Case Study: Goodwill of the Olympics and Rainier Region achieves streamlined operations and real-time retail insights with Microsoft Dynamics 365

Optimizing internal operations frees Goodwill staff to focus on the mission

Goodwill of the Olympics and Rainier Region is a medium‑sized nonprofit that operates 37 thrift stores across 15 Washington counties to fund job training and placement programs serving more than 9,000 people a year. The organization struggled with a patchwork of aging systems that produced slow, error‑prone reporting (daily sales reports could be hours of manual work or data up to weeks old), limited managers’ ability to price and rotate inventory in real time, and exposed the nonprofit to outages and security risks.

A Microsoft grant enabled implementation of Windows 10, Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, and Power BI, automating sales reporting and delivering real‑time store data to handheld devices. The change eliminated roughly 22 hours per week of manual accounting work, produced accurate reports earlier each morning, improved inventory turnover and pricing decisions (driving an extra $167,000 in sales in one month), increased network redundancy and security, and freed staff to focus more on programs and participant outcomes.

Goodwill of The Olympics and Rainier Region

Lori Forte Harnick

Chief Executive Officer