Goodwill Industries of the Greater East Bay, a nonprofit founded in 1919, provides job training, employment experience and life skills, enabling disadvantaged and disabled individuals to achieve self-sufficiency. We do this through financially sound community-based businesses that provide vital vocational services to our community. We serve thousands of individuals and families every year, and placed 1,419 people into competitive employment in 2005.

We run our programs through selling donated material in second-hand stores. Because we accept all donations we have large volumes of excess material that we sell in bulk on the open market. Each month we produce around 400,000 pounds of used textiles which is sold by the pound. We are always looking for new buyers of this material. Our textiles come in baled form and each bale weighs approximately 950 pounds.