How Goodwill Won With Four Words

June 10, 2025

In 2022, Goodwill Industries of Kansas set out to better understand how our community perceives our brand and mission. Through surveys and one-on-one interviews, we discovered a critical insight: while many people support our retail stores, few understood how their donations and purchases directly support our mission to transform lives through education, training, and employment.

Armed with this knowledge, we launched a bold new campaign – “Donate. Shop. Change Lives.” – to bridge that gap.

The Challenge

Our research revealed that many non-shoppers viewed our stores as disconnected from a meaningful cause — our mission. Even loyal customers were often unaware of how their support fuels programs like NexStep Alliance, which helps Kansans earn their high school diploma, learn English, and gain career skills.

We needed to change perceptions, increase awareness, and drive both engagement and action.

Examples of ads used during the campaign

The Strategy

From November 2024 to April 2025, we partnered with local experts to develop a fully integrated marketing campaign.

Our goals were clear:

Raise awareness of Goodwill’s mission
Connect shopping and donating to community impact
Drive traffic to our stores and website
Reach new audiences, including Spanish-speaking communities

We worked with CK Communications, Howerton+White, Digital Brand, Method Productions, Dot Strategies and Copp Media, to bring the campaign to life.

Together, we created:

A custom campaign landing page
Five core video spots and two mid-campaign videos
A robust social media strategy
Paid and organic media placements
A retail strategy to ensure in-store alignment

Close up of a small spherical glass award on a brown desk.

The Recognition

In June 2025, our campaign was honored with the Integrated Marketing Campaign Award by the Wichita chapter of the American Marketing Association. This recognition celebrates not just the creativity and strategy behind the campaign – but the real lives changed because of it.

What’s Next?

As we continue to grow our mission services, we remain committed to telling the stories of transformation that happen every day at Goodwill. “Donate. Shop. Change Lives.” isn’t just a campaign – it’s a movement.