Giving Back to Society
In life, there are those companies and individuals which “talk the talk” about how to help those in need and to make our world a better place, and then there are those who do something to make it happen. For the past four decades, Goodwill Communications has been distributing public service campaigns to improve the human condition, but that is what we do professionally – how we earn our living. Beyond that, we have contributed our time and resources pro-bono on several important social issues as described below.
SafeRide America & the Jordan Wachtell Foundation
Goodwill Communications has a long history of working on highway safety issues. Our latest pro-bono work is on behalf of SafeRide America (SRA) and the Jordan Wachtell Foundation.
SafeRide America prevents impaired driving by providing professional, pre-screened drivers to get both impaired drivers and their cars home safely.
The Wachtell Foundation was created to honor Jordan Wachtell, a successful business executive who was killed by a drunk driver. We wrote the copy and created the site architecture for the Wachtell Foundation website which can be viewed at: www.jordanwachtellfoundation.org
We helped SRA promote their new chapter in Boca Raton, Florida which resulted in a news clip on WPTV. It can be viewed here. We were also mentioned in a feature story in the Sun-Sentinel newspaper, the second largest in the state of Florida.
iAM ABLE Fitness
Another one of our Good Causes initiatives is a public education campaign on behalf of iAm Able Fitness, a South Florida non-profit exercise facility that helps people with spinal cord injuries regain their strength and mobility.
By raising public awareness of spinal cord injuries and paralysis, we helped iAm Able Fitness in building a community to support their work, by assembling a team of partners to help them create a TV PSA in English and Spanish at no cost. You can view the TV PSA at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=0y0JrrR0orw
Supporting Our Troops
The principal of our firm served in the U.S. Army during the Cuban missile crisis – the only time America went to DEFCON2 since the Second World War. During this time he served on a missile base less than 100 miles from the Communist border. This experience forged a bond with his fellow soldiers who were treated very badly as they came back from Viet Nam. Largely due to these experiences, Goodwill Communications has a 40-year history of supporting our veterans. On a pro-bono basis we wrote, produced and distributed a TV PSA entitled “Dedication” showing the important work and sacrifices made by our armed forces.
The American Legion
We provided pro-bono consulting services to one of the largest veteran support organizations in the country – The American Legion. First, our principal made a presentation titled: “Building a Brand Image for the American Legion” to the Legion’s Public Relations Commission, outlining the steps the Legion should take to expand public awareness of their organization. Additionally we wrote an article titled: “How to Place PSAs in Your Community” that was published in the Legion’s PR Handbook distributed to 14,000 of their local posts throughout the country.
Operation Not Forgotten
ONF is a program of Life Renewed International, an all-volunteer non-profit organization which helps veterans and their families achieve a better quality of life working through peer-support groups called Vet Life Communities. We have provided a variety of pro-bono services to ONF including creating a newsletter to promote their programs; distributing their TV PSA to the media via our CablePAK distribution service; creating a poster to be placed in outdoor venues and ongoing marketing/public education consulting services.
Creating a Blood Bank in Panama
In Panama, if you get in an accident where there is significant loss of blood, the patient has to get their family or someone with the same blood type to come to the hospital to donate blood. If that does not happen, the patient most often dies, because there is no blood bank from which blood can be withdrawn.
Obviously this is a horrible situation, particularly for those patients who do not have relatives, or for some reason, those relatives cannot be located. Perhaps worse, typically tainted blood and medical waste is buried in landfills where infected blood or waste can leach into the water aquifers. If that happens, it can lead to a medical disaster.
We were asked by a company called AST/Panama to help them create a blood bank network and our role was to help AST create a public education campaign to publicize the problem and help provide a viable solution.
Our Founder, Bill Goodwill, travelled to Panama three times meeting business executives, legislators who supported the initiative, prospective marketing partners and the media. We held a press conference to create public awareness for the program modeled after the American Red Cross. To view the presentation made by Bill Goodwill at the press conference go to: https://www.goodwillpanamapresentation.com
The AngelCare Haiti TV PSA Campaign
Perhaps the most gratifying effort in which we have been involved is a probono TV PSA campaign we launched to help the children of Haiti after a disastrous earthquake turned their world upside down in mid-January of 2010. We not only provided our distribution services free of charge; we asked all our suppliers to do the same – those who design and print the collateral materials, duplicate the tapes sent to media, along with creating a greatly improved website for the organization.
The “Don’t Go There” TV PSA Campaign
While the number of fatalities in teenage drunk-driving crashes has declined in recent years, even the loss of a single life is a tragedy if it could be prevented.
Our Founder has been involved with anti-drunk driving efforts for many years, and to our company, it is a very important issue. We distributed a PSA campaign to alert young people against drinking and driving called “Don’t Go There,” via our CablePAK distribution service on a probono basis. This is a message that everyone should heed, not just youngsters: If you drink and drive, eventually disaster is going to knock on your door