A favorite of thrifting addicts, Halloween costume shoppers and budget-restricted folks, Goodwill is an Arizona resale empire. But has profit lapped conscience?
By Amy Silverman | Illustration by Dan Page
Do me a favor. If you happen to run into my husband anytime soon, please don’t mention the three vintage typewriters, two sets of encyclopedias and I-don’t-know-how-many dinner plates in the back of my car. In my defense, those plates are the Franciscan Desert Rose Ware pattern – and they’re gorgeous.
In my husband’s defense, it’s true that I do already have eight typewriters, piles of encyclopedias and enough plates to cover every square inch of wall space in my house. That’s just the beginning. I’ve got a bin of “Occupied Japan” figurines, a jar of porcelain doll legs, stacks of velvet-lined jewelry boxes, a shelfful of hand-tooled Mexican leather purses, collections of carnival chalk and carnival glass. At this point, it’s safe to say, I am a collector of – collections.
I do not need any of this, obviously. Also, I can’t live without it. My rationale is that thrifting is cheaper than therapy and safer than meds – that dopamine rush is real. And everyone knows it’s not hoarding if your bins have cute chalkboard labels. But lately, I’ve realized that I really am on the verge of critical mass, both literally and figuratively, and it’s got me thinking about why I’m planning my travel schedule around flea markets and realizing that I’ve memorized the layout of most of the antique malls in town.
That’s not even the worst part. I do find treasures at Savers and on Facebook Marketplace, but I have a dirty little secret: Goodwill.
I know, I know. It’s terrible. I’m terrible. For many, Goodwill may seem like a harmless place to shop for bargains. But it’s known in some circles that Goodwill employees do not make a living wage, while executives are rumored to make small fortunes, not a good look for a nonprofit. Even worse, I should really know better because my daughter Sophie has Down syndrome – and Goodwill has a longtime reputation of using a federal legal loophole to pay employees with disabilities even less than minimum wage.
And no, the irony is not lost on me. I thrift as a distraction from the stress of worrying that I’ll never be able to help my adult child find her place in the world in a meaningful way, which includes integrated, competitive employment. She’s two years out of high school; so far, it’s been impossible. And these days it feels like there’s a Goodwill on every corner – beckoning me. More times than I can count, I’ve given Sophie a $10 budget and set her loose in the T-shirt aisle while I browse for vintage cookware. Often, I can’t think of anything else to keep her occupied. She’s got nothing but time these days. (And, as a result, a very large T-shirt collection.)
The perfect flamingo-pink Pyrex baking dish won’t solve any of our problems – but it’ll make me feel better for a few minutes.
Not everyone understands. I’ve learned to hide the telltale price sticker if I post a picture of a particularly good find on Instagram. I don’t talk about my Goodwill habit with friends in the disability community.
But earlier this year, I decided to come clean – and to attempt to answer a question that bugs me every time I pull into a parking lot and feel the rush of anticipation. It’s one thing if you can’t afford to shop elsewhere – no judgment. But for someone like me, who treats thrifting like a sport, just how bad it is to shop at Goodwill?
The first thing you notice when you walk into the Goodwill of Central and Northern Arizona headquarters just off the Black Canyon Freeway at Peoria Avenue is the smell.
“It smells like Goodwill!” I blurt out to Lea Graham, the young public relations representative who meets me at the door. And it does. Like some kind of hopped-up Febreze. I won’t lie, it’s an unpleasant, pushy aroma that lingers in your hair and mouth. But flowery soap is preferable to dirty laundry, the typical thrift store perfume. That Goodwill smell is so pungent, so unmistakable, standing in that lobby I have a Pavlovian response and immediately look around for shelves of glassware.
No such luck. Just an office building. Graham and I take an elevator to the CEO’s office. On the way, Graham asks for my favorite Goodwill store.
I freeze. That’s like asking me to choose my favorite daughter.
Seventh Avenue and Indian School? Thomas and 32nd Street? 51st Avenue and Olive? Southern and McClintock? Guadalupe and Rural? 19th Avenue and Camelback?
I mumble that I’m not sure. Graham’s is on Union Hills Drive, she says.
The elevator doors open, and we make our way to a big office where Tim O’Neal, a giant man in a blue pinstripe suit with a Goodwill lapel pin, is waiting. We speak for more than an hour, which is very generous for a guy running a 501(c)(3) nonprofit company that he says takes in a million donated items a day. He’s in charge of quite a few other enterprises as well, I learn.
That Goodwill smell is by design, O’Neal tells me, the result of a lot of market research meant to make the secondhand retail experience pleasant. Initially, Goodwill of Central and Northern Arizona tried a scent used in a Las Vegas casino, “Vegas Sunset,” but that was too strong. Shoppers got headaches; people complained. They switched it up till they got it right. Same goes for the music piped in while you shop, an alchemy of nostalgia and quick-moving pop.
O’Neal grew up at Goodwill, beginning as a donation clerk at 18, he says. After that he worked at other places, but returned to the organization a few years later, when he took a job at Goodwill of Central and Northern Arizona as a district manager. Three months in, he was the vice president of retail operations.
Decades later, he’s running the organization. Once on the verge of disappearing altogether, Goodwill of Central and Northern Arizona is now one of the largest Goodwill conglomerates in the country – currently operating 112 stores, with another 100 slated to open in the next decade, O’Neal says. (By contrast, Savers, another thrift chain, operates eight stores in Arizona.)
Nationally, there are about 4,000 Goodwill stores, but each region operates on its own – there’s some oversight from Goodwill Industries International, but for the most part, O’Neal and his board are pretty
autonomous.
I admit to him why I am there, that I’m not sure whether I should feel guilty about shopping at Goodwill.
Unfazed, O’Neal nods. He points to his lapel pin.
“The best thing about us is that little logo. The worst thing about us is that little logo. And that’s one of the challenges we face… if you’re a small Goodwill in Timbuktu and you do something stupid, somebody like you is gonna call us here,” O’Neal says. “So, the good thing is we go put that little logo on an empty building and tomorrow donations will be waiting under the sign. But it comes with all that damage, too.”
That damage he’s referring to is workplace accidents in other states and high-paid executives (more on that later), but mostly, Goodwill’s bad reputation is related to the subminimum wage.
That’s not fair, O’Neal says. Not now, anyway. He offers some history.
“Goodwill started in 1902 by a Methodist minister, and its original purpose – people think it was always to serve people with disabilities. It wasn’t really originally for that,” O’Neal says.
“The idea was to help the poorest and the most impoverished people in the Boston area get back on their feet. And so, the way that he did it, the founder Edgar Helms, is he’d go door to door and he’d ask people if they had anything they didn’t want any longer.”
I’ve read that Helms and his congregants took the donations and hired impoverished people to repair appliances and mend clothing. The individuals kept the items, or they were given to others.
After World War II, faced with veterans in need, Goodwill began to ask, “How do you help somebody that’s got a disability to get back on their feet?” And that, O’Neal says, is what led to sheltered workshops, settings where people with disabilities are segregated and given small tasks – and paid less than minimum wage. Sometimes pennies an hour.
“None of it really worked,” he says. “When you go to a sheltered workshop, there are people that need that kind of environment, but most people, they need to be integrated.”
When he first arrived in Arizona, O’Neal says, he observed shelter workshop employees putting together welcome kits for a cable TV company. But he estimates it’s been 15 years or so since Goodwill of Central and Northern Arizona paid subminimum wage.
That’s good. But it’s also meant a shift away from prioritizing employment for people with disabilities.
I feel my face get hot. I’d always imagined that Goodwill’s career services program was targeted to people like Sophie. Maybe they didn’t do it well – but at least they tried.
People with disabilities aren’t excluded, O’Neal says, but no, Goodwill hasn’t leaned into that work for a long time.
In fact, I later learned, this is not unusual for Goodwill. Most of the regional organizations have abandoned sheltered workshops and an empahsis on people with disabilities.
Goodwill of Central and Northern Arizona is focused on employment services and job placement for the general population. O’Neal tells me I really need to participate the next time they do a “poverty simulation.”
(That sounded fraught and possibly not very respectful, but I just smiled and nodded.)
And through related entities, this Goodwill organization has created a cottage industry devoted to education.
O’Neal is not just CEO of Goodwill. He recently became CEO of another organization, Thrive, which – among other things – operates microschools with funding from Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, including one•n•ten’s school that serves students from the LGBTQ+ community.
A few years ago, O’Neal says, Goodwill invested “seven figures” into a lobbying campaign to change state law to allow for an Arizona student to receive a high school diploma after their 22nd birthday. It took more than one try to get a bill signed into law. The argument is that a diploma is preferable to the only other option at the time, a GED. Thrive now operates a charter high school for adults that offers services including transportation and childcare.
In the abstract, at least, it’s hard to argue with any of that, feelings about the state’s ESA program aside. But I had one more awkward question.
Don’t worry about it, O’Neal tells me when I admit I feel uncomfortable. People ask about his salary all the time. He’s more than happy to share. In fact, he says, he’s pretty sure he’s the highest paid nonprofit CEO in the state. He’s proud.
As CEO of Goodwill of Central and Northern Arizona, O’Neal earned a base salary of $493,500 in 2023, according to the organization. If he reached revenue goals, he received another 40 percent of his base salary. That means another $197,400, for a total of $690,900.
As CEO of Thrive, he was paid a base salary of $494,025 with an annual incentive of 15 percent, another $74,103, for a total of $568,128.
So, O’Neal – who works at the pleasure of a six-person board of directors, including two attorneys, a real estate executive and a financial planner – made $1,259,028 in 2023, assuming he hit his goals.
That doesn’t include expenses, which the organizations declined to provide, or a “long-term incentive” program that offers additional money if those goals are reached.
Although there is quite a bit of overlap on the Goodwill and Thrive executive teams, O’Neal says he’s the only one receiving salaries from both entities. Thrive is a taxable nonprofit, which means its disclosure requirements are not as stringent as Goodwill’s, a 501(c)(3) non-profit.
By comparison, a hospital CEO in Arizona might make 20 times that amount. Arizona State University president Michael Crow makes considerably less – about $834,000 in 2023.
Bottom line, O’Neal makes a lot of money – particularly when compared with most of his employees. A starting salary for a front-of-the-store Goodwill retail employee in metro Phoenix is $14.50 an hour, 15 cents more than minimum wage.
In February of this year, MIT estimated that a livable wage for a single adult with no children is $24.69 an hour.
That’s a pretty big gap.
So, where does this leave Sophie – and me? What about my question? I tell O’Neal when we meet that, unlike a lot of other thrifters I know, I’m not bothered by Goodwill’s increasing prices. As long as you’re doing good things with the money, I say, I’m OK with it. Sometimes I don’t even bother to use my 20 percent off coupon you can sign up to receive monthly.
As with many situations in life, I suppose, I’m left holding a mixed bag. Free childcare and transportation for someone looking to better themselves with a high school diploma? It’s hard to complain about that. And while I worry that segregating kids who identify as LGBTQ+ in a private school funded with public dollars might not be the best course of action, I can see how like minds could differ.
Clearly, O’Neal is a powerhouse – in the last decade Goodwill of Central and Northern Arizona’s revenues went from a little more than $100 million to $275 million.
But how can you rationalize paying just above minimum wage when you earn well over a million dollars a year? And when the profits from your nonprofit company go into job-training programs?
It makes me feel a little bad about all those beautiful old Pyrex bowls on my kitchen shelves.
Even if Goodwill did have a program that focused specifically on employment for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, there still likely wouldn’t be anything for Sophie.
She wants to be a dance teacher, or to perform with a professional company. She’s not so interested in being around other people with disabilities. I blame myself – and the public school system – for raising her expectations. She was always mainstreamed in school, and while she didn’t make the cheer squad, she did get cast in the school musical and was placed in advanced dance. She didn’t always get what she wanted, but she was included in a lot of meaningful ways.
Then Sophie graduated from high school, and the bottom of her universe fell out. There is no mainstreaming in the real world. Every employment option we’ve chased has led to a dead end.
At the moment, Sophie doesn’t even earn subminimum wage. That would be a step up from her current situation – “working” four hours a week at a friend’s vintage boutique. It’s more caregiving than anything else.
I know Sophie knows the truth – but we don’t ever talk about it.
I feel terrible about this. I promise myself it’s not forever. We fill the rest of Sophie’s time with trips to the gym and dance classes at a local community college. She performs with a local theater troupe for adults with disabilities, the one exception to her “no one else with disabilities” rule.
It’s a good life, but I would love for Sophie to find employment – where she gets paid, interacts with her community and takes pride in a job well done.
She’s not alone in her challenge.
The state estimates that the population of people with IDD in Arizona is around 150,000. About a third of those receive significant government support. And yet during fiscal year 2023, only 738 of those 50,000 or so were referred to the state’s vocational rehabilitation program for employment assistance. Only 250 qualified for the services. And of those, 115 actually found jobs with competitive salaries.
Sophie is one of the 250 who qualified. Unfortunately, the state’s voc rehab program lived up to its terrible reputation, and while the representatives were nice, no one was at all equipped to help Sophie find fulfilling employment.
I hate that Goodwill has all but abandoned this population. I get that sheltered workshops are terrible – but was the only other option to turn to other communities?
And while Goodwill of Central and Northern Arizona has abandoned the subminimum wage, others here haven’t.
There are 23 organizations in the state that have government authorization to pay subminimum wage, usually in sheltered workshop settings alongside others with disabilities – meaning the employment is neither competitive nor integrated. Current federal stats reflect that a few hundred Arizonans are employed in this way, by organizations like Civitan and Gompers.
To make any kind of difference, Arizona would need to make the subminimum wage illegal, says Doug Crandell, the author of the 2022 book Twenty-Two Cents an Hour: Disability Rights and the Fight to End Subminimum Wages.
“It really doesn’t matter if a few organizations in a state decide they aren’t going to go in that direction anymore. If a state doesn’t pass a ban, it lowers the expectations for everyone – lawmakers, community members and taxpayers,” Crandell says.
And just getting rid of the subminimum wage isn’t enough, he adds. The world needs to double down on finding meaningful work for this population. Instead of moving from not-great subminimum wage jobs to competitive employment, people with intellectual disabilities are landing in day programs that can feel a lot like babysitting. Or warehousing.
Crandell told me about a report released earlier this year by the think tank New America, which ranked Arizona 42nd among states for its efforts to limit the subminimum wage. I can’t help but wonder what would happen if O’Neal set his sights – and his organizations’ resources – on fixing that.
I was thinking about it as I took a break from writing this story and headed – where else – to a Goodwill. I took a deep, soapy breath and grabbed a cart, heading first to the “surprise bags” hanging on the wall, as I always do. The parking lot was full, as was the store. It took me a minute to focus on the music playing, then I couldn’t stop laughing.
“I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” by U2.
Well, that’s true, I thought as I examined a beautiful Fire King bowl I had no business buying. (I bought it.)
I’m not ready to completely give up shopping at Goodwill. But I’ll definitely be using my 20 percent coupon from now on.
