Mission Driven

Valentine’s Day 2014 started like any other for Jordan Bartlett, co-founder of Doing Good Works, a Certified B Corp, and the umbrella for DGW Branded and Foster Greatness. He didn’t expect anything out of the ordinary to happen that day until it did. Mid-morning, he sent his boss an email letting him know he was resigning. He didn’t have another job lined up, and he didn’t know what he was going to do. He just knew he needed something different that made a positive impact in people’s lives.

Jordan Bartlett

Photo Credit: Doing Good Works

The events of that morning were set in motion years earlier. Jordan knew from a young age that he was adopted. He didn’t think about tracking down his biological family, because he had a loving and supportive family and didn’t feel like he had any gaps to fill. But his biological family came looking for him when he was 19 years old. One day a young woman approached him. She introduced herself as his biological sister. He learned that they shared the same father, she had spent time in foster care and struggled with addiction. She made him wonder how different his life could have been had he not been adopted by his family. After that first meeting, they stayed in touch and got to know each other over Facebook. He would have no idea how meeting her would impact his career path in the years to come.

Success Is Tied To Happiness And Fulfillment

Jordan started working in insurance right out of college thinking it would be a short-term stay on his professional path. Eventually, it turned into seven years and included a move to Southern California. He didn’t consider himself the corporate type, didn’t like dressing up for work and wasn’t motivated by a paycheck. When he resigned in 2014, he was grateful that the company didn’t just cut him off but gave him some support through the transition. A lot of people questioned what he was doing, including his mom.

The nonprofit sector seemed like the logical place for him. Jordan met with a lot of amazing people at nonprofits doing important work that was making a difference in the lives of many. But he believed then as he believes now that success is tied to happiness and fulfillment. He determined it would be a difficult path to pursue, because it would be like starting all over.

It was at a meeting with Royal Family Kids  that Jordan made an important connection, though. He was encouraged to meet Scott Henderson, who had a similar background and desire to do good. Jordan and Scott met for coffee and by the end of it agreed to start a business together, because that is what they knew how to do and use the profits to support people who aged out of foster care.

It Was A Grind

They started out selling products like coffee and phone cases. They even provided one customer, an intellectual property law firm, with 200 tin race cars filled with Jelly Bellies. But it was a grind. In 2016, they brought on someone who understood the branded merchandise industry, which freed them up to meet with prospective customers, but it was still tough. It wasn’t until the end of 2017 that they started getting paid by the company, and even then it wasn’t that much given the high cost of living in Southern California. The toughest day was when they let go of their staff because there just wasn’t any money coming in. But Jordan and Scott didn’t give up hope. The next day, they showed up for work and kept going.

Learning something new was one of the ways Jordan got through this difficult period. He read biographies about people who pursued a similar path and succeeded and took online courses in marketing, sales and finance. He can see now that what he learned during the company’s early days contributed to incremental changes that got it to where it is today.

Revenue Equals Mission

Their mission to support people aging out of foster care is their North Star and gave them the discipline they needed to build the business. Jordan and Scott learned to be agnostic about the product because revenue equals mission. They developed strong relationships with reputable and socially-conscious suppliers who believed in the mission, which allowed them to be flexible and pivot quickly to provide a range of products that their customers wanted. It also helped that Scott's background was in supply-chain management. It didn't matter if they were getting t-shirts, business cards or 15 million face masks during the pandemic, revenue kept the mission alive, and it still does. In 2020, a cold call to Sephora resulted in a contract to deliver swag kits for their employees. This contract changed their trajectory and allowed them to shift from individual branded items to swag kits and work with bigger companies. The mission helped open many doors, but it was their ability to deliver high quality products and excellent customer service that got them in those doors. Sephora continues to be one of their best customers, and their suppliers include Hydro Flask, Oakley and The North Face.  

Scott Henderson

Photo Credit: Doing Good Works

Just as the company evolved, so has their support for people impacted by the foster care system. It started with volunteering once a week at a local foster care resource center teaching a class on resumé writing that was really a discussion about life. They were usually there until at least noon, often much longer. It was there that they met Ashley and Morris, whom they hired. Ashley was fearless when it came to cold calls and Morris was a self-taught social media genius. They thought jobs would be their main source of support but as they hired more employees and interns impacted by the foster care system, they realized more was needed.

It was not uncommon for the young people they hired to be overwhelmed by the lack of support as they transitioned out of the foster care system. In foster care, they had a whole host of people telling them what to do and when to do it and little to no control over their own lives. Many of them were completely on their own for the first time and had no one to turn to if they needed help. Jordan and Scott saw employees struggle in their jobs because they were worried about affording a place to live and having enough to eat. So they started providing financial support for things like security deposits, groceries and other living expenses. They work to create a safe and caring community for their employees, and they continue to stay in touch with those who moved on to other opportunities to provide support, celebrate successes and cheer them on.

Foster Greatness

Foster Greatness, an application that can be downloaded to a smartphone, launched in 2023. It was designed by and for young people impacted by the foster care system. It has four parts informed by best practices and lessons learned. They are: 

• Low- and no-cost resources in each state that can be found by entering a zip code. The resources include information about housing, education, financial literacy and employment. The links are checked every six months to make sure they are current.

• Connection to a resource specialist, who experienced the foster care system, and provides one-on-one support to community members trying to identify and access resources.     

• Job opportunities with DGW Branded, vendors and customers.

• Community: For many impacted by the foster care system the connection to someone who shares that experience is almost immediate. People using the app can set up a one-on-one meeting with someone who understands their journey.

Work on the platform began in 2020 as business took off and eighteen interns were hired to start researching resources in all 50 states. 

Every year about 26,000 young people age out of the foster care system. Foster Greatness is a community that people never age out of. It is a safe place to connect with someone who shares the user's lived experience or apply for a job. Foster care takes so much away from kids who are in it. The goal of Foster Greatness is to build back trust and give hope by putting control back in the hands of users by letting them decide how and when they are involved and always have it there for when it is needed. Currently, there are 250 Foster Greatness community members, and they hope to increase that number to 5,000 by the end of 2024.

Jordan says it is gratifying to see current and former employees and interns succeed. Ashley is crushing it in sales with DGW Branded, and Morris has a great job with Amazon. Tamar, who interned back in 2020 planned to become a social worker, which, along with law enforcement, is a pretty common career path for kids aging out of foster care. She excelled at communications and learned it can be a powerful tool for good and to change behavior. She ended up majoring in it and is now making a name for herself in public relations.

To Live A Good Life

Too many people view young people who aged out of foster care almost like criminals when in reality it was through no fault of their own that they ended up in a broken system. Young people coming out of foster care often end up struggling with addiction, cycling through the criminal justice system and or are homeless because of the harm done to them by this broken system. The young people Jordan and Scott have worked with over the years want what we all want - to live a good life. Jordan saw it with his sister who needed help and support to get on a better path, which she did. Today, she is living in Florida working for the treatment center that helped her overcome her addiction.

In 2022, Doing Good Works invested almost a million dollars to support their mission. Jordan says business and life are really good. Their success is made all the more sweet knowing how much their families sacrificed to get to where they are now, because it was a lot. He tells anyone wanting to start a mission-driven business that you can succeed if you work hard and have a thick skin, because a lot of people will tell you it can’t be done.

Jordan doesn’t take their success for granted, and he knows he is living his purpose. He is often in awe of what they have built and the impact it is having, because it is so much bigger and better than what he and Scott ever imagined. His hope is that one day they can hand the company off to people from the foster care community to run and continue giving opportunities and hope for a better life.    

Note To Readers

At the time I was working on this profile, the state of Minnesota announced a $5 million shortfall in the Fostering Independence Grant program, a first of its kind program in the nation that covered the full cost of college for Minnesotans who have been in foster care.

If you know someone who has aged out of foster care or know someone who works with them, please let them know about Foster Greatness.

Learn More

To learn more, visit Doing Good Works where you can review their 2022 Impact Report and learn more about DGW Branded and Foster Greatness.