Official Style Guide

MESSAGING

Key Messaging

Goodwill is committed to helping individuals from all backgrounds empower themselves to achieve their own definition of success. Our trusted network of locally led organizations advances equitable opportunities within their communities through comprehensive job training, skills development, direct employment and support services that are sustainably funded through the sale of donated goods.

Messaging Examples
  • There are 165 independent, community-based Goodwill agencies in the United States and Canada and affiliates in 13 other countries that comprise the Goodwill enterprise.
  • Goodwill is recognized nationally as one of the most efficient charities—channeling 87 percent of revenues to mission and sustainability.
  • Goodwill is the second largest nonprofit in the United States (NonProfit Times) and one of the top 25 most inspiring companies (Forbes). Goodwill is also one of the nation’s top five most valuable and recognized nonprofit brands, as well as a leading social services enterprise (Cone Nonprofit Power Brand 100).
  • Goodwill of Northwest North Carolina works as a strategic partner to build the communities in which it serves crossing 51 locations and 31 counties.
  • Through the sale of donated items in our stores, Goodwill Industries of Northwest North Carolina funds employment and training programs that help people find hope, opportunity, and jobs.
  • Goodwill Industries of Northwest North Carolina provided services to more than 30,000 people in the last year alone.
  • Goodwill provides people with support to empower themselves and thrive through comprehensive job training, skill development, and pathways to family sustaining wage employment. 
  • Goodwill puts people first, focusing on individuals’ abilities and helping them harness their potential, not defining them by their challenges or disabilities. They serve everyone in need of support, especially those who have faced inequity or other barriers to accessing opportunity. Goodwill meets people where they are and provides them with the holistic services they need to reenter, upskill, or advance in their careers.
  • Goodwill provides support services—including child care, financial education, transportation, mentoring and other services for youth and families—that enable people from all backgrounds to obtain and maintain economic independence and an increased quality of life.
  • We believe in the sustainability triple bottom line: people, planet, prosperity. 
  • We divert billions of pounds of usable goods from landfills, connecting high-quality donated goods with sustainability-minded consumers to maximize the usefulness of the things produced for our society. 
  • We empower the circular economy as well as our socially impactful mission through our retail enterprise, with revenue directly funding training, development, employment and other supportive services. 
  • We are a social enterprise that operates nonprofit donated goods retail stores as efficient businesses that generate revenue for our own programs. Goodwill is an entrepreneurial leader, environmental pioneer and social innovator of the “reduce, reuse, repurpose” practice. Through its entrepreneurial business model of collecting and selling donated goods in its more than 2,700 stores and through its auction site, shopgoodwill—the first and only nonprofit Internet auction site—Goodwill helps communities extend the life of usable items in environmentally sound ways and prevents items from piling up in landfills.
  • Through socially innovative partnerships with corporate partners, county and city governments, and other organizations, Goodwill diverts used computers and computer equipment from landfills and provides consumer education on the importance of environmentally responsible computer disposal. These programs create job training opportunities as well as entry-level and skilled jobs for people in need of work.
  • We are a network of community-led organizations, drawing leadership from and supported by the communities we serve.
  • As a strategic partner in the communities we serve, Goodwill of Northwest North Carolina’s services and investments are uniquely tailored to the local needs and opportunities of our individual communities and the people who are part of them.
  •  Eighty-seven percent of collective revenues raised through the sale of donated goods go directly toward supporting and growing Goodwill’s critical community-based programs and services and result in environmental and social impact.
  • Based on local labor markets and in-demand occupations, Goodwill works with multiple industry sectors, focusing on those with expanding family-sustaining career pathways.
  • Goodwill engages high-growth sector businesses—such as health care, information technology and customer service—to support entry-level and middle-skilled workers as they earn market-valued credentials and advance their careers so they can better support their families.
  • Goodwill provides support services—including child care, financial education, transportation, mentoring and other services for youth and families — that enable people from all backgrounds to obtain and maintain economic independence and an increased quality of life.
  • Goodwill is in the business of changing lives. Goodwill trains people for careers in fields such as financial services, computer programming and manufacturing, as well as in high-growth industries such as technology and health care.