The president and CEO of Goodwill of North Georgia said the organization’s career centers in Fulton County served 8,409 people and connected 4,509 with living wage jobs in 2023.
Goodwill’s Keith Parker spoke at the Sandy Springs Perimeter Chamber’s Signature Luncheon on Tuesday to share the organization’s mission of helping people through workforce development. He said those efforts have had a major impact on the state’s economy, education, and the environment. It’s the largest nonprofit in metro Atlanta and among the largest in Georgia with more than 4,000 employees.
In the last five years, Goodwill’s Fulton County Career Centers served more than 28,339 people while placing 14,070 of them into living wage jobs, he said. The donations and retail sales support its workforce development training.
“We have all sorts of job seekers from retired veterans to people who have literally never worked before. We’ve got folks that are 35 years old never had a job before but don’t know how to go to work,” Parker said.
Goodwill teaches them everything from building up their resume, interview skills, what to wear, and many other factors, he said. Students, retirees, people in the middle of their careers, and anybody else who wants to improve their situation can get Goodwill’s services free of charge.
Goodwill has 14 different career centers throughout North Georgia. Some of the high-impact areas are forklift operations, welding, logistics, and IT cybersecurity.
“It’s not unheard of to see people that would double, triple quadruple their salaries in just a few years,” Parker said.
He said Goodwill takes the ABC approach to workforce development: A job, Better job, Career.
They are developing a special niche in several areas, including people with disabilities. The national unemployment rate for people with disabilities is traditionally four times the national average. More than 7,000 people came through Goodwill’s doors with disabilities and they were able to place about half of them into full-time employment, Parker said.
More than 10,000 people who have come out of the criminal justice system have come through Goodwill’s doors, Parker said. About 50 percent of them have been placed into full-time positions.
Over the next several months, Goodwill hopes to get around 15,000 people trained and employed in the electric vehicle industry. A person completing the one-month can get a job earning $40,000 a year, Parker noted.
Goodwill partners with virtually every community college and technical school in North Georgia. It also offers virtual classrooms for some of its trainees, although Parker said they’ve found the success rate is almost 50 percent great if a person has at least some face-to-face contact with instructors.
Those programs are primarily funded by donations made to Goodwill that are resold in its stores. Shopping at Goodwill offers another benefit to the region by reducing the carbon footprint by keeping about 43 million pounds of items out of landfills, Parker said.