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Reporting for 1936 through the office of Oliver A. Friedman, secretary of National Goodwill Industries Department of Accounting and Co-operation with Other Agencies

Summary of Financial and Service Reports of Goodwill Industries Reporting for 1936

MATERIALS

INCOME

EXPENSE

SERVICE

NOTE: Statistics are reported only for those cities where information on reports was complete enough to be included. Several cities filed reports with the department but information was quite incomplete and therefore the cities could not be included in the exhibits. It is hoped that the exhibits in the report for 1937 may include every Goodwill Industries.

Financial and Service Reports of Goodwill Industries for 1936

Goodwill Industries are non-profit enterprises, the purpose of which is to provide employment, training, and rehabilitation for handicapped and needy persons, helping them to attain the highest physical, intellectual, vocational, social, moral, cultural, and spiritual usefulness of which they are capable. They are sheltered workshops or employment centers in which persons of limited employability or those who have lost their skill are given employment at tasks for which they are fitted, are conpensated -sic- in accordance with their abilities, and through training during employment are equipped for self-employment or placement in commercial industry.

Goodwill Stores and other co-operative activities supply clothing, shoes, furniture, and other necessitous articles at reasonable prices to people of limited means.

Goodwill Industries conduct religious and social service activities for persons touched through the Goodwill workrooms and stores, and as Christian missionary enterprises take cognizance of unmet religious and social service needs of their immediate communities. Where practicable and possible they conduct activities necessary to meet such needs until the needs shall have passed or the activities may be better cared for through other agencies.

Thus the basic purpose of Goodwill Industries is to help persons of limited employability realize a more abundant life, and it is the aim of Goodwill leaders to interpret that basic purpose in the terms of current social and economic needs, adapting their program to meet changing conditions.

In an introductory statement to last year's report, Dr. E. J. Helms, founder of the Goodwill Industries movement and Executive Secretary of the National Goodwill Industries organizations, suggested that Goodwill Industries were business organizations-plus, social service organizations-plus, religious organizations-plus. That report further suggested something of the uniqueness of Goodwill Industries and the practicability of the Goodwill way of service because of the fact that each Goodwill Industries was those several kinds of an organization-plus.

This was further developed at the National Institute for Goodwill Industries held at Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, in March, 1936, at which time the development of the Goodwill movement was reviewed. A Goodwill Industries Purposes and Policies booklet adopted by that Institute represented the accumulated experience both of individual local Goodwill Industries and the National Goodwill organizations, and included policies governing the management and service of local organizations, relationship of local organizations to the National movement, and the methods of operation of the National organizations. Copies of this Purposes and Policies booklet (price 25 cents) may be obtained from Morgan Memorial Goodwill Industries Press, 89 Shawmut Ave., Boston, Massachusetts.

Goodwill Industries are essentially local and autonomous organizations with self-governing boards. The National organizations are in a very real sense voluntary organizations of locally autonomous Goodwill Industries. It is the policy of the National organizations to encourage the establishment of autonomous Goodwill Industries in communities of approximately 75,000 population or more and to encourage these autonomous Goodwill Industries to develop branches or service units in the smaller cities round about. In this way, local autonomy is possible in centers large enough to develop a full Goodwill program and smaller centers within reach of autonomous Goodwill Industries are provided with Goodwill service in accordance with their needs and resources, and are represented on the governing board of the autonomous Goodwill Industries of which they are a part.