Goodwill sets up first Longboat Key location

Longboat Key will have its first Goodwill location by the end of the year.

It’s been a long time coming.

“I’ve been trying to get out on Longboat Key since I first got here 13 years ago,” Goodwill Manasota President & CEO Donn Githens said.

The outparcel of the newly built Brista Commons shopping center will be home to a Goodwill bookstore and donation drop-off center at 3150 Gulf of Mexico Drive. With 3,442 square feet of space, the store is in two sections, with the rear fit to serve as a donation dropoff location and the street-facing portion an open-to-the-public bookstore. The shelves will be updated often, Githens said.

“We’ll be dropping off fresh books probably about three to five times per week at a minimum,” he said.

The bookstore and donation center will both be open seven days a week from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. The location is expected to be open for business in mid-December.

Githens said the decision to open a bookstore rather than a retail store was largely due to the difficulty in finding a large space on the Key.

“Retail space is very limited on Longboat Key. So when we had the opportunity to grab this space for the donation center and bookstore, we grabbed it,” Githens said. “Our traditional model in Goodwill Manasota is a larger box store. We want to have that larger footprint because it allows us to hire more team members and provide more meaningful job training experiences.”

The Longboat Key store will be Goodwill Manasota’s fourth bookstore in the region. The store will employ seven to eight, and they won’t be minimum wage, Githens said. Goodwill Manasota has several programs to help employ “people with disabilities and other barriers to employment” through job skills training and employment opportunities, according to its website.

“Our mission is changing lives through the power of work,” he said. “We meet each team member where they are… We also have a pursuit of education program where we have about 18 team members who are going to college getting either an associate, a bachelor’s or a master’s degree paid for by Goodwill. That helps with the upskilling of people in the community, who then grow with our organization or become a valuable employee for one of our business partners in the community.”

There are several organizations on the Key that benefit from donations, and Githens said he hopes to work together with those groups to benefit the island collaboratively.

“Goodwill Manasota has a long history of partnering with other nonprofits in our community,” Githens said. “We have a model that is 123 years old for the collection, production and sale of donated good to fund our mission programs, and some of those mission programs are to help other nonprofits in the community, and we’re always looking for new partners.”