Program areas at Goodwill Industries of SW Michigan
Our commercial services division is best known to the public. It benefits from community donations of gently used clothing, household items, toys, working electronics, cars, and other vehicles. Donations are processed and resold in our Goodwill retail outlets. Our workers use these donations to learn valuable work skills. Their jobs include collecting, sorting, processing, pricing, stocking, and selling these items. The revenues generated by Goodwill retail outlets provide our workers' wages and fund Goodwill programs and services. Total revenue in 2022 for commercial services is 10,939,998.
Goodwill provides area businesses with manufacturing services while providing work experience for the people we serve. As with our retail operations, Goodwill uses the revenues from our contract manufacturing services division for its education and career services for people with disabilities and disadvantages such as welfare dependency, homelessness, and lack of education or work experience. The custodial services division offers the resources to provide local businesses with janitorial services.
Goodwill provided 128 families with 9,997 services of education, training and support services in 2022. These services included employment/career coaching, financial literacy services, adult literacy services, vocational assessments and counseling, community resource navigation and a 20 year commitment to families who want to exit poverty with a child 0-3 called life guides. Life guides of southwestern Michigan provides a life coach for families with a small child. The objective of the program is for the child (0-3) to graduate from a post-secondary program and obtain a living wage position, thus breaking the poverty cycle for that family. The difference between a middle class family and a poverty family is time frame. Life guide coaches work with the family to develop middle and long term goal setting by helping the family rid themselves of the daily crisis situations that lead to poor decisions for the long term.