Welcome back! As you may know, my goal is to educate and excite you about all that Goodwill does for our community and what it can possibly do for you and/or your business! If this is the first blog you have read in this series, please feel free to see how it all got started from my first entry here.
Last Thursday was the 25th Annual Day of Caring put on by the United Way of Washington County, MD. This event is a catalyst for getting volunteers into the community to donate a full work day of their time to help to a local non-profit. Hundreds of volunteers are deployed around Washington County for this event and, as in years past, Horizon Goodwill was able to host some of these kind, caring individuals.
Nearly 60 employees from First Data arrived at our facilities that morning with about half of them at our corporate office on Pennsylvania Ave and the other half at our facility on North Prospect Street in Downtown Hagerstown, MD. 
The day started with an explanation of our mission and how we go about accomplishing our objectives. As always seems to be the case, they were fascinated by the work that we are doing and the variety of revenue streams that fund our mission. After a brief tour of the facilities, it was time to put them to work! At our corporate facility volunteers helped with a landscaping project and in our donations processing area getting items prepared to be sent to our retail stores. At our downtown facility, they sat with our clients and helped fulfill a contract kitting project.
Watching them interact with our clients was heartwarming. The level of engagement and size of the smiles from both the volunteers and our clients made it clear that the day was a huge success. It goes a long way to reinforce that we are doing a good thing for an underserved population. Everyone involved was proud to be a part of this special day. I would like to say a big thanks to all who helped and to First Data for being a great community partner that made their employee efforts possible. We hope to continue this tradition every year!
Thanks for reading! Please feel free to contact me with questions or comments regarding the blog or what our Business Services division can do for you! bmarks@goodwill-hgi.org