THE TRUTH ABOUT GOODWILL: Goodwill? More like Illwill.
At first glance, Goodwill seems like the friendly neighborhood thrift store focused on giving back
to the community and fighting inequality. On paper, they’re a non profit that isn’t
owned by anyone which means no shareholders, no stock, and hopefully no anticonsumer behavior.
Their board of directors is actually filled with a bunch of volunteers, so theoretically,
they’re only goal would be to give back to the community which they do in several ways. They
have a bunch of career programs that help underprivileged people make some cash and
learn new skills. They’re also one of the only organizations out there that will hire people
with disabilites aside from the government. They’ve also been around for quite some
time as Goodwill has been around for over 120 years which means that they’ve donated tens of
billions if not over a hundred billion dollars to charitable services. In fact, in 2018 alone, they
pulled in $6.1 billion in revenue out of which $5.27 billion was spent on charitable services.
So, they’re doing a great job right? Well, yes and no. There are definitely commendable portions of
Goodwill and I don’t want to take away from that. But, there’s also a lot of reprehensible portions
as well. For one, Goodwill isn’t even all that charitable in the first place. Goodwill claims
that 82% of their revenue goes towards programs and services for people in need. Some regions
even have percentages as high as 90%. But, this is largely misleading as this does not mean that
82% or 90% of the money that you spend at Goodwill goes the charity. In fact, there’s evidence that
as little as 1/8th of their profit actually goes to the main programs that they advertise. Also,
you know how Goodwill employs disabled people? Well, this may be more exploitative than
generous. You see, there’s special laws that allow organizations to pay disabled people as little as
22 to 41 cents per hour which is already quite bad but it doesn’t stop there. Disabled employees also
don’t have the same protections that everyone else does which makes them the perfect scapegoat to
hand off dangerous tasks to. And when it comes to whistleblowers and employees fighting back,
Goodwill may as well just be a private corporation as that’s how they behave. They usually threaten,
fire, and publicly discredit people that fight back. So, here’s the truth
about Goodwill and why you should think twice before donating to or purchasing from Goodwill.
QUESTIONABLE DONATIONS: Jumping straight into their donations,
Goodwill claims that they spend between 80 and 90% of their revenue on charitable services,
and technically speaking this is probably accurate. As we touched on, in 2018,
Goodwill pulled in $6.1 billion and donated $5.27 billion. So, that falls right in line
with about 86% of their revenue being donated. But this doesn’t mean what you think it means.
Any normal person would probably think that this means that for every dollar you spend at Goodwill
86 cents gets donated. Or atleast, maybe for every dollar they profit, they donate 86 cents but
neither of these are true. You see, the reality is that much of Goodwill’s charitable spending isn’t
even funded by us the customers, it’s actually funded by various government organizations.
Take Goodwill Omaha for instance. They have a bunch of job training and assistance programs
but nearly all of these activities were funded by government grants and contracts. And you know
their program to employ disabled people? Well, that was primarily funded by school districts.
It turns out that out of the $4 million worth of profit generated by the region, only
$557,000 or a little more than an eighth was spent on these flagship job programs. And keep in mind,
that’s profit, not revenue. Only 1/8th of the profit is being spent on these programs, so
imagine how little of the consumer based revenue is being spent on these programs. But, then where
are all of these profits going instead? People are literally donating items for free, so surely
Goodwill shouldn’t have too many manufacturing or shipping or sourcing expenses. Well,
the official reasoning is administrative overhead, but that’s just the fancy term for large executive
compensation. Goodwill actually has a history of paying executives super large salaries. In
2014 for example, they paid their CEO Frank McGree $933,000. This actually won him so much criticism
and backlash that he would end up resigning. But, things haven’t exactly gotten better.
His successors were paid a base salary of $434,000 and there are rumors that total comp reached as
high as $1.1 million, though Goodwill disputes the total compensation numbers. Either way though,
executives and high level managers are being paid multiple six figures. In fact, Change.org claims
that the top managers at a 150 Goodwill locations are being paid more than $30 million. Also,
some of these people don’t seem to have any issue charging a bunch of personal expenses
onto corporate cards. Former CFO Tim Ligon, for example, charged over $75,000 worth of personal
purchases onto a Goodwill corporate card. So, yeah, that’s where much of the profit is going.
Also, for the record, I have no issue with people making a lot of money. If you wanna make a lot of
money, go to a private company or start your own business. Don’t leach off of a non profit. Also,
one more thing about these executives is that many of them are politicans by trade. The current CEO,
Steve Preston, for example, was the secretary of housing and urban development under President
George Bush. And the former CEO, Jim Gibbons was part of the White House Council for Community
Solutions under President Barak Obama, so take that for what you will. But, it’s not
just your donations that Goodwill is exploiting. They’re also exploiting the people who work there.
EXPLOITING THE DISABLED:
One of the trademarks of Goodwill is providing jobs to underprivileged people and especially
people with disabilites. But, once again, this isn’t as great as it sounds. It’s actually really
bad. You see, Goodwill leverages an archaic rule found in the Fair Labor Standards Act which was
passed way back in 1938. Section 14c of the act basically allows companies to legally pay disabled
workers wages that are lower than minimum wage. This has resulted in disabled people
in Pennsylvania earning as little as 22 cents, 38 cents, and 41 cents per hour. Goodwill claims
that these are outlier cases and they’re probably right about that. But, just because the average
disabled worker isn’t making these absurdly low wages doesn’t mean that they’re making good
wages either. Also, I wanted to point out that it’s not just Goodwill that’s exploiting these
rules either. Basically every organization that hires disabled workers other than the govenrment
leverage this tactic. Disabled workers at Applebee’s for example were making $3.97 to
$5.96 per hour. And disabled workers at Barnes & Noble were making $3.80 to $4.85 per hour.
So, it’s kind of an industry wide problem and it doesn’t seem like it will fixed anytime
soon either. Goodwill has actaully fought against proposals that suggest raising the minimum wage.
Their reasoning is that they simply can’t afford to pay employees anymore which doesn't
really make any sense when you consider how much their executives make and how little
actually gets donated. But, not only does Goodwill pay disabled workers low wages,
they also expect a lot of work. In fact, disabled workers are straight up tested for
effectiveness. Disabled employees have to take a timed test to see how quickly they can sort and
hang clothes. The ideal rate is 100 garments within 32 minutes. For most people, this is a
pretty reasonable target. But, if you’re blind for example, this becomes exponentially harder. And,
if they don’t reach this target, your hourly wage gets deducted proportionately. This is how you end
up with employees making ridiculously low wages. One blind Goodwill employee named Sheila Leigland,
for example, was already only making $3.99 per hour. But, Goodwill wanted to reduce this to $2.75
an hour. Sheila would end up quitting but this is not a luxury that most disabled workers have. So,
they’re just stuck making $2.75 an hour. Goodwill claims that they’re not exploiting workers and
that they’re actually providing opportunity as 80% of disabled people in the US don’t have
any opportunity at all. But pity jobs that milk these people for the lowest wages possible isn’t
the same as truly uplifting and supporting the disabled community. As Alice put it,
at least we gave them jobs is not a progressive, socially responsible move.
WORKPLACE DEATHS:
If you didn’t think that exploiting disabled workers was bad enough, well, it gets even worse
as Goodwill has been linked with several workplace deaths. Goodwill’s PR and legal team love to write
off these deaths as tragic incidents that were not their fault. But, when you take a look at
the evidence, that story becomes a lot harder to believe. Take former Goodwill employee Dave
Goudie for example. Dave only worked at Goodwill for a mere 6 months as a waste management driver
but let’s just say that he went to hell and back during his short tenure. One day during his shift,
he noticed that the trailer brakes weren’t working when activated from the cab. So, as a responsible
driver, he would pull over, shut down the truck, and call management. He was hoping that Goodwill
would sent out a technician who could fix the issue. But, instead, they just sent out another
driver that was willing to drive the truck despite the issue. This was no doubt jarring for Dave and
he would of course go ahead and file complaints to Goodwill regarding the incident. But, this was by
no means the only safety hazard that he noticed. He also noticed a major safety hazard regarding
Goodwill’s trash compactors. He reported quote “Based on my personal observations, most employees
now operating compactors at each plant have not received the required training.” He would go on to
warn that this could result in injuries, deaths, and fines which could be completely avoided if
proper training was implemented. But, as fate would have it, Goodwill would take no action
and a 26 year old employee named Abraham Garza would be killed trash compactor just a few weeks
later. This would’ve been a good time for Goodwill to apologize to Dave for not taking his complaints
more seriously but instead, they would fire Dave and blame the incident on Abraham. Cal OSHA would
eventually step in and fine Goodwill $106,000, but even after that, Goodwill would continue to
maintain that they were not liable. If this was a one off incident, they would have some
plausible deniability but Goodwill actually has a history of onsite injuries. In 2008,
a 27 year old was crushed to death by a trash compactor lift. In 2014, a 69 year old was
crushed by a forklift. And in 2017, a 54 year old was killed by another forklift. And the worst part
is that many of these deaths are amongst disabled workers. You see, employers aren’t as liable for
disabled workers because the disability may increase the chances of a workplace injury. So,
Goodwill is literally incentivized to place disabled workers in dangerous jobs and it seems
like that is exactly what they’re doing leading to many disabled workers literally being killed.
IllWILL:
Those are just a few of the most notable issues at Goodwill but they’re by no means the only issues.
For example, another major critic against Goodwill is that they send clothes that they can’t sell in
western countries to developing countries. And given that these were donated items,
they can sell these clothes for super cheap which screws up the local clothing industries. And the
only reason that Goodwill is able to get away with so much is because they’re a non profit. If a for
profit company like Amazon was exploiting disabled workers by paying them ridiculously low wages and
exposing them to significant workplace risk, they would be crucified by public opinion. But,
since Goodwill is a non profit/charity, these issues often get glossed over. Now again,
this isn’t to say that Goodwill is completely evil like big pharma or something. They do some awesome
things but they’ve also got some major issues that they have been ignoring for way too long.
And just maybe, if we bring enough attention to these issues, we can actually get them to
change but that’s just what I think. Do you think Goodwill is really good will or ill will? Comment
that down below. Also, drop a like if you would like to see more videos exposing the darkside
of such organizations. And of course, consider checking out our discord community to suggest
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