Goodwill Needs Your Donations to Replace Items Destroyed By Aiken Fire

Aiken, SC—Goodwill Industries’ Whiskey Road Emporium in Aiken suffered extensive damage during a fire, on Friday. Over 20,000 items of clothing and household items were damaged during the fire that broke out just before 7:00 p.m. The Aiken Department of Public Safety responded promptly to the call, and all Goodwill clients, employees and customers escaped safely before the first firefighter arrived.

Jim Stiff, Goodwill President and CEO, was on site this morning to encourage the staff who are working diligently to clean up the damaged items and begin to make repairs.  Stiff said, “We hope to reopen this Goodwill Whiskey Road retail store on Wednesday, and we have already reopened the donation center. Goodwill is confident that loyal donors across the CSRA will clean out their closets and donate items to Goodwill in order to help us rebuild and continue to advance our life-changing mission.”

The unemployment rate in the CSRA has risen to 9.9%, and a rising tide of joblessness is spreading in our community. More people than ever are coming to Goodwill help.

Goodwill needs your help to replace damaged donated goods to help underwrite Goodwill’s critical job training and placement programs. Please clean out your closeouts of clothing and household items and drive them to a donation center nearest you (see GoodwillWorks.org). Tax deductible monetary donations can be mailed to: Goodwill Works Foundation at PO Box 212668; Augusta, GA 30917. (Phone 706-564-4521).

Jim Stiff, Goodwill President and CEO, said, “Our trainees depend on all of our businesses to operate in order to receive job training services and a pay check. We are grateful to God that no Goodwill employee or trainee was hurt during the fire. Now we need community help to rebuild our retail business that works so people can. We need community support via donations of money and household items.”

Thanks to community support, your local Goodwill placed over 5,000 people into jobs over the past 5 years and generated over $90 million in new payroll purchasing power.  Goodwill provides job training and placement services to people with disabilities and other barriers to employment.

CSRA DONATION LOCATIONS

Aiken:
Goodwill Emporium
1400 Whiskey Rd
803-644-4601

Augusta:
Goodwill Emporium
3120 Peach Orchard Rd
706-790-3800

Goodwill Donation Center
3021 Riverwatch Parkway, Suite E
Augusta, GA 30907
706-650-5760

Goodwill Donation Truck
Augusta Exchange Shopping Center
(Next to Target; in front of Circuit City building)

Martinez:
Goodwill Emporium
4047 Washington Rd
706-855-8559