For Good

The Original Social Enterprise – And Growing.

100% nonprofit and local, SFGoodwill connects the engine of capitalism with the human drive for self-improvement to deliver social good on a large scale. This has been the business model and promise of all Goodwills since the founding of the first chapter in 1902.

Goodwill is an embedded social enterprise, meaning that our social programs and our business activities are one and the same. We hire the people we serve; more than half of current SFGoodwill team members once sought our services and have grown with us. The more we can grow our business – and the more businesses we can grow – the more people we can help learn the skills necessary to lift themselves out of poverty.

Our mantra at SFGoodwill is to “See the good and grow it.”™ We see the good in everyone who crosses our doorstep by helping them achieve their full potential. We see the good in everything that’s donated to us by trying to maximize its value in the marketplace. We plow the resulting “profit” right back into serving more people and growing our businesses. We believe nothing and no-one should go to waste.

This thinking is shaping our future focus on the emerging ReValue Economy™, built around harvesting the value of everything – and everyone. Today we live in a U.S. economy built on consumption and waste. Often our society discards human beings as if they, too, are used goods. A ReValue Economy uses the labor and entrepreneurial potential of those often overlooked –  people returning to society after having served their time in prison, for example – to grow new businesses that make better use of materials now clogging our landfills.

Building materials, furniture, textiles, electronic waste, and plastic wrap are the five big offenders in Bay Area landfills. Each of these will spark the creation of new enterprises to capture the value of these raw materials. We believe that Goodwill-trained graduates will have a hand in starting and operating them.

Would you like to participate in our ongoing conversations that bring together venture capitalists, social investors, policymakers, and others who are building the scaffolding of this emerging economy? Join one of our ReValue Lab™ gatherings in the year ahead and help us design the next century of Goodwill. Contact Kate Moynihan at KMoynihan@SFGoodwill.org for more information.