the group, class, or category to which that person or thing belongs rather than on individual merit.
Even though there are Federal and state laws in place prohibiting discriminatory practices like Hiring and firing, compensation, classification of employees, Harassment on basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin or age we are still witnessing such discrimination at Goodwill (Refer to the references posted) or any other charity organizations since it’s obvious that most of the employee’s at Goodwill Organization are from wide ranging backgrounds or immigrants , it is not surprising that there are wide range values and beliefs.
Although the case states that Goodwill has established diversity as an organizational norm, and as a result, employees are comfortable addressing issues of stereotyping and discrimination, it does not appear from the experiences of several people who are victimized for the same reason.
The most shocking experience of such discrimination practice at Goodwill was that People with disabilities are paid as low as .22 cents/Hour at some Goodwill locations. ( http://www.girlwiththecane.com/category/running-stories/goodwill-pay-discrimination-scandal/) and Goodwill argues that that certificate allows them to pay people with disabilities below minimum wage is a tool that facilitates job creation for people that would otherwise find it difficult to find work is shameful way to react and defend the practice.
This clearly shows Goodwill violates the laws and exploits the advantage of providing employment to needy and discriminating by not paying them to the efforts they put in at work.
Goodwill as a charity organization with diversity as organization norm, should address such discriminatory practices if they are common across the organization in order to maintain the core values they claim that being maintained or if they are sporadic address them by training the store managers about the Organization policies in place

Problems and Solutions:
Handling of Disposals:
Often Goodwill will receive electronics like computer parts, DVD players, VCR's, video game consoles, cell phones that vary in functionality and may not have all parts together to function or may be damaged beyond repair.

Once goodwill finds such electronics cannot be used or resold even after repair , they have to responsibly dispose them off many of them contain mercury, lead and other environmental sensitive materials and some states require fee for disposing them off with proper handling, hence goodwill has to divert the money from what could have been provided employment for few others.

Goodwill has formed a partnership with Dell to create a program that would allow a local goodwill agency to responsibly dispose unwanted products without diverting resources from their mission, the partnership is known as Reconnect as part of the Green initiative.

Competition and challenges:

People donating the things in big way every year, whenever they move to a different place to work and Goodwill generate revenue by reselling them also Goodwill receive federal tax dollars to provide employment and retrain people. I wonder if the money is being used responsibly. Is there a internal/external audit in place? Several people complain that all the money that is being generated out of the sales is diverted to open another store but the lower wage rate of the employees is not addressed.

While several people donating their belongings to Goodwill, in several housing communities, yard sales are also underway where the owners are selling their used items for a cheaper price to neighborhoods by posting the yard sale announcement on craigslist/local newspaper classified and only unsold items in the yard sale are being dumped in Goodwill.

Salvation Army and other Thrift societies other non-profit oriented charity based companies are the real competitors for Goodwill. Due to the tough competition amongst charity organizations, the trend now is moving towards opening new stores in new locations to attract more donations.

We believe ,the charities needs to be more responsible for what they are in business by ensuring the majority of sale profits/tax dollars should go towards providing rehabilitation and employment opportunities for the needy on a priority.

Reference: *
Bauer, T., & Erdogan, B. (2009). Organizational behavior. (Vol. 1.1, p. 10). Irvington, NY: FlatWorldKnowledge, Inc. * http://www.freepresshouston.com/featured/goodwill-isn%E2%80%99t-living-up-to-their-name/
Conclusion:
From the case we understand that Goodwill as an Organization started as a young missionary about 100 years back and went on to become a reputed leader in the charity space with operations across most of the States within and outside USA with more than 2300 locations. More importantly it helped millions of people over the period that were struggling and provided them a “hand up” to fulfill the basic needs of a life. Goodwill also progressed as an organization by implementing initiatives like Green Initiative to address the disposals issues to cut the spending and by collaborating with several other organizations they have innovated themselves by entering in to social media like Facebook, You tube and Twitter by setting goals like increase the number of “likes” to 125 percent, increase the impression by 150 percent is a great initiative for Goodwill. At the same time Good will also hit with several complaints/lawsuits by various people/organizations that some Goodwill locations allow discriminatory practices by paying the disabilities as low as 0.22 cents/hour which needs to be addressed and clear that impression. As a Charity organization Goodwill needs to provide more opportunities to people to donate voluntarily or by providing accessible drop boxes in various locations and by collaborating with similar charity organizations like Salvation Army with a healthy competition by which Goodwill would achieve the core values of the organization.
Contributors - Group A: * Elmuatz Abdelrahim * Leah-Kimberly Tubig * Patrick Anyaegbunam * Sudheer Arukonda * Terri Bond