Mark Goldsmith knows about serendipity. The 85-year-old founder of Getting Out and Staying Out (GOSO), a nonprofit that helps incarcerated young men re-enter society, experienced it in a big way.
When Goldsmith was 68 and retired from corporate life, his wife, Arlene, suggested he participate in New York City’s Principal for a Day program, where volunteers go into the public school system one day a year and talk to students about their futures.
It was Goldsmith’s future that was about to change.
“I asked for the toughest school in New York City and they gave me exactly what I asked for,” he says. “It was The Horizon Academy, a school for 16-21-year-old young men located on the notorious Rikers Island.”
On the surface, it appeared to be a strange match for a former cosmetic industry executive who had worked for companies such as Coty, Almay, Revlon, Yves St. Laurent, and led marketing efforts for Brut Cologne, while handling endorsements from celebrities like Muhammad Ali and Joe Namath.
“When I first walked in, I did not have a clue what I was going to say,” says Goldsmith, who relates his experience and his efforts to successfully launch GOSO in the new book From Madison Avenue to Rikers Island: The Making of a Social Entrepreneur.
From those corporate days, Goldsmith understood the importance of finding a way to make a connection with those you seek to influence. So he talked about Tupac Shakur and Kobe Bryant, which immediately earned the attention of the young men, who couldn’t quite fathom the idea of a 68 year-old white man in a suit and tie discussing rap and his championship basketball career.
After his talk with students, the corrections officers told Goldsmith that in their time on Rikers Island they had never seen the young men listen to a speaker as intently as they had to him that day.
The Clang of a Cell Door
Many of the inmates had been arrested on drug-related crimes, so Goldsmith employed an analogy comparing corporations to a drug cartel to show them they already knew more about business than they realized. Corporations have salespeople, hiring managers and people who handle the money, as do illegal drug operations.
These young people just needed the opportunity to transfer their skills to the corporate world.
“More importantly to them, they didn’t realize that they could actually make more money in a corporation than they made selling drugs, without the threat of being arrested,” Goldsmith says.
Although age and background represented a large gap between Goldsmith and the inmates, he felt a connection to them because of something that happened deep in his past. As a young man in his hometown of Johnstown, PA, Goldsmith drank too much one night, got behind the wheel of the family car, and promptly hit a police car.
That landed him in the city jail where he learned what it was like to hear the clang of a cell door slamming shut behind him. But his parents bailed him out and paid his fine, and that was that. He knew things would have been much different had he been a person of color.
“I always thought that if I had been Black or Latino in New York City and had run into a cop car, I would have been sent to Rikers,” he says.
Finding a Passion
Over time, Goldsmith’s participation in the lives of the inmates at Rikers grew and so did the idea behind GOSO, which he launched in 2004. The nonprofit’s philosophy is based on what he refers to as the three E’s: education, employment and, most importantly, emotional well-being.
“Without the third E the other two don’t work,” Goldsmith says. “You need trained social workers to help them deal with the trauma they have been through.”
That was a point driven home to him by his wife, Arlene, who holds a doctorate degree in social work. According to the GOSO website, more than half of the program’s participants wrestle with mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, or a substance-use disorder.
That can make for tough work, but it’s also rewarding work, Goldsmith says. Fewer than 15 percent of GOSO’s participants return to jail, compared to a national rate of more than 65 percent for men ages 16 to 24.
Goldsmith says that success is a reflection of the organization’s motto, “It’s all about the guys.” That is, it’s about them getting jobs, furthering their education, and achieving better physical and mental health. In his book, Goldsmith includes several letters he received from GOSO participants that show “how the guys blossomed.”
Now Goldsmith is hoping to inspire others, not necessarily to work with inmates, but to understand that it’s never too late to do something worthwhile. After all, he was 68 when he made that first visit to Rikers.
With that in mind, his book serves as a primer for founding and operating a nonprofit organization, giving the reader a virtual roadmap covering every aspect of nonprofit from fundraising, to staffing, to volunteers, to financing, to possible pitfalls, in case retirees are seeking an encore career or those still in the workforce are pondering a career change.
Ultimately, the trick is to discover something you have a passion for, he says because passion is critical to success in the nonprofit world. Then find ways to become involved, whether that means starting an entirely new organization or volunteering at one that already exists.
“When you do this kind of work, you get much more out of it than you put into it,” Goldsmith says. “That’s the big reward for people who are out to do good for society. The biggest surprise of all is what it does for you.”
