GW: According to the fashion calendar, when does the Spring fashion season officially kick off?

JL: Traditionally, light colors with more energy and lighter weight garments debut in March. Shoppers are ready to change out closets and freshen up their looks with color pops and lighter fare. In other words: Now is the time.

GW. Which colors and fabrics will ring in spring?

JL: Primarily tangerine/orange will be the bell weather color this season. To tone it down, you will also see teal and emerald green making strong showings.  These colors or color combinations make for an exciting yet balanced look.

Q. What are the must have Spring looks this year?

JL: Essentials include a cropped jacket, color block sheaths, lightweight cardigans, leather cross body bags and stacked mixed bracelets. Jewelry layering is huge this season. If you’re a do-it-yourselfer, consider upcycling ballet flats with gems, metallic piping or beads to add freshness. The spirit of this year’s look taps personal style to express modern femininity – bold and fun.

GW: What are some easy and affordable steps for freshening up Bay Area spring wardrobes?

JL: You can easily refresh your look by using bright solid color separates mixed with black or gray neutrals. The color pop adds new life to staple wardrobe looks and fits limited shopping budgets. The trenchcoat, a Bay Area wardrobe staple, has gone through several re-imaginings and can be found in a range of lightweight fabrics in functional and bouncy lengths. Turning a denim jacket into a denim vest, literally lightening the jacket, is very Bay Area. I’d suggest wearing these do-it-yourself vests with a floral print dress, another key Spring wardrobe piece.  You won’t find more affordable prices on these spring statement pieces than at our 21 stores.

GW: Is there a Spring fashion don’t?

JL: Although pattern mixing when done correctly is a hit—beware of pattern overkill. To avoid looking like a fashion faux pas, always use contrasting patterns and limit your look to two patterns. A large floral can be accented with a small polka dot or stripe. Find a contrasting point and it never hurts to get a second opinion from a trusted friend.

Q. Are there spring classics that stay evergreen?

JL: Calf length pleated skirts, classic A-form dresses in a pastel palette, multi-strand pearls or beads, striped belts, boat shoes, nautical accents and beaded clutch are timeless looks that always present flawlessly on any body type.

Q. What’s the most important fashion rule of thumb, regardless of season?

JL: Don’t be a slave to fashion. Take the best the season has to offer and create your own personal look and fashion expression. Fashion is fun! If you’re not enjoying your shopping experience, you’re doing it wrong!

By Tim Murray
SF Goodwill

As long as I’ve lived in the Bay Area, I’ve donated things I no longer need to Goodwill. A few times a year—usually triggered after I buy something new—I’d open the closets and drawers to assess the situation. My rule was, if I hadn’t worn it or used it in the past year I had to get rid of it. Screw sentimentality; I needed space.

Dropping the boxes and bags off at the donation center was strangely freeing. I was only shedding stuff, but I could swear I felt an endorphin rush similar to the high I experienced after taking a long run and sweating all the toxins out of my system. It felt good to be done with it. When I returned home, I could almost hear my flat, now swept clean of all that excess stuff, breathe a huge sigh of contentment.

All of this was before I started working for Goodwill and discovered the good that came from my donations. Like many people, I had no idea that the mission of Goodwill was job training and placement.

Once I realized that my trunkful of gently used clothes, books and technology—along with everyone else’s similar contributions—was funding more than 80 percent of Goodwill’s services and programs, my donation elation rose to a whole new level.

But (and there’s always a but) in all my years of donating, the experience of dropping stuff off left something to be desired. The physical layout of the donation yard was often awkward to navigate in my car. The donation folks were sometimes bored-looking or gruff as they handed over my donation tax form. My stuff was getting piled together with everyone else’s. As I watched a box containing a hand-me-down vase of my grandmother’s—not my style, but Noritake—disappear into the maw of the Goodwill trailer, I had to wonder what would become of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvTu08no5uk

Now, as the director of brand and marketing for this same Goodwill, I’m part of a team that’s committed to improving the experience for our donors. We’re upgrading the physical layout of our donation drop-off locations one by one. We’re adding signage that explains our mission and retraining our donation ambassadors in the finer points of customer service. And we’re making plans to turn a carbon-copy donor form into a digital or mobile experience.

That’s where you come in. We’re asking folks who donate to Goodwill to give us their feedback. What’s working well about the experience today and what could we improve? If we were to move to a digital experience—where donors can keep track of their contributions through the year electronically and print out a year-end tax form—how might you want to be identified? Please make your voice heard by completing a super-simple online survey.

Need further incentive? You’ll be entered to win one of four $50 gift certificates to Molly Stones Market.

Not a bad trade-off for five minutes of your time.

Next time you donate, consider filling out an online donation form before you come. And afterward, visit our new donor tracker to rate your experience in 30 seconds or less.

The other thing I’ve learned since coming to work for Goodwill is that, with a few exceptions, we actually take very good care of the items donated to us. We are committed to maximizing the value we can receive from any donation, and that requires TLC all the way from the donation trailer through our processing and pricing facility, and back out to one of our stores or e-Commerce inventory at SFGoodwill.org. Seeing how folks in our production warehouse gently handle and clean items of value and rewrap them for transit makes me proud.

We won’t quit until our donor experience better reflects the care we actually take with the stuff you contribute, whether it’s a pair of last-season boots or your grandmother’s vase. Your feedback can help us get there.

Tim Murray is the director of brand & marketing for Goodwill of San Francisco, San Mateo & Marin.

“This year we wanted to personally say thank you to our extraordinarily loyal and generous donation community and so the Goodwill Donate-a-thon was born.” — Leslie Bilbro, Donations Director, Goodwill of San Francisco, San Mateo & Marin.

By Deborah Bouck
SF Goodwill

For bringing joy to so many people in need of a second chance, Goodwill is saying thank-you this Dec. 31.

Legend has it that most Goodwill donors wait until the last week of the year to bring their goods to our donation drop-off locations.

Legend has it wrong.

The truth is that—although Dec. 31 represents a culmination of generous, yearlong community support—many of our donors visit us three or even four times a year. Better yet, Goodwill donors who include us in their holiday giving traditions get the added bonus of receiving year-end tax deductions.

With that gratitude in our hearts, we’re taking a different approach this year to saying thanks. Many of us at Goodwill asked how we could turn a donation experience into an event that celebrates the very act of giving to Goodwill.

How do we thank people we’ve never met, but who share our devotion to re-valuing items that deserve a second life and helping people who need a second chance?

Why not start with a party?

So, whether you’re a longtime or first-time Goodwill donor, our Donate-a-thon event on Dec. 31 is a tribute to you.

We’ll be transforming our 1500 Mission Street donation drop into a donation sensation with live music, donor tributes, snacks and treats for the kids. Thanks to our partners at KOIT-FM and KFOX-FM, the first 400 Goodwill donors at our Mission Street location will win San Francisco Zoo or Century Theater movie tickets when our gates open at 7 a.m., Dec. 31.*

The biggest gift? Your much needed donations will fund Goodwill’s job training and work placement programs, which provide so many local people second chances and a dignified path out of poverty.

Goodwill has helped more than 2,000 people get jobs in San Francisco, San Mateo and Marin counties during the current economic downturn. Your gently used clothes, toys, electronic items and household goods are the lifeblood of our nonprofit social enterprise.

To kick off this season of giving, former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown donated more than 90 custom-tailored items from his personal collection.

In the meantime, please visit us at our Donate-a-thon event this Dec. 31 and—as you once again help fill our trucks—give us the chance to personally thank you for supporting second chances.

*Tickets will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis only at 1500 Mission Street beginning at 7 a.m. To find all donation location hours, please check out sfgoodwill.org.

By R.F. Hosseini

It got to the point where I actually dreaded Christmas.

It had gone from being my favorite holiday as a child (Duh. Kids are greedy gift-hoarding machines.) to plummeting way past Thanksgiving, Halloween and New Year’s Eve, and landing somewhere just above national Acknowledge Your Postal Carrier But Don’t Make Lingering Eye Contact Day.

In other words, its stock had plummeted. How typical.

All those people I was lucky enough to have in my life—friends, family and their expanding broods (seriously guys, another kid?)—were reduced to chores, names on a list I felt obligated to check off.

Is this how Santa feels?

Doubtful. Saint Nick may have seven billion (and counting) folks on his Christmas to-do list, but the pathologically jolly franchisee also has an army of elves handling the particulars. Santa doesn’t have to deal with packed mall parking lots, screaming kids, overworked sales clerks, slow-moving herds of customers or Michael Bublé’s skit-skatting version of “Little Drummer Boy” playing on an endless loop. If he did, Santa would probably hate Christmas, too.

But a few years ago, my family did something that saved Christmas. Call it a Christmas bailout. (Or don’t. Yeah, let’s maybe not call it that.) It was shortly after the financial crisis brought our world economy to the brink, and people everywhere were understandably skittish about spending their dwindling dollars on frivolous trinkets no one really wants. (That nose-hair trimmer I bought a cousin’s husband one year? Total waste of $11.38!)

Besides the general economic uncertainty, our clan of parents, brothers, aunts and cousins had just flat-out OD’ed on the department store hustle-bustle. And not only were we tired of getting gifts, we were equally exhausted with getting them. No longer could I keep a fake grin plastered to my face and pretend a powder blue tracksuit was exactly what I always wanted.

As we gathered that year for a relaxed Thanksgiving dinner—swapping stories, needling each other, stuffing ourselves with stuffing and emptying a case of wine—someone finally wondered aloud, “Why can’t Christmas be like this?”

All the heads at the table quickly nodded in agreement and a plan took shape: No gifts this year except for the kids.

The following year, we took it a step further with a Secret Santa gift exchange. The year after that, we discarded the old pretenses altogether and embraced the dark side. Two words: White Elephant.

Now most of you know how this works. Everyone is responsible for bringing one purchased or homemade gift, and there’s typically a cap on how much people are allowed to spend. (We’ve fluctuated between $20 and $40.) Guests pull numbers to see in which order they get to choose the wrapped presents. And once chosen, a gift can be stolen twice before it’s “frozen” to the person currently in possession.

This has allowed myself and family members to focus on getting one good, unique, thoughtful gift, which basically disqualifies a quick trip to the mall. Participants have patronized local boutiques, quirky little shops and, yes, thrift stores just like Goodwill. (Plug!) This has resulted in a small treasure of highly coveted gifts, rather than a huge pile of meaningless tchotchkes.

As for the game itself, my family really gets into it. There’s something about the nakedly selfish, ruthless way in which we target each other to achieve maximum burnage. It really brings out the holiday spirit.

Even as the financial situation has gradually improved and Black Friday brawls are once again de rigueur, our family is sticking with this adopted tradition.

This year we’re adding a “mystery” gift that will remain unopened until the end. This could prove a pleasant surprise for whoever ends up with it, or they might just find themselves unwrapping a pair of slightly dusty, never-used nose-hair trimmers.

Either way, it’ll be a Christmas miracle.

By Virgie Tovar
Special to Seismic Thrift 

Frugal fashionista Virgie Tovar mugs for her camera while trying on a white-and-yellow striped top with oversized nautical buttons at the Ocean Beach Goodwill.

Sundays in the Outer Sunset are perfect for chocolate cake at Devil’s Teeth Baking Company, dim sum at Happy Bakery, sunning (and freezing) at Ocean Beach and thrift store-hunting at Goodwill. After a raucous weekend filled with Pride fetes this past summer, I found myself wandering around my neighborhood.

The Outer Sunset, to many San Franciscans, is too foggy and too far. But to me it’s home! It’s also home to one of my favorite Goodwill stores, on 2400 Irving St.

I’m a plus-sized, frugal fashionista, so it’s important to have some fab thrift options nearby. Right there on 25^th and Irving stands the small shop best known for its extensive collection of cashmere. Cashmere is the kind of thing people from the Outer Sunset can appreciate.

I was able to pair a desert sun-red cashmere turtleneck with a horizontally-striped pencil skirt. This outfit illustrates the art of layering, which is essential to any SF day that’s going to last from sun-up to sundown.

The day starts with a walk on the beach with an oversized white hat, pink tank top, and the aforementioned black-and-white skirt. As the day begins to cool, I pull the snug turtleneck out of my bag, throw it on and add a skinny white belt to dress up the look. I keep the hat because it’s fabulous!

Ocean Beach is one of my favorite destinations and I visit it often, so I can’t resist a nautical-themed piece when I see it. That Sunday, I matched a white-and-yellow striped top with oversized nautical buttons with an eggplant A-line.

My prize find, however, was a cheetah-print halter romper. I even found a furry cheetah-print purse to match! Animal print on animal print is trés timeless. This will look amazing with a cardigan and some boots (if it’s chilly) or some strappy sandals (if it’s not).

After a long day in SF and a mini-vacation in the Goodwill fitting room, I was exhausted. But fashionably so.

Hope you enjoyed my fitting room diary!

Virgie Tovar is the editor of Hot & Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Life, Love and Fashion. She lives in San Francisco. Find her online at www.VirgieTovar.com.

For the first time, posters and mission messaging dress store walls, while eye-level signs help Goodwill shoppers see how their purchases support our mission of job training and placement as a dignified path out of poverty. 

By Deborah Bouck
SF Goodwill 

As Goodwill’s new marketing manager, working on the Pacifica store—the first to showcase a brand makeover—felt like a rite of passage.

I looked forward to helping create a family store designed to meet the needs of a community famously shrouded in fog. Located in the busy Linda Mar Center across from the town’s most popular surfing beach, the store came to life as surfboards, beach gear and plenty of windbreakers and fleece began to populate the racks.

Signage in Spanish and English acknowledges the diversity of Pacifica and its neighboring communities.

As the store took shape, so did the local Goodwill team helmed by store manager Angelica Kobashi. Surrounded by the freshly painted “Goodwill job training grows second chances” messages dressing our store walls, Angelica shared her story with me.

Eight years of unemployment related to medical and life challenges created a seemingly insurmountable barrier to employment. Finally, a friend suggested Goodwill. Resume-writing tutorials and role-playing with a San Mateo Goodwill career counselor reignited Angelica’s hope that she would be back in the workforce in spite of the bleak 2009 economy.

“I was motivated to believe and hope that if I did the work my circumstances would change. I thought, ‘Goodwill is going to give me a second chance,’” she said.

Starting out as a temporary employee at Goodwill’s San Mateo store, Angelica was promoted in five months to Burlingame’s assistant store manager and last year assumed the manager position of Goodwill’s store on Clement Street.

“Our brand transformation reflects the personal transformation of the people we serve and the communities we work alongside,” explained SF Goodwill CEO Deborah Alvarez-Rodriguez. “Our public face needs to be as innovative as the program solutions we offer.”

So how does this story lead to Pacifica?

“I always wanted to have the experience of opening a new Goodwill store and to keep pushing and learning,” Angelica said. “I thought I was ready.”

Her managers agreed.

“Angelica earned this sought-after position because of her growth and proven abilities as a manager,” said Goodwill district manager Lisa Martinez. “Now, it’s her turn to train others.”

Two months later, with the store open and thriving, I can’t ask Angelica if this is a happy ending because there is still so much ahead for her. I simply ask if Pacifica, with its warm embrace of the store, is what she expected.

“Getting to know this community has been priceless,” she answered. “I’m very grateful.”

“I want to do the best I can every day and continue to improve. I really care about my career.” Angelica Kobashi, Goodwill Boutique at the Beach store manager.

Angelica lives in San Mateo, but is looking to move to Pacifica to be closer to the community she serves. As for me, I learned much more than the nuts and bolts of opening a Goodwill family store.

I’ve been told that you never know what treasure you’ll find at Goodwill. In Pacifica, I found a store with a story.

Let the games begin — just in time for the holidays

Goodwill would be happy to accept gently used toys as donation. For Tim Murray, director of brand and marketing for Goodwill, it’s a regular habit.

By Tim Murray
SF Goodwill

Before our son was born, I had a clear idea about the kind of toys I wanted him to play with. We’d save up our money and only buy safe, educational playthings made from stuff found in nature. I flipped through catalogs and scanned sites admiring felted wool caterpillars and kid-sized musical instruments, and imagined a small play corner neatly stacked with handcrafted wooden toys, their edges sanded smooth and stained with nontoxic vegetable dyes.

Once he arrived, so did the gifts. A wagon filled with wooden alphabet block and little carved whistle seemed to appear right out of my imagination. Then came the lime-green car from my niece and it was, well … plastic. But really cool, with recessed headlights and a molded handle he could chew on. It soon became his favorite.

Our neighbor dropped off a Ziploc bag of Legos and a four-key plastic piano and six dolls. I was so delirious from sleep deprivation at the time, I can’t recall how the DayGlo stacking rings, tiny farm animals, plastic clackers and stacking boxes got into the house. I remember salvaging a toy kitchen from the sidewalk. An old friend whose kids were off to preschool showed up with two big boxes of plastic fruits and vegetables, finger puppets, wooden puzzles, whirlywigs and tops, cabooses and engines, Hot Wheels and castinets, play phones and a Whack-a-Mole. Stuffed animals apparently snuck in through an open window and multiplied until they formed a mosh pit of unrecognizable limbs in a basket.

And we received a used ark. The ark has piano keys on top, 12 exotic animals, baskets of fish, a cuckoo clock, and Noah at the helm. It clangs, growls, clucks, neighs, moos, plays synthetized Mozart, and blows its horn. It’s haunted by Noah’s spirit, randomly ringing six bells every few hours to attract the attention of passing ships, sometimes just as I’m drifting off to sleep.

Though we purchased very few toys of our own, our son’s room is now awash with plastic fish, construction equipment, zoo creatures, foam balls, and overflowing bins of bits and bobs and board books. They show up amid pots + pans in the kitchen, under my pillow, and in my shoes. So every month or so while he’s sound asleep, we purge the toys hasn’t played with in a while, bundle them up in a bag, and put them in the trunk for a trip to the Goodwill donation site on Mission at Van Ness in San Francisco.

Thanks to a change in government rules, Goodwill can once again accept gently used toys as donations. (Unfortunately, we can’t take car seats, high chairs, cribs, and strollers due to safety recalls – see a full list of what we can and can’t accept.) By selling these donations, Goodwill funds training, classroom learning, career placement services and more — opening doorways to jobs for people in need in the Bay Area.

Our son’s trucks and trains can do a lot of heavy lifting through Goodwill. Imagine what an ark could do?

Blogger Courtney Crenshaw models the stylish terrycloth romper she found hiding in plain sight at a local Goodwill.

By Courtney Crenshaw

After the political upheaval of the 1960s, the 1970s were a decade of hedonism.

Rather than wanting to change the world, people just wanted to go out and have a good time. Much of ’70s fashion was still being influenced by the hippie movement, though the flower power focus of ’60s spirituality had shifted inward. People were now finding themselves through things such as astrology, crystal healing, indigenous traditions and, yes, even mood rings.

That sort of kitchen-sink philosophizing translated to sartorial sketches, in which a one-piece swimsuit could double as a body suit when worn with high-waisted trousers; tops veered to the tube and crop variety; and pants were converted to hot shorts.

The rest, as they say, is history. And history is back in fashion.

The terry cloth romper is a delightful and creative hybrid of the tube top and hot short trend. In the 1964 James Bond film Goldfinger, a very confident Agent 007 exits the pool and zippers himself into an attractive robins-egg blue one-piece, with full wedgie functionality. After suiting himself up and zipping the romper just enough to expose the perfect amount of bustling chest hair, he fastens his belt (oh yes, there is a belt) and completes this fine little number.

So there you have it – another vintage comeback! The terry cloth romper, which was a hit during the mid-to-late 1960s and 1970s has made its way back. If it’s good enough for Bond, it’s good enough for me.

The romper goes great with wedges.

Check out the photos of this cute little white number I just found at a Goodwill store in San Francisco for $6. I included photos of some sexy gold wedges that would look absolutely fabulous with a metallic belt and braided headband.

Dance off in a costume of your own creation

By Tim Murray
SF Goodwill

Growing up on a farm in Virginia in the 1970s, I had to be driven 10 miles into town to have the Halloween experience of suburban lore. In my buddy John Grove’s tidy neighborhood near the University of Virginia, a small pack of us small boys dressed as Speed Racer, Jimmy Connors, or Jughead roamed from house to house in the dark, our sneakered feet kicking up the rain-soaked leaves. Aside from a reminder to watch out for cars, the parents stayed home to greet little goblins, setting us 8-year-olds loose to gather as much candy as our pillowcases could hold. We didn’t get into trouble, mostly. The naughtiest I got was encouraging my friends to help me rip a George Wallace sticker off the bumper of a Dodge Dart. My parents were political and I knew that Wallace was “prejudiced.”

It wasn’t until a Castro Halloween celebration many years later that I had the adult Halloween experience of urban lore. The Castro was a melee in the nineties as Eureka Valley stretched to accommodate a hundred thousand or more revelers, many of whom had been over-served. One night I went to a party near the Castro at which we played a Halloween version of the White Elephant game. Each of us had to wear the costume in the brown paper bag we ended up holding. Inside mine was a sleeveless, sequined powder-blue gown, pumps, and a diamond tiara. What the heck, I thought, and walked down into the mass of humanity on unsteady heels. It was mind-bending to be wearing something Marilyn Monroe might have been photographed in while standing to pee at the urinal at The Midnight Sun.

Where had our parents and my friend picked up the costumes in those brown-paper bags? Goodwill, of course.

What do you want to be this year?

Goodwill has always been the go-to source for one-of-a-kind dress-up. Our stores do a big business as Bay Area folks use their creative juices to out-zombie their neighbors and upstage their friends with Goodwill-purchased garb. We’re highlighting the full line-up with our Happy Bike-oween campaign, a bit of inspired silliness to celebrate the season and our love of two-wheeled transport. Be sure to check out our “Boo-tique” at our flagship San Francisco store too for the largest selection, and check out some costume ideas here.

Putting together a unique costume at Goodwill is not only more environmentally responsible than purchasing that shrink-wrapped Snooki or Dark Knight costume at a big box store. Your purchases from Goodwill help fund our job training and placement programs that open doorways to jobs for those most in need, right here in your community. That’s at Halloween and all year long.

This year, I’ll be shopping Goodwill for something special to clothe our two-year old son, who’ll be trick-or-treating on a blocked off street near our home in the Castro. And once the big night is over, we’ll put his costume through a wash and dry cycle and bring it back to Goodwill for some other little tot to enjoy on Halloween next year.

By Tim Murray
SF Goodwill

San Francisco Goodwill is getting a modern brand look. The fresh face of Goodwill – seen first on our fleet of 60 trucks, at selected donation sites, and in newly opened stores – reflects new innovations in how we’re delivering on our job training mission. We’re constantly rethinking, reinventing, and re-valuing our services and businesses. We now have an innovative-looking brand to match.

Our trucks sporting the new look!

Our new imagery shows off great stuff — great stuff that Goodwill has for sale in our stores, and great stuff that Goodwill seeks as donations. The graphic design using over 100 icons represents the wide range of high-quality items Goodwill gratefully accepts as donation. One item is highlighted in the hands of a happy Goodwill shopper who has found the treasure they sought.

Bay Area designer/ illustrator Craig Frazier has generously donated a substantial portion of his time and resources to the project. Introduced to Goodwill by our pro-bono agency partner BBDO West, Frazier was a regular visitor to his local Goodwill donation site in Mill Valley, but hadn’t spent much time in our stores. “I was amazed to discover the quality and breadth of what Goodwill sells,” Frazier said. “It deserved to be marketed like a best-in-class retailer.” Frazier also developed the messages, which all riff off the good in Goodwill and subtly recognize supporters for their part in making our mission a reality. Good work!

Designer Craig Frazier designed these new iconic images.

Now the Goodwill trucks serve as mobile billboards traveling the highways between the Menlo Park boutique to the south and Novato store to the north and delivering our brand message deep into San Francisco neighborhoods. It will introduce a new audience to the brand, prompting them to say, “I never thought of Goodwill that way.” Once they arrive at our stores and donation drop-off locations, customers and donors will learn more about the mission side of Goodwill and the impact we have on individuals, families, and communities.

Our new Pacifica store showcases the rebranding.

The new Goodwill store in Pacifica is the first retail location to take on the new brand look and messaging. Signage ties the simple act of shopping to the huge impact it can have through Goodwill job training and placement services. SF Goodwill donation drop-off locations will also begin to carry the new brand look and messaging. Meanwhile, our website and printed collateral will carry personal stories of people who have uplifted their lives through work, thanks to Goodwill.

Said SF Goodwill CEO Deborah Alvarez-Rodriguez, “Our brand transformation reflects the personal transformation of the people we serve and the communities we work alongside. Our brand message must be as innovative as the program solutions we offer.”

GI Graphics, a business run by Goodwill Industries of Fort Worth, supplied the colorful decals. GI Graphics was not only the lowest bidder on the massive print project.

Please let us know what you think of the new look in the comments!

Since they hire only job-seeking veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, they support the mission of Goodwill as well.

BBDO West, long a pro-bono partner of SFGoodwill, provided significant resources toward establishing the enterprise-wide brand strategy, out of which this new look emerged. Bay Area artist Brian Moore of 499 Designs played a key role in connecting Goodwill and Frazier.