Goodwill Omaha Update: A Message From Our CEO

Greetings from all of us at Goodwill Omaha,

I hope this finds all of you and your families healthy and safe as we begin our fourth week of sheltering in place and social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic. As you probably know, our retail stores, donation centers and training centers remain temporarily closed so our employees, customers and program participants can comply with health directives to stay home and adhere to social distancing guidelines. At this time, we are observing Governor Ricketts’ extension of Nebraska’s directed health measure (DHM), and we tentatively plan to reopen on or around May 11, unless the governor extends or shortens the DHM.

These days, we are taking every opportunity we can to celebrate, so we are excited to share a few bright spots with you! We’ve partnered with local dry-cleaning company Max I. Walker in response to Creighton medical students’ medical scrubs drive, which runs through April 25. Max I. Walker cleaned the scrubs — all 761 of them — and we delivered them to Creighton on Wednesday morning. As stewards of the community, we are honored to be able to help our heroes in health care who are fighting the coronavirus on the front lines, and we are grateful to Max I. Walker, another longtime community steward, for their help.

I’m also pleased to announce that we have reopened our e-commerce storefronts and are posting new items every day, so, if you find yourself in need of a Goodwill shopping fix, I encourage you to check out the items we have available online:

·       ShopGoodwill (Omaha)

·       GoodBytes ebay Store

·       Goodwill Omaha Amazon Storefront

And lastly, you may have heard that Goodwill Omaha purchased the Canfield’s building at 8425 W. Center Road in December. We’re renovating the building and will move the Goodwill store currently at 83rd and Spring Street to this location at the end of May. Our GoodBytes store will also move to Canfield’s Plaza, but that may happen in June. Another exciting aspect of this location is that we’re building a Work Experience Training Center, so our shoppers will have another opportunity to see Goodwill’s mission in action right inside the store.

We hope to hold a grand-opening event at the Canfield’s Plaza location later this summer; however, an event will depend on whether the coronavirus threat level, as the safety of our employees and the community is paramount.

The Goodwill Omaha executive team and I continue to monitor and evaluate the situation on a daily basis. We are carefully considering the safety of the community and our employees, as well as balancing the long-term sustainability of Goodwill Omaha. We also continue to seek out additional opportunities for funding and assistance. Unfortunately, the economic relief legislation recently passed applies to businesses and nonprofits with 500 employees or fewer. With nearly 600 employees, we are holding out hope that we will be eligible for upcoming relief packages.

Whether you’re a retail customer, donor, program participant, employee or other supporter of Goodwill Omaha, I want to thank you for standing with us as we determine the best way to move through this difficult time together. Our donation centers are currently closed, so if you have donations, we ask that you please hold on to them for us until we reopen. We can't wait to get back to fully serving all of you!

For the latest information about when our stores and donation centers will reopen and other information and news, please follow us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, or check our website. Please take care of one another. We’ll see each other soon!
 

Sincerely,

Tobi Mathouser

President & COO

Goodwill Industries, Inc., Omaha