Philadelphia Business journal has an article on Good Will: One Place Where Bad Times Are Good. The hard times caused by rising gas and food prices is making their “business” jump.
It is an interesting case study on how discounters can prosper in hard times. Of course, if people donated all their used goods to you so you had no inventory cost, you’d be doing pretty good yourself.
What is disingenuous about the whole article is that Good Will is a non profit organization basically running a thrift store chain of thrift store operations. In our town they are right next to a “for profit” store in what for this area passes for the high rent retail district. How do they swing that? The homegrown thrift store that helps local people from their profits is in the run down part of town. That means Good Will stores have special tax relief and are eligible for special treatment that ordinary businesses aren’t.
What basically makes them untrustworthy in my estimation is that, according to Goodwill’s own historical record, the organization began as a religious organization but dropped that when they wanted Federal funding. They admit as much themselves here in this “historical timeline”:
With the Methodist church backing expansion, by 1920 there were 15 Goodwills, including Morgan Memorial.
In subsequent decades, the relationship with the church would gradually lessen as Goodwill sought leaders
from outside the ministry, and as federal funding requirements made it necessary for Goodwill to become a
more secular organization.
This is completely “anecdotal”, but in my time working with their case workers, whenever I asked for help for someone, they were getting state funding for those programs. Never once were store profits used to help the people I tried to refer. Where’s grandstanding Chuck Grassley on this outfit?
Bottom line from the article, I think the Philadelphia Business Journal is onto something…discounters who can help people save money on commodities right now are doing well and it’s no surprise that Good Will is cashing in. Sadly they’re not a model most businesses can emulate… we pay for inventory and have to pay taxes because we don’t claim to be a “non profit”.
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