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Organization: Goodwill Industries of Greater Cleveland and East Central Ohio, Inc
Territory: 10 counties across Ohio and West Virginia
Mission programs: 30+ employment, training, and family-strengthening programs
People served (most recent year): 22,000+
CaseWorthy customer since: 2023
Solution:
Insights From: Megan Clow and Averie Destafano
Summary:
Goodwill Industries of Greater Cleveland and East Central Ohio serves 22,000+ people annually across 10 counties and 30+ programs. After replacing a paper-heavy legacy system with CaseWorthy in 2023, the team drove quarterly file review compliance from roughly 7 out of 30 files failing to just one, earned CARF accreditation, cut audit prep from days to minutes, and gave leadership real-time visibility into staff capacity and program outcomes for the first time.
The Organization
For more than a century, Goodwill Industries of Greater Cleveland and East Central Ohio has helped people in Northeast Ohio and the northern panhandle of West Virginia move toward independence. The nonprofit operates more than 30 mission programs across its 10-county footprint, from job coaching and employment readiness to parenting classes, rape crisis services, hot meal programs, and adult literacy.
The Mission Services team supports individuals referred by partners like Opportunities for Ohioans with Disabilities (OOD), as well as community members who walk in on their own. Employment specialists help clients prepare for work, study for their driver’s permit, complete assessments, and find and keep a good job.
The Challenge
A Paper-Bound System That Couldn’t Keep Up
Before CaseWorthy, Goodwill’s data lived in a legacy platform called Good Track, supplemented by a heavy paper trail. Forms were filled out in the field, scanned back at the office, and uploaded by the records department. The result was predictable: double work for staff, a foggy picture of program activity, and audits that meant sitting with stacks of paper files hunting for records that met the criteria. For an organization serving more than 22,000 people a year across 10 counties, the system simply couldn’t scale with the mission.
Why CaseWorthy
CaseWorthy as the Operating System for Mission Services
In 2023, Goodwill joined a group of affiliates that adopted CaseWorthy through Goodwill Industries International. With a shared GII point of contact supporting implementation, the team started rebuilding its core workflows inside the platform — intake, case notes, attendance, file management, and reporting.
The wins showed up quickly. Releases, consents, and program forms now live directly on the client record. Goodwill built a fee-for-service plan template specifically for OOD referrals, turning a multi-step paper process into a guided workflow. Customized user roles ensure each staff member sees only the fields and tasks relevant to their work and report exports that used to take hours now take seconds.
The Results
Real-time documentation replaces backlog
Intake, case notes, and attendance now happen in the moment instead of piling up for later data entry, changing staff behavior and the quality of the data captured.
A dramatic jump in file-review compliance
Goodwill conducts quarterly file reviews of its employment specialists, with a target score of 93% or above. When Averie took over the reviews last summer, the first round revealed roughly 7 of 30 files out of compliance. After standing up new workflows and templates in CaseWorthy, the most recent quarter told a different story: only one file out of compliance, and a majority of staff scoring above the 93% threshold.
CARF and Medicaid audits that used to be painful are now routine
Goodwill earned its three-year CARF accreditation in December 2024 for Job Coaching and Job Development programs. The team credits CaseWorthy with making the documentation side of accreditation dramatically easier. The same has been true for Medicaid audits. With records, releases, and case notes already structured inside the platform, file pulls for auditors take minutes instead of days.
Better data for GII reporting and program decisions
Goodwill International requires significant data from its affiliates. With CaseWorthy, Goodwill's leadership can pull exactly what GII needs, add ad-hoc fields when a question comes up (such as how many clients are low-income or live in rural areas), and remove them when they're no longer needed.
Placement and retention numbers that finally reflect reality
Because placements and 30-day retention only count if they're documented, accurate data entry directly affects Goodwill's outcomes story. Megan has watched her team take ownership of that connection, making sure placements are recorded in CaseWorthy and retention milestones are entered on time, so the organization's reported numbers actually match the work being done.
Visibility for leadership and a new conversation about capacity
This year, Goodwill started pulling attendance data into management conversations for the first time, giving the COO a clearer picture of how staff time is being spent and whether the team has room to take on more.
Staff buy-in and morale
Perhaps the most meaningful shift is cultural. Once staff could see their own data — their placements, their retention numbers, their file scores — the work stopped feeling like data entry and started feeling like proof of impact.
What’s Next
With a stronger foundation in place, the Goodwill team is sharpening its goals for the year ahead:
Reviews
Hit 93%+ on every quarterly file review.
Attendance
Roll out attendance tracking across the whole department to inform staffing and capacity decisions.
Workflow
Standardize the case note → attendance → billing workflow so every employment specialist follows the same sequence. A change the team believes will be transformative once it becomes the expectation across the board.
Reporting
Continue partnering with their CaseWorthy contact to refine reports, including deduplication logic for clients with multiple services under one program.
In Their Own Words
When asked to sum up CaseWorthy’s impact in a single sentence, Averie didn’t hesitate:
Featuring Insights From
Averie Destafano, Mission Operations Manager, who runs records, billing, and the administrative backbone of the program.
Megan Clow, Supervisor of Mission Services for the northern territory (Cuyahoga, Lake, and Geauga counties), who oversees the employment specialists serving clients every day.
