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.
