Goodwill of Southern Nevada used StackAI to replace a six-figure annual data vendor contract, free up 20% of its career coaches' time, and put real-time reporting in the hands of every store manager. The result is more people placed in better-paying jobs, funded by stores that are growing again.
The Background
Goodwill of Southern Nevada exists to help adults break the cycle of poverty. Its workforce development programs connect people with training, career coaching, and jobs that lead to real upward mobility. Its longest-running programs serve people with disabilities, delivered in partnership with the local school district.
The mission runs on retail. Revenue from Goodwill's network of thrift stores across the region funds every program, so a strong month in the stores means more clients served, and a slow one means fewer.
Rick Neal, CEO of Goodwill of Southern Nevada, saw AI as a way to solve some of the organization's biggest pain points. That interest led him to an MIT course on agentic AI for Goodwill CEOs. When StackAI appeared on the instructor's list of tools, he signed up, explored the platform on his own, and then reached out to the team.
The Challenge
Like most manufacturers, quality data lived in production spreadsheets exported from the line at the end of each shift. Everything the plant needed was in those files: defect counts by material, cure cycle, mold, and press. But identifying patterns meant manually reading thousands of rows, preventing teams from getting insights in a timely manner.
The same lag showed up off the floor. Curing adjustments depended on the availability of a senior engineer. Procurement only saw supplier and price risk once a higher quote came back. The company's CIO wondered whether AI agents could work off the data they already collected, without replacing the MES or asking operators to change how they logged results. That’s when they found StackAI.
The Solution
StackAI's AI deployment team started with the problems Goodwill's staff had already named, building each workflow around them rather than introducing a tool and hunting for a use.
The first workflow went live in mission services: an agent that tracks client placements in Salesforce and replaces the manual, vendor-run process. Retail followed, giving store managers the ability to generate their own store-level reports and act on them without waiting for headquarters.
Just as important was how the team worked. In weekly sessions, they unblocked staff and taught them to solve the next problem on their own, and mapping each workflow gave staff a clearer view of their own operations.
As confidence grew, Rick stepped back from the weekly sessions and handed ownership to district directors and store managers, and progress sped up. Today, an AI enabling council of mid-level managers and individual contributors, with no C-suite members, drives adoption from the ground up.
“We were thinking too small. Working with the StackAI team every week showed us how much more was possible.”
Rick Neal
CEO of Goodwill of Southern Nevada
The Results
Beyond the savings, StackAI's enterprise AI platform delivered results across the organization.
More capacity for the mission. Career coaches now carry about 20% more caseload without added strain. Placement rates have climbed, putting Goodwill of Southern Nevada among the top Goodwills in the federation for mission placements. The jobs are better, too: the average hourly wage of placed clients now ranks #2 out of 150 Goodwill territories.
Stores are growing again. After a difficult stretch, more than 70% of Goodwill's stores are now beating last year's performance. Store managers pull their own reports and fix problems themselves, shrinking a cycle that used to take four to five weeks from detection to fix.
People were made more effective, not replaced. No employees were let go because of AI. Instead, it has helped existing staff do more of the work that matters, and every dollar Goodwill saves goes back into the mission.
Put More of your Budget Back into your Mission
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