NFL and shopgoodwill.com Join Forces to Serve Those Who Served Our Country

Written by Frank Talarico Jr. – Huffington Post, November 10, 2017

Everyone says they want to help our veterans. The Retired NFL Players Congress is putting their money where their mouth guard is.

The Congress recently agreed to team-up with us at Goodwill of Orange County to auction exclusive memorabilia on our shopgoodwill.com, with much of the money raised going to support the Goodwill of Orange County’s Tierney Center for Veteran Services, California’s largest nonprofit veteran services organization.

I love stories like these. Innovative ideas put to work in service of those who served our country. The partnership illustrates what every one of us can do, on some level: take the resources available to us, mix in a bit of creativity and add a lot of resolve to help former service members and their families locate the resources and services they need, including housing, job placement, education, and wellness.

By supplying signed jerseys, unique experiences with current and retired football stars, game-worn items, and other exclusive memorabilia for auction on shopgoodwill.com, the Congress will improve the quality of life and eliminate barriers to work—and independence—for thousands of our nation’s veterans.

We have already seen how powerful business partnerships can be in helping our nation’s greatest heroes. In its first year, the Tierney Center served more than 10,000 veterans. When we started out in 2016, the average wage of a Tierney-trained veteran was $13 an hour. Now it is now $27-an-hour, and those veterans are being placed in some of the largest and most high-profile companies in the region, including Boeing, Hilton, and NASA.

That increase is just one small example of how we’re making an impact through our public education program that focuses on the benefits of hiring veterans and our partnerships with a growing number of outstanding companies who are reaping the benefits of adding service-minded people to their teams.

By engaging retired NFL and other professional athletes, we will be able to go even wider. Forty percent of the sports memorabilia sales will go directly to the Tierney Center and another 40 percent will fund the Congress’ effort to serve the homeless veteran population, providing outreach services, housing assistance and more. The remaining 20 percent will support wellness services for former NFL players with catastrophic injuries.

In announcing the partnership, Ron Brown, a member of the Congress’ Executive Committee and the spearhead behind this collaboration (as well as a gold-medal sprinter and retired Los Angeles Rams wide receiver) said the partnership speaks to the NFL’s commitment to veterans.

“We want to ensure men and women who sacrificed so much to provide our freedom get everything they need to live healthy and rewarding civilian lives,” he said at the October 27th Goodwill Gala. He was joined by other notable professional athletes, including former Los Angeles Lakers Byron Scott and A.C. Green, as well as the Executive Director of the NFL Players’ Congress Bob Grant, President of the NFL Players’ Congress Marvin Cobb and the NBA Alumni President Rick Darnell.

The shopgoodwill.com e-commerce site is the right place to do just that. Having generated more than $500 million in sales since its inception, the site was recently ranked by LifeWire.com as the second most popular online auction website behind eBay. It is the largest charity auction site in the world. It was started right here and continues to be owned and operated by Goodwill of Orange County. Most important, more than 90 percent of its funds support removing barriers to employment for the disabled, veterans and other groups.

These are challenging times for our country, our military and our veterans, who have a harder time finding work and are more likely to be living with physical or emotional trauma. I applaud the NFL Retired Players Congress for coming together with us through this creative new investment, and I challenge other businesses and non-profit organizations to think of ways to do your part.

Together we can ensure a brighter future for our veterans, the future that they deserve.