Goodwill's woes not due to lack of revenue
By
Sue-Ann Levy, Toronto Sun
First posted: Sunday, February 07, 2016 03:52 PM EST | Updated: Sunday, February 07, 2016 03:59 PM EST
TORONTO - Amid crocodile tears, Keiko Nakamura — CEO for Goodwill of Toronto, Eastern, Central and Northern Ontario (TECNO) — claimed last month that a “cash flow crisis” forced her operation to shut down and put 430 people out of work.
She said Goodwill was strapped for donations and suffering under the weight of high GTA rents.
Now they don’t even have a name. Late Friday, Goodwill International issued a statement indicating they decided to disaffiliate Goodwill TECNO from membership — noting the shuttering of 16 stores and 10 donation centres and the board’s decision to resign amounted to “egregious acts.”
After trying to reach Nakamura for days, she sent me an e-mail late Friday indicating she can’t talk because the Goodwill International decision “changes the landscape.”
If Nakamura’s operation was indeed strapped for cash, according to a Toronto Sun investigation, it wasn’t due to a lack of revenue or a lack of donations, or even a lack of affordable space.
Footage provided to the Sun from early January shows their 21,000-square-foot Midwest Rd. warehouse packed to the rafters with skids of donations. Minutes of Goodwill’s Community Partnership and Engagement Committee from last March indicate they were the “partner of choice” with the City of Toronto’s Environment days and had just signed a deal with 1-800-GOTJUNK in the GTA to divert “usable” items to their drop-off depots.
According to information provided by Noelle Broughton, of Peel Region, for at least 10 years, Goodwill has operated the reuse store at Chrysler Dr. in Brampton as well as three other drop-off sites. Boughton indicated that over a 10-year period, Peel Region received approximately $33,000 (or about $3,000 per year) from Goodwill for use of the four locations.
A Goodwill insider says Nakamura hired Gladys Okine away from Toronto Community Housing Corp. to act as the organization’s unofficial grant-getter and go after “every free dollar that exists.”
In addition to grants, totalling $1.7 million from the Ministry of Community and Social Services, and nearly $2 million from the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities, Goodwill accessed money from the Ontario Trillium Foundation and the George Cedric Metcalf Foundation, a private family foundation.
Adriana Beemans, of the Metcalf Foundation, confirmed they approved a $97,481 grant to Goodwill over two years “to increase the employability prospects of low-income workers through the design and implementation of sector specific career ladders.”
She said the first portion, or $65,941, was released in 2015 but the remainder of the funds will not be released due to Goodwill’s current status.
“We have not as yet managed to reach anyone at Goodwill to discuss the situation,” she said.
Goodwill’s grant from the Trillium Foundation was $132,700, awarded over 24 months “to develop and implement a volunteer service program,” says spokesman Ana Ariyadasa.
She says all the funds were disbursed as of May of last year and last summer “everything was fine” — that Goodwill reported 255 people as having “enhanced capacity of increased health and well-being” and 296 people “felt more connected to their community” as a result of the money given to them by Trillium (whatever the heck that means.)
Ariyadasa says the final report was due to be submitted by Goodwill on Jan. 25 and they have “contacted Goodwill on several occasions but have not heard back from them.”
RENEW THE GOOD
The effort is called Renew The Good.
But for those who have donated cash to help the 430 people left without a job or severance when Goodwill shut its doors on Jan. 18, will it be a case of throwing good money after bad?
According to the Renew the Good effort website, some 148 people have contributed a total of $104,575.
But it’s anybody’s guess which employees will actually get the money — and who decides on the lucky recipients.
After sending questions to an anonymous e-mail address last week, I learned that Renew The Good is being managed by 15 former Goodwill management employees headed up by the senior director of donations, Gladys Okine.
Okine started her own non-profit foundation in 2010 called Sesheme, whose website was wiped clean on Jan. 16 — three days before all information on Goodwill’s website was removed, never to be found.
Sesheme is not a registered charity with the Canada Revenue Agency. It is just one of nearly 60,000 non-profit corporations governed by the Ontario Corporations Act.
The anonymous e-mail address indicated that the trustee and advisor for Renew the Good is the Working Women Community Centre. There was no indication the trustee is a lawyer.
Mary Stinson, who worked as Okine’s executive assistant for 10 months, said her boss expected all of her employees to follow the rules when it came to filing expenses or obtaining cash advances, but never stuck to them herself.
For example, says Stinson, contrary to protocol — which stipulated that all expenses be documented and submitted to accounting for reimbursement — Okine was constantly dipping into the petty cash box (which contained $1,500) for cash to cover her meal expenses and for money to go to the U.S., where she was taking an MBA at the University of Phoenix on a Goodwill International scholarship program. Stinson said even though Okine provided invoices, the petty cash box was to be used for “sundry expenses” only.
Repeated efforts to reach Okine through Strategy Corp. public relations consultant Emily Naddaf and through Renew the Good were unsuccessful.
But according to an e-mail from Okine to selected former Goodwill employees, obtained by the Toronto Sun, the plan is to distribute the Renew the Good funds — starting the week of Feb. 8.
Okine indicates 40% of the money will go to supported employees (those with development or other disabilities), 5% to self-referred individuals with “hardships” and 45% to part-time and full-time staff “based on demonstrated need.”
She didn’t indicate who would get the remaining 10%.
Asked whether it was a conflict of interest for Okine to be running Renew the Good — given that she operates her own foundation — the anonymous Team Renew respondent indicated that the unnamed trustee and the unnamed members of Team Renew do not believe there is a conflict.
“The aims of Sesheme and Renew the Good are not incompatible ... And no team member has independent decision making authority,” the unnamed respondent said.
POVERTY INDUSTRY'S REVOLVING DOOR
The ties between TCHC and Goodwill Industries of Toronto run deep. Here is a list of staff who have worked at both TCHC and Goodwill in the past 10 years and their jobs:
Keiko Nakamura
- TCHC: 2006-2011, COO and CEO
- Goodwill Industries: Late 2011-2016, CEO
Gladys Okine
- TCHC: 2007-2012, manager of community economic development
- Goodwill Industries: 2012-present, senior director, mission advancement/donations and donor relations
Mitzie Hunter (MPP)
- Goodwill Industries: 2002-2009, v-p external relations and corporate secretary
- TCHC: 2009-early 2012, CAO
Len Koroneos
- TCHC: 2010-2012, CFO and acting CEO (left with a $461Gs-$600Gs package)
- Goodwill: July 2015-present, consulting services
Louisa Muffo-Magalhaes
- TCHC: 2002-early 2013, human resources consultant
- Goodwill: Early 2013-present, manager, HR and organizational development
Steve Curic
- TCHC: 2013-2014, HR associate
- Goodwill: 2014-present, senior adviser, HR
Jaemar Ivey
- TCHC: 2014-2015, admin assistant to director, resident access and support
- Goodwill: March-September 2015, co-ordinator people strategy
- TCHC: 2015-present, tenant services co-ordinator
Rajesh Kanhai
- TCHC: 2008-2010, manager community engagement
- Goodwill: September 2014-present, director strategy and operational effectiveness
Julet Allen
- TCHC: 1998-2013, youth specialist, children and youth manager, community health manager
- Goodwill: 2014-present, clinical case manager
David Chu
- Housing Services Corporation: 2004-2012 director, operations and CFO (While at HSC, David’s father, Gordon, worked with Keiko Nakamura at TCHC)
- Goodwill: 2012-2015, vice-president business services
sue-ann.levy@sunmedia.ca
Goodwill's woes not due to lack of revenue | Levy | Toronto & GTA | News | Toron
2014 report raved about Goodwill TECNO
By
Sue-Ann Levy, Toronto Sun
First posted: Sunday, February 07, 2016 04:02 PM EST | Updated: Sunday, February 07, 2016 06:29 PM EST
TORONTO - She came in for a little more than one day from Goodwill Industries International and left with an armful of parting gifts, sources say.
When all was said and done, Margaret O’Brien, senior director of organizational strengthening and accreditation, gave Goodwill Industries of Toronto, Eastern, Central and Northern Ontario (TECNO) a glowing report.
According to the 13-page December 2014 report, obtained by the Toronto Sun, CEO Keiko Nakamura’s Goodwill operation met 100% of the qualifying standards, 94.3% of the scored standards and was recertified for another three years to the end of 2018.
In that report, O’Brien raved that there is an organizational code of ethics in place, that monthly financial reports are generated; that the organization had demonstrated “commitment to good human resources practices”; and that programs “appear to be adequately staffed and supervised.”
Yet, late Friday, following numerous attempts to get a statement from Goodwill International, Beth Perell, vice-president of communications and information management, sent word that the board decided to disaffiliate from Goodwill TECNO.
A Goodwill insider, who was there during the review, says the certification process is highly “detailed,” comprising 120 pages of guidelines. Yet “she didn’t go through” the checks and balances as one should, the source said, meeting only with seven top brass. She did not talk to employees on the floor or check any employee files, which “were a total mess” (half of them missing and others out of date).
The source says stores O’Brien visited were “preselected” by Nakamura and “staged” so they were full of new goods and fully staffed.
“There were areas that we actually failed and Margaret (O’Brien) could have stopped them (the Goodwill brass) then,” the source said.
The source said O’Brien left by taxi to the airport with three bags of goodies in tow, one of the gifts a bottle of Crown Royal “pulled out and shown to her.” Staff were led to believe they were for her retirement, the source said.
When I first reached O’Brien by phone in Rockville, Maryland, last week, she tried to send me to a public relations person, after which the line went dead. After sending her two e-mails, Perell wrote back indicating the review only addressed “program processes and delivery,” not Goodwill’s finances, and the names of those O’Brien interviewed can’t be shared “for privacy” reasons.
Perell said O’Brien only left with a “small bottle of ice wine and a T-shirt” as souvenirs of her visit to Ontario.
2014 report raved about Goodwill TECNO | Toronto & GTA | News | Toronto Sun
