Doing Good Works: Foster the purpose of business to improve lives and connect communities.
- KLS
- Jun 10
- 20 min read
For the 190th feature of our "Together Talks" campaign, we collaborated with Doing Good Works and Chief Impact Officer, Logan Altman. Founded by Scott Henderson and Jordan Bartlett in 2014, Doing Good Works leverages the power of business to change outcomes for young adults who have been impacted by foster care.
"Together Talks" feature # 190: Doing Good Works presented by KLS - Your Trusted Shipping Solutions In The USA
Story of how it was created? What have been the biggest challenges? Goals for upcoming year + Next phase of the company? Share a decision that you made that was detrimental? What is your why?
Story of how it was created?
Doing Good Works was really the idea that we could use business as a force of good to create life-changing outcomes for individuals in the foster system. We began back in 2015, where my two co-founders, Scott and Jordan, they both came from totally separate business worlds. One, my CEO spending 30 years in packaging and supply chain, and my COO spending about 10 years in executive search, two totally different verticals. They had never met each other before, but had on their own terms learned of the really dismal statistics for individuals that are aging out and have aged out in the foster care system.
Only 3% ever graduating with a college degree and 75% ending up at one point homeless and 50% in prison. Those statistics were really alarming and both ended up realizing that that was something that they didn't necessarily feel was right. Both having their own business background wanted to use business to ultimately help to enact that change. And the reason they ended up finding out about the statistics was vicariously through other people. Neither of them had direct experience in the foster care system, but they knew somebody who did.
Our CEO, Scott, his wife volunteered as a court-appointed special advocate or a CASA here in Orange County, California, and was the legal representation for a young gal who was navigating the system. Any educational decisions, financial decisions, his wife would come alongside and represent this individual. He would hear the real struggles that this young gal has had and was quite disappointed to learn that the statistics that his wife had shared were indeed true. He started to get that tug on his heart in terms of figuring out what that next step for him would look like.
On the flip side, my COO, Jordan, out in Florida at the time had received a Facebook message from a gal who said "Hi Jordan, you don't know me, but I'm actually your sister and while you were adopted, I was not. I ended up in foster care." One, he learned that he had a sister, but two, he learned that his sister's life experience was vastly different than his. He was very fortunate to have been adopted, whereas his sister was not. For him, it then became very personal to look at what did the foster care system look like and how did she navigate that, whereas he was on the outside and had no idea because he was fortunate enough to be adopted.
How the two ended up meeting and ultimately forming Doing Good Works was a mutual friend of theirs, was a very well-known individual here in Orange County that was involved in a nonprofit called the Royal Family Kids Camp. Royal Family Kids Camp is a national nonprofit that brings together kids in the foster system to have a week at camp, and it's an amazing time for them to be able to get away and focus on fun. They were both invited to a gala here in Orange County through this same mutual friend who ended up connecting them and both hit it off immediately and said that they don't feel right sitting back and seeing the statistics continue to go the way that they are. Both also had enough business practice to make the decision that if they were going to jump in, they weren't going to form a nonprofit and fight over those grants and donation dollars that so many wonderful nonprofits in our community were already really working hard towards. But the idea of being a self-funded business was really enticing, and that was where the idea of creating a social enterprise struck both of them in saying that let's take what we know.
They know business very well between the two of them, you know, 40 plus years in the world, and use a medium to fund the mission. That way it was self-funding and then ultimately creating those outcomes. The idea behind brand marketing, brand activation, the promotional products industry was that Jordan had done some research, and it was a $28 billion industry that everybody could play a role in supporting the mission. Whether you're a small nonprofit, a Fortune 500, you're here in California or out in New York or Chicago, everybody needs branded merch. And if we could help offset maybe about 10% of the revenue and support it back into creating outcome changes, then that was how we were going to come alongside a lot of those nonprofits and those incredible groups that were working directly with the youth.
My involvement began at that infant stage. I was kind of three in command, if you will, where Scott and Jordan realized they needed somebody who had that background, who knew brand marketing and brand advertising in a way that could keep things competitive and showcase a great experience. I was recruited by the two of them. I had spent about seven, eight years in the industry up at that point and wasn't excited about it. I was doing a great job of working for various distributorships and proprietorships in brand marketing, but I wasn't feeling really excited about where the industry was headed. I was looking to exit at the same time a mutual friend of ours introduced me to Scott and Jordan and said, "they're using what you know really well to create outcome changes for kids in the foster system". I said I at least owe them a couple of Starbucks runs. We did that early part of 2015, and I was sold with the idea of helping businesses and nonprofits use their marketing dollars to create social impact.
I came on board and was kind of the category expert as that third in command. This is really how we began then funding that avenue was now kind of created through the brand marketing. But then it became, how are we going to actually make change? We hired a gal very early on that was an exec at Disney to help us with connecting young people that have aged out of the system to jobs. We thought that a staffing model was going to be the way to go when we first began. Amy, who's now our CFO and also our career architect, came on and immediately helped us to start connecting young people in Southern California to jobs.
We were seeing that it was so fun and it was working and these young people were getting jobs. But then at the career fairs that we'd hold a week later, we'd have those same young people come back and say they need another job. And we said, wait we just got you a job, "What happened?" They would tell us they an altercation with the boss and needed a new job. That became a common denominator with all of the young people that we were placing at this point. Very infant stages of our organization is that it became apparent that there wasn't that direct skill set that had been unfortunately missed throughout the foster system when you're in a critical juncture, to be able to navigate how to not only get out of that, but to create a thriving mindset. Our model then quickly shifted from simply an agency for placing young people in jobs to one that was built around mindset training. Job creation was still a big component of it, but then creating a different mentality, and that kind of helped us to get to where we are today. The trajectory, which we'll talk a little bit further, it became apparent that we needed to address the mindset issues, that we're creating these systematic issues within young people that aged out of the system.
What have been the biggest challenges?
From the mission and the business side, as I mentioned, we had really early on hit the roadblock where we were placing so many incredible people in the job, but they weren't sticking. We had to really make a pivot within our mission efforts to address how we were going to solve that survival mentality, that fight or flight mentality, and shift it over to one of how do we address this and make it sustainable. We tried to do a master class model where we would do the cohort for 16 weeks with individuals who have aged out to come alongside mentors and go through a training course. Our hope and goal was that we were going to get that in the California community colleges that were specifically funded for those in the foster care space, like the Guardian Scholar programs or the Next Step programs here in California. That was hit with excitement from the ground level, but resistance from the state level where funding it was going to be a problem. That stalled us out quite a bit, and we ended up having to find a new avenue that was going to create sustainable change for individuals in the system.
It took us a lot of research. A lot of trial and error, really, honestly, about 10 years to get to the point of where we realized that the big two common denominators that individuals who have aged out really need, those common denominators are resources and community. And I tell you, when it took us 10 years, it really did take us 10 years to get to the point of figuring out how we really address this that creates sustainable and scalable change. Through that, that's how our nonprofit Foster Greatness was born. We understood and addressed the need for resources in a singular place, as well as a strong, connected community of individuals with lived experience in the system. And that could be in collaboration and in community with other lived experience individuals in one place. We tried to do some research, and there wasn't anything out there specifically that had all of that in one place.
We decided we were going to create it. We created an app and a website and a community for individuals that have experienced in the system to be in community with one another, as well as be able to have a singular place to get resources without having to try and navigate Google or the social services system. When you age out of the system, any resources that you had up to that point are gone. The safety nets that you may have had when you're in a group home are gone. You are trying to navigate that by yourself. If you and I were trying to go and ultimately figure out housing and how to be able to get rental assistance, we would be on Google or we would be trying to do it ourselves. Well, try and do that without having had any safety net for the majority of your life. That's where ultimately this is why the system has been broken for so long.
Our platform became the single largest resource hub for individuals with lived experience where, wherever you are in the United States, you can enter in your zip code, type in your specific need and up will populate a vetted list of resources, community groups, advocates, contacts to be able to navigate what that specific need is. Then we take it a step further by having a resource specialist that has been in the lived experience space. So not you and I, but somebody that has been in the system that's navigated it as somebody that can come alongside and help navigate that. Someone who has built that trusted advisor approach. What that did was we learned how to fail in the mission space when it comes to supporting the community. Then we really, at the end of the time, rebounded in terms of being able to figure out how that ultimately can create scalable change. We're in all 50 states and have over 1,500 members in the community over a 10-month span, which has been really, really fun.
As far as our mission or our business side of things, when the pandemic hit, I think that challenge was really exasperated at that point. In our space, brand and merch and events, those all went away. We were thinking about it in March of 2020 where we were sitting around and saying, what does tomorrow even look like if all of the events and everything goes away? How are we going to ultimately stay afloat? We got together, my CEO, my CFO, and my COO, and I kind of sat there and said, we don't know what it looks like tomorrow, but we have a strong need to continue to fund the mission and be that consistency where the rest of the world is not. We made a pact that whatever we were going to do, we were going to provide those same resources and that same level of community that was needed in a time of such uncertainty.
While the world, the event space, the branding was going away, we sat there and we figured out that the need was, what could we do to support those groups continue to stay afloat? We were very fortunate that in that timeframe, we got connected through groups we already were working with on the brand merchandise side who said, "hey, we really need support with masks, with FDA-approved certified masks that for our hospital systems we need support with. We know that you guys have done importing before and strategic sourcing. Is that something you can help out with?" And that ultimately, Sean, became our lifeline in the early part of 2020. Through the balance of that year when everything else went away, we ultimately, if you will, we became a PPE procurement group. That really was tough because you've had a group of people that have no medical experience importing in millions of millions of masks to the tune of 20 million to massive hospital groups across the United States in a way that was, whatever we can do to use our resources, we're going to do it.
In what was the most challenging horizon for our business, being built on events and merch, we realized as a trusted advisor solutions-based agency was now going to be part of our DNA. Since that time, we've made it a real strong desire to say, whatever the need might be for our customers, we're going to come alongside you to support that. Whether you needed masks, whether you need events space, whether you need consulting. That way we're not just a commodity-based group, but we're really a solutions-based agency.
Goals for upcoming year + Next phase of the company?
We've been really fortunate to have been announced on the Inc. 5000 list two times and as a real leaders impact group four times. We actually were recently named Greater Irvine's Business of the Year. But that ultimately has been validating in terms of the work that we're doing, and it's just getting started. We've been in business for 10 years, this is our 10th anniversary this year. And we've learned a lot in the last 10 years about what we should be doing and what we shouldn't be doing.
For our goals, we're at 1,500 plus individuals in our community from the mission standpoint. Our goal is to take that internationally. Last month in April, were out in the UK. we met with Parliament, my CEO and our Director of Affairs from our Foster Greatness team out in the UK talking about the Foster Greatness model, the resource model, because it's not specific here to the United States. The Foster Care System is a global system. It just is called the Care Leavers out in the UK and out in Europe. They have the same struggles that we have here in the United States. The best practices are still trying to be discovered out there as well as it is here.
We are looking to scale fairly quickly. We've got community partners, we've got advocates, we've got the infrastructure, and so that's coming quite quickly because the need is an international need, and that need for resources is international as well. We're really excited because our growth from a mission perspective, if we think about the folks from the foster system as our customers on our mission side, it is now a global customer base. Because we're not in it to try and just keep this here in the United States, we really want to see systematic change affect folks all across the globe. We're really excited, that's our huge plan.
Then to continue to build out the resources and advocacy here in the United States through our partnerships and groups here. 26,000 folks a year, Sean, age out of the foster care system. There are so many individuals that desperately need a community and a place to gather those resources, while trying to navigate it on their own. Our goal is to continue to get awareness and community partners out there from our mission side.
The same thing on the business side, we've become sort of that agency of record for so many of folks that have said, "we're just looking to blend business and mission together and do it in a way that becomes part of our DNA." The generations that are currently stepping into purchasing and support roles are demanding that the company as a whole, that their representative cares about the people and planet. If they can work with social enterprises like ourselves and make it part of their ethos that their marketing budgets are going to go back to supporting global initiatives, that it's going to help not only attract and retain talent, but it's ultimately going to help their customer base grow as well because they're authentically integrating that in. Our continued growth is pretty large, we've been 20% year over year. It's going to be one of our largest growth years yet in terms of our business segment. But what we're really excited about is just to continue to show best practices, not only here in the United States, but as I mentioned from the mission side, we are growing out in Europe as well. We're really just excited to showcase how doing good is good for business. Our real goal is to continue to get to tens of thousands of folks in the community from the mission side, as well as to continue to champion business as a force of good, not only here in the United States, but globally.
Share a decision that you made that was detrimental?
There's a few that come to mind, but the early part of our organization was really focused on growing and scaling the promotional products and brand marketing side of the business, we did try a few other avenues that caused us to fail and fail quickly. We started a social enterprise coffee company in the early stages of our organization, had a real great opportunity to scale that, but realized that after time and time again, we were not going to be able to compete with the Starbucks's or the Dunkin's of the world in terms of being able to compete for that space. We invested a lot of time, energy, and effort. I personally was very heavily invested in that, and we were gaining some traction, but it was costing us significantly more human capital as well as, of course, overhead to be able to roast and white-label coffee to then scale the mission. It was more of a B2C model, and we tried to do a B2B model, and we couldn't gain a whole ton of traction. we ended up Spending a good year just trying to scale that while we were working on the promotional product side as a secondary revenue source to fund the mission. it ended up taking away a lot of our time, energy, and effort, and it did set us back in terms of our overall scale of the promotional product side. We nixed that.
We went in and also tried something that we thought was a spinoff of the promotional product side that could be a B2C type play with regards to iPhone and Android cases where individuals could go and create their own type of screen or skin on their phone case, and then we would offset a portion of that and support young people in the system. Again, we spent a lot of time, energy, and effort trying to market that, get in with folks, do advertising for it. It wasn't picking up steam, and it was taking away from what we realized was the general funding mechanism of our business.
Honestly, Sean, about two to three years of our infancy stages was spent working on social enterprise models that weren't scalable or sustainable, where we could have been focusing 100% of our effort into the brand marketing side. Which happens to be very much scalable because everybody could play a role in their purchases making a difference. It was something that we did realize is that, we got to take out the noise and focus 100% of our effort on scaling the side of the business.
While we could have likely scaled faster, we thankfully were able to have that revenue still coming in. It just wasn't as much versus us going 100% full steam ahead on the phone cases or on the coffee business, which for us would have been absolutely detrimental in terms of our overall operation. That was probably our biggest hurdles. Had we not just simply had the open-mindedness to listen to solutions, I can guarantee you, Sean, we wouldn't be here after March of 2020.
Because when we're sitting and we were about to have a phone call with all of our team addressing, what does tomorrow look like when all of our funding goes away? Because our business is built on events, marketing, merchandise, promotional products to fund the mission and as well as pay the team. We sat there thinking how are we even going to stay in business tomorrow? We made the conceited effort to reach out to our groups and say, however, we can support you, we're here to come alongside you, not as your promotional product supplier, not as your event consultant, but as your community partners throughout the pandemic. Having that mindset was able to open up the doors for our groups to say, "hey, we know you do merch, but can you do this?"
And that honestly, Sean has become a mantra for us to say, whatever the need is, we're going to do it. If it's warehousing and fulfillment, if it's drop shipping, if it's non-branded products, whatever you need as an organization, we want to come alongside. Had we not had the open-mindedness, there would be no Doing Good Works, there'd be no Foster Greatness. there would be no now $4 million invested back into the population. If we didn't learn to listen to the solution versus try and find and force solutions onto folks.
What is your why?
My why is realizing how much of an impact businesses and organizations can have on creating life change at the individual level. I am very much somebody that learned about the statistics before coming into this role. Since being in this role, I have seen firsthand, I have mentored, I have been alongside individuals that have come from 18, 20-plus jobs to go on and get their Juris Doctorate degrees, to go on and become travel nurses, and I've seen the direct impact that's been made simply because of conscious business decisions.
For me, my purpose is to continue to champion the idea that business is a force of good, that doing good is good for business, and that we can take everyday business transactions and turn it into tangible human transformation. I can guarantee you, Sean, there's not a group that's out there, I personally want to be that champion that says nobody wants to sell you a shirt more than I do or nobody wants to help you put on a global event more than I do because I see firsthand the impact that it's making on thousands, now tens of thousands of people over the last 10 years to the tune of $4 million given back to the mission. There's nobody that cares more about showing you how easy it is. In terms of taking your everyday purchases and creating human transformation, because I can come and tell you dozens upon dozens of direct stories I've directly been vicariously involved in, or I've actually mentored for individuals that thanks to these purchases have been able to change the trajectories, not only for themselves, but their friends that have gone through the system.
For me, that why that passion is because I've tangibly been able to see just how easy it is to make a life change for those that don't often know that they can make that change without having to write a large check to a nonprofit or to go do a beach cleanup, but that it can be part of your business ethos in just how you operate from a marketing perspective.
Do you have a moment that brings you the most joy?
I always come back to that opportunity where we were able to provide 20 million masks to healthcare workers. I was fortunate enough to develop some very strong relationships with one of the largest healthcare organizations in the world, and they took a flyer on me saying, "hey, do you have anybody or do you know anybody that can help us bring in masks? Because we trust you as our advisor in this space, and you know strategic sourcing. Is there anything that you can do?" It took a lot of blood, sweat, and tears.
I was working from 6 p.m. to 4 a.m. for a good six months. I was working directly with strategic groups that were booking planes and boats, and we were working with the FDA and the White House Task Force. The stress level on that was so high. It's funny, I always joke, but I'm not joking when I say I ended up getting on Lexapro. In the commodity space, it's not life or death. It stinks when you order 1,000 products. it doesn't show up, it doesn't necessarily mean that somebody's dying. In this instance, these masks were FDA isolation masks, and if they weren't on the faces of healthcare workers, there really was a chance of potential life or death.
The task was tall. We went through a lot of struggles, but at the end of the day, what was so special is from that very large healthcare group, once we finished importing and getting those all in, we received a very special video call from the chair and CEO of that group alongside dozens of pulmonologists, doctors, physicians, patients, thanking us for the tireless efforts to get them equipped with masks and materials that gave them the confidence to fight throughout the unknowns of the pandemic.
Again, what's crazy, Sean, is that in my career, you know, 15 years in the branding world, this wasn't a branding project. This was a life solutions project where we were needing to get product onto faces of our healthcare workers. For me to get that video at the end from those workers directly saying, "thank you for your ability to make me feel safe while I deal with the patients or thank you for our entire organization for the efforts that you took to protect us.". To me, that will probably not be topped in terms of just the sheer gratitude and the efforts where we went into it not knowing what the heck a BFE or a PFE rating is on a face mask to learning overnight what the needs were and addressing that and becoming that trusted advisor. That video will always be played back in my mind, that thank you from those healthcare workers. For me, I don't know how that would be topped in terms of the overall human impact in the midst of what will, without a doubt, be the largest health crisis in our generation.
Piece of Advice
Don't be afraid to pivot and get out of your comfort zone. I think a lot of businesses and business leaders feel like they don't want to feel scared to venture out and become something that they didn't think they were going to be able to possibly do. Whether it's I'm getting outside of the commodity that I focus on or I'm taking a leap of faith on something, it's not only fail fast, fail cheap, but understand that you will have more success as a trusted advisor that's coming alongside your partners or your constituents as somebody that says we're in this together. It really focuses the idea in that I'm not trying to sell you something or I'm not trying to just have a client relationship. I'm here to go through your business life together and ultimately help out in any way that I can as a leader to help you further your goals.
For what I've personally learned is that, again, that pandemic case, and since then, whatever that need is, we want to address that and become that solutions provider. What that ultimately does is helps you become a one-stop shop, but also shows your clients that you've got the understanding that you're in it to support. That's probably the biggest.
The other thing is, is don't be afraid of the pivot. The pivot is something that we all have to be okay with. You have to have an objective mindset. The pandemic forced us to pivot. And I always joke, but I'm serious when I say there has not been any sense of normalcy over the last six, seven years since 2019, whether it's wars, inflation, financial crises with the Fed or human and health crises like the pandemic. We have not had any sense of normalcy. Having the need and desire to be okay with pivoting will not only keep you as a business leader or as a business open to new opportunities, but will help you focus on keeping an objective mind when unique situations do happen. Do not be afraid of the pivot is another one that I would say is really important.
Community Callout
I'd love to give a shout out to the woman who showed me how impactful the branding industry can be: my aunt, Robin Richter, of Wearable Imaging, Inc. I attribute so much of my networking, my passion, and my desire for excellence from learning under her leadership as I was just getting started in my career.
Rick Muchow
I'd also love to give a shout out to my former life mentor, the late Rick Muchow of Saddleback Church. Rick was a dear friend of mine for decades who would show me how to lead with grace and love and taught me that there is always a chance to shine light on others.
In Closing
KLS wants to thank Doing Good Works and Chief Impact Officer, Logan Altman, for today's "Together Talks" feature. Follow along for their journey with their social handles below!
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