Goodwill vs Desert Industries

[slavereeno]

So I hear this a lot from TBMs. That one should go out of their way to donate and buy from DI instead of Goodwill. This is followed by a description of the corruption of the Goodwill people, rich CEO and profits and not really helping the poor etc. And that compared to how altruistic the church is, all about helping people and much better run etc.

Is this objectivly true? Anybody know?

[IT_Veteran]

Actually, Goodwill discloses their financials. There’s been a lot of misinformation about them out there. My interaction with them has been positive. I am on a non-profit board of directors, and they provided and paid a couple of part-time employees to us as job training for the employees.

http://www.goodwill.org/uncategorized/t ... il-rumors/

[Thoughtful]

I donate to my local hospital auxiliary thrift shop, and my local domestic violence advocates.

Living outside UT, I know members who drive their junk to UT to donate to DI.

I have used GW, but feel there are better options.

[crossmyheart]

I live outside the morridor but highly recommend donating to actual homeless shelters. They all either run a donation collection or directly receive benefits from one. Call them up and ask. They provide jobs to the homeless to sort the items and then use the items to set them up in an apartment with furniture and clothing. Anything they cant use for their homeless population is then sold in a re-sale shop run by the shelter.

Working in law enforcement- I see a lot of this up front and can vouch for the benefits of donating to a local shelter.

I will say, Goodwill runs a temp agency out of most of their larger operations and they help homeless and felons find work. Despite all of the bad publicity about their CEO's salary- they do have boots on the ground truly helping people in need.

[Hermey]

As for DI, my neighbor (who is also the SP) runs a DI location. He said that DI takes in enough money from "rag" sales to pay the entire operating costs of DI. Everything else they generate in terms of sales is simply icing on the cake.

[DPRoberts]

And DI cut back hours on all their employees so they wouldn't have to provide health insurance under the ACA. Can't have those people we are teaching job skills cut into our margins /s

[alas]

In Utah, DI’s does give to the homeless, *without a bishop’s order.* At the agency where I used to work, there was a woman who signed for DI’s orders for our homeless battered women, homeless families, homeless women, and anyone else who came through our DV/homeless shelter. There was also the DV/ homeless shelter, a rape crisis center (needed clothing for the women to go home from the hospital in because the police kept all clothing for evidence), a closet for professional clothing for women returning to the workforce, and the men’s DV shelter (yup we had shelter for battered men too) that you could donate to, and anything donated there that was not used went to the DI’s. So, we had a real good working relationship with DI’s and anything donated to one, might end up helping the other. So, we donated things that we knew the shelter needed directly to them, and household items that they had no way to store anyway went to the DI’s. Ian sure that DI’s has this kind of working relationship with other homeless and DV shelters. So, seriously, don’t dis DI because they don’t help anyone but Mormons. Women with children who had escaped a battering relationship and lost everything were really helped by DI’s.

[Cnsl1]

I was a bit disappointed with one DI that would only employ some disabled persons for no more than three months. If the people did not find another job in that interim they were jobless. No offer or efforts to help them find jobs or provide any real job training applicable to what they could do, and no real job skill assessment. I was surprised what little DI did for disabled LDS people, or at least those I was aware of.

[alas]

I was a bit disappointed with one DI that would only employ some $disabled persons for no more than three months. If the people did not find another job in that interim they were jobless. No offer or efforts to help them find jobs or provide any real job training applicable to what they could do, and no real job skill assessment. I was surprised what little DI did for disabled LDS people, or at least those I was aware of.

I had one friend who needed a sheltered workshop kind of job for life. He worked at DI’s until they changed their policy to only giving disabled people a job for a few months. Then they fired him at it just crushed him. He was unable to get a job elsewhere and ended up on welfare. I lost contact with him, but as long as I knew him, he never regained the self respect he had working for DI.

My brother is disabled and the government finds it cheaper to had him money than find sheltered workshops for the disabled. My brother can work in the right environment. But years ago, the government quit working with employers to get them to hire the disabled, so my brother got fired from his job. He went into a depressed funk over it. But he is so anti Mormon, he won’t even shop at DI.


The thing conservatives don’t understand when they want “private charity” to take care of the poor and disabled is that private charity doesn’t. DI’s is good for normal people who are in some kind of transitional state, like immigrants. But for the marginal, those not so disabled that they cannot work, but who are going to need a sheltered workplace for life, DI’s is worthless, and our government listeners to the conservatives who think you work hard for what you have and refuse to “coddle” people like my friend and brother who can work, given the right situation, but in today’s cutthroat environment, nobody is going to hire without some special incentive.

[Cnsl1]

My SIL was similar case. Disabled but very capable of doing many things quite well when given time, support, etc. She loved her job at DI, but was cut suddenly after a few months. The reason given was that their policy was only to employ temporarily while the disabled person received training. Then what? A disability check and no job. These people need a job, a purpose, a connection to others through work. I know this is a larger cultural problem but it's irritating that the church, with all it's resources, can't do better in the area of helping to provide people like this, their own disabled members, with sheltered employment when there is a system already in place.

I'm sure there are other pieces to the puzzle, so if anyone out there knows why DI does this, weigh in with explainations.