Goodwill CEO expands programs, embraces mergers, tries new territories

Kent Kramer registered an inkling of his calling early in high school when he started working for a supermarket in his native Muncie. He loved helping customers, getting to know them better, examining what they were buying and seeing how they stretched their food dollars. After college he jumped onto the store management track with Sam’s Club, deep in the heart of American consumer culture. This ultimately led him to his dream job with the global nonprofit Goodwill Industries, best known for the thrift stores that help power a wide variety of programs that help people become economically self-sufficient.

Kramer became president and CEO of Goodwill of Central Indiana in 2015 and has captained aggressive expansion of its programs and footprint. Now known, at least for the time being, as Goodwill of Central & Southern Indiana, the organization serves 40 Hoosier counties and 21 counties in central Illinois, while it establishes its model in Puerto Rico. Kramer has overseen impressive expansion of his organization’s employment, education and health services. That includes growing its maternal and natal care program to all 92 Indiana counties and scaling up its Excel Center program for adult education on a national level. Over the summer, IBJ Media recognized Kramer as the first recipient of its nonprofit executive of the year award, and he is our guest for this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast discussing his early love for retail, how central Indiana’s Goodwill extended its influence to a U.S. territory and how the organization has handled the challenges of several mergers with like-minded nonprofits.