This Detroit Goodwill wants to be the center of a new EV workforce

Near downtown Detroit, next to a warehouse where the local Goodwill processes donations, the nonprofit now has EV charging stations—and a class of students learning how to maintain them.

The program, which just graduated its first cohort, is part of the Goodwill Clean Tech Accelerator. It’s designed to help unemployed or underemployed workers get better jobs while fighting climate change. A second program in Atlanta is also training workers to fix EV chargers. In Houston, another Goodwill class is training workers to install and maintain heat pumps. In Tennessee, students are learning to install solar panels and batteries.

“We knew that there was a true opportunity here for people to learn and get into high quality, good paying jobs,” says Martin Scaglione, chief mission officer at Goodwill Industries International, the overarching organization that works with more than 150 independent regional nonprofits. Accenture, the consulting firm, proposed the idea and invested in it. A $750,000 grant from General Motors will help it expand; the individual branches have each secured local funding as well.

Goodwill has always focused on workforce development. But many of its jobs—like the retail training in its thrift stores—pay minimum wage. A job installing solar panels or heat pumps can pay more than twice as much, and workers are in demand. The nonprofit recognized that it had the resources to help. “We have ‘Opportunity Centers’ across the nation to do bootcamp-style learning,” Scaglione says. Some of those centers are adjacent to Goodwill stores; the new classes take relatively little space, he says.

Each program lasts a month, with an intensive eight hours of training a day. Workers are paid a stipend while they learn. But the program is as short as possible so they can quickly transition into higher-paid work. Goodwill starts by offering a week of foundational classes, including some basic construction and business skills and help with résumés. Then it works with partners who dive into a detailed curriculum.

In Detroit and Atlanta, for example, a company called ChargerHelp! brings in EV charger technicians to walk students through hands-on work in labs at the Goodwill locations. “We set up these very elaborate lab setups that mimic the real-world scenarios in the field,” says Jessica Hutcheson, vice president of learning and development at ChargerHelp!. The Tennessee lab, run with an organization called GRID Alternatives, includes a roof where students can practice installing solar panels. BlocPower, a company focused on building decarbonization, leads the training on heat pump installations.

The first cohort in Detroit included 12 students, and another class is now going through the course. The frequency of classes will be based on the number of jobs that are currently available in the marketplace, says Kianna Scott, senior vice president of learning and development at ChargerHelp!. “What we don’t want to do is contribute to disillusionment that’s already present when we talk about the populations that we’re servicing,” she says. “We don’t say we can train you and then there is no work ready to receive and accept the new knowledge and skills that you have.” But the number of green jobs is growing nearly twice as fast as workers with skills to fill them, according to LinkedIn data, so there should be no shortage of demand.

Eventually, each Goodwill Opportunity Center in the program will offer all three types of classes. The nonprofit also plans to work with its regional members to expand across the U.S., scaling to 20 cities over the next seven years.