Longtime Goodwill CEO, prominent pastor dies at 82

Rev. Don Roberts and Bob Rosinsky spent a chunk of the early 1980s on the road in a camper — with the occasional flight when their destination was really far — visiting Goodwill stores across the U.S. and Canada. 

Rosinsky dubbed the trips, thousands of miles in total, the Magic Mystery Tour. The pair, both at the early stages of their Goodwill careers, sought to see what worked and what didn’t in the fragmented, nonprofit retail-for-jobs model. Sometimes they visited as many as 10 Goodwill stores a week. “We were looking for the characteristics that defined great Goodwills,” Rosinsky says. “We wanted to see where the innovation was coming from.” 

They used that knowledge, in addition to their own creativity and strategies, to build one of the largest and most recognized Goodwills in the 120-year-old global organization. That unit, Goodwill Manasota, had $95 million in revenue in its most recent fiscal year, according to public tax filings.