Evergreen Goodwill Excited by AI Grant | Style

Artificial intelligence is about to give a 102-year-old Seattle-based nonprofit a major boost, thanks to a grant from Microsoft’s AI for Good Lab of computing muscle and lab expertise to streamline the nonprofit’s process for sorting and pricing millions of pounds of donated items, and help advance its mission.

Evergreen Goodwill of Northwest Washington is among 20 Washington organizations that the AI for Good Lab announced last month as recipients of a combined $5 million in assistance over the next two years. Awardees will receive Microsoft Azure credits and the ability to collaborate with AI for Good Lab data scientists. The lab — a philanthropic arm of Microsoft — partners with organizations around the world working to solve myriad problems. It’s headed by Juan Lavista Ferres, corporate vice president at Microsoft and chief data scientist at the lab.

The grants come as Redmond-based Microsoft celebrates its 50th anniversary this year.

“Evergreen Goodwill may be 100 years old, but we are not stuck in the past,” President and CEO Libby Johnson McKee said in an email. “On the contrary! Our mission is to train people for a 21st-century workplace. We are increasingly focusing on digital-literacy skills in our job-training programs to make sure members of our community and our own workforce are prepared for an AI-enabled world. We are open to any innovation that supports our mission and helps our workforce do their best job.”  

For Evergreen Goodwill — which started as Seattle Goodwill Industries in 1923 and has Eastside stores and donation centers stretching from Bellingham to Tukwila — AI innovation is about to do a lot of heavy-lifting to support Goodwill’s mission.

Evergreen Goodwill, with 30 donation sites, annually processes about 45 million donated items that tip the scales at more than 108 million pounds. Teams must touch and inspect every donated item and decide if a product is sellable or unsellable. If sellable, they must decide where — at one of the organization’s retail stores or online — and for how much. If it’s unsellable, can it be recycled or repurposed? The process involves countless painstaking decisions, with staff tapping years of experience to sort and price accordingly.

AI is now about to give them a high-tech hand.

AI image processing and machine learning will improve efficiency in identifying and classifying sellable versus unsellable items, pricing, and more. Scanning devices also will reduce physical handling by staff. Evergreen Goodwill staffers aren’t going away. The proposed AI solution will apply a human-in-the-loop approach to help enable employees to make smarter, faster data-driven decisions. It also will free up longtime staff to train incoming staff on evaluating and processing items.

The team now is in the planning phase for implementing AI. Next will come sourcing and installation of project equipment and, later this year and next year, testing of project equipment and Microsoft Azure AI implementation as well as staff training, Evergreen Goodwill said. Tools that will be used include Azure AI services for image recognition, voice processing, machine learning, and data storage; Azure AI Custom Vision processing; speech-to-text processing; and more.

The adoption of AI at Evergreen Goodwill is not limited to the staff at stores and donation centers. AI will take an increasingly prominent spot in the organization’s program curriculum to ensure community members have the digital skills to thrive in a 21st-century workplace.

“Our AI for Good project is a true win-win-win,” Johnson McKee said in the email. “First, our own workforce will be able to make smarter, faster, data-driven decisions as they process millions of donated items. Second, we will be able to keep more items out of landfills, strengthening our commitment to sustainability, circularity, and the goal of zero waste. And third, greater efficiency will allow us to teach and fund even more cutting-edge workforce-development programs here in Washington state.”

Evergreen Goodwill — which serves King, Snohomish, Skagit, Whatcom, and Kitsap counties — provides free job training and education programs for people across northwest Washington, funded from the sale of donated items in its thrift stores and online. Last fiscal year, it served 6,210 individuals across northwest Washington through its free job-training and education programs.

People remain at the heart of everything Goodwill does, Johnson McKee said, adding that AI’s integration is focused on empowering its workforce, not replacing it.