I didn't intend to do this career.

I was here as an intern and I started meeting these families, and you realize that there is a lot of work to be done to help them and to help the world realize that these are wonderful people who have so much to offer.

Because if we don't create a space for them to work and to play and to become part of our society, we are the ones missing out.

[Narrator] Funding for this program comes from The Daniel Foundation of Alabama, strengthening communities and improving the quality of life for all regions of Alabama.

The Joseph S. Bruno Charitable Foundation, supporting organizations and providing leadership that responds to challenges and creates positive change.

And Maynard Nexsen Law Firm, deploying innovation and efficiency and legal services across the country and around the world.

They're not the rich and famous.

Their profit comes not from the thing they sell, but the good they do.

Our nation has more than 1.5 million nonprofits that employ one out of 10 Americans, providing services that otherwise go unfulfilled, keeping our community connected when all else fails.

But nonprofits often lack the tools to properly promote themselves, to inspire more donors and volunteers and clients to their cause.

That's where I come in.

I've been at the nonprofit world for nearly 20 years.

I connect nonprofits with marketing professionals who donate their time and expertise so that at the end of the day, these life-giving organizations can do more, do better, by creating more that's right.

-"Buzz."

-(gentle upbeat music) We knew the whole pregnancy that it was high-risk, but when you get that diagnosis of brain issues, which is the one thing you wanna avoid in the NICU the whole time, it's just complete shock, 'cause every brain injury is different, and you always just want the best for your child.

I'm Jessica Little and my daughters are Harper and Sarah Little, and they're twins and they're five, about to be six.

[Interviewer] You said they were born three months premature?

28 weeks, yes, so about three months.

With genetic testing, now mothers and fathers know early on that their child is going to be born with special needs, and so you try and help prepare them for that.

Upon discharge, we had the expectation of a likely cerebral palsy diagnosis for Harper because of some brain issue she had had in the NICU.

And then with Sarah, she had struggled with eating in the NICU and growing and she was not only three months early, she was a pound.

She defied expectations in the NICU and so we knew that she would probably have some struggles.

[Mark] The mission of United Ability was to provide care, education, and help for children and adults with special needs and their families.

United Ability serves over 5,500 individuals with disabilities and their families every year.

And we really serve individuals from birth through the end of their life.

And we do that through 12 different programs that kind of focus around three pillars, health, -education, and employment.

-(bright upbeat music) We are in the facility right now of our nationally renowned early learning program.

It is an inclusive early learning program where we have 141 students every day, 40% of whom have a disability, and 60% of students whom are typically developing.

But it's not just a daycare.

It's a true early learning program.

We're NAEYC accredited, which is the highest level of early education accreditation that an organization can have.

We have two first class pre-K classrooms here.

We're a Head Start provider.

So everything that we do in this facility is around teaching, learning, socialization.

We're accountable to all of our funders and to our families for those same cognitive, social-emotional benchmarks that any early learning program would be.

I had heard about Hand In Hand years ago, and as soon as we graduated the NICU, I put them on the list.

[Interviewer] Yeah, yeah.

'Cause it was the only place I wanted them to be.

We were lucky enough to get into the Early Learning Program and it's just been amazing, not only with the teachers and the therapists and the medical staff that just pours so much love into them, but, again, the confidence, and they just feel so empowered.

Then in our adult programs, we constantly work with our adults on daily living skills.

How do you prepare food for yourself?

How do you live on your own in an apartment?

How do you pack a suitcase?

Grace, please listen for feedback.

If the boss tells you, "I see that you're known for getting the job done, 10 out 10."

[Susan] All of those things that enable them to be independent and on their own.

We work with them on budgeting, et cetera.

All of that is part of our adult education program.

So it's important to say our weaknesses 'cause we all have weaknesses, and they might ask you that in a job interview.

They're gonna ask you, "What are your strengths?

What are your weaknesses?"

These are all important questions that you wanna know ahead of time.

[Narrator] Amid its many educational and employment opportunities, United Ability also makes sure the adults in its day-long program have time for fun.

As a parent, to be able to take your child to an inclusive environment where they move with their class by age, not by ability.

They learn, and what they learn is just invaluable going forward.

[Interviewer] If I may ask you, do you have kids?

I do, I have two kids, yeah.

[Interviewer] And has your work here inspired anything as far as your children?

Those two boys went to preschool here.

So they have learned about kids with disabilities or different needs.

They've learned about pieces of equipment, wheelchairs, walkers, gate trainers, augmentative communication devices.

They've learned about it all.

Going into their teen years and going into public school, they reflect on those times.

I have one son who is active as a peer helper in his high school so that he can work with people who might need extra help.

So I think we've been able to raise the awareness and the confidence that we all exist and we all may need different forms of equipment and we may all have varying degrees of disabilities, but we're all humans and we need to be together and educated together and communicate together and be part of the community together.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) I will say United Ability is the only place like its kind to have the entire lifespan covered in just one facility.

United Ability has always been known for its exceptional therapeutic services.

Those therapeutic services begin in early intervention from the day that a child is diagnosed with a developmental delay.

We are the largest nonprofit early intervention provider in the State of Alabama, working with over 800 families a year, children ages zero to three with OT, PT and speech.

That continues here at our Hand in Hand early learning program where the students that are here receive speech, OT, and PT every day.

As occupational therapists, we're really geared to improving the quality of life for the patients that we serve.

We work alongside the family and their patients to increase their independence and overall quality of life.

So I'm looking at fine motor, I'm looking at gross motor skills, as well as feeding, any areas, play.

So a lot of our kids here, they simply just wanna play.

I think in general I work with families who come and they have very little idea of what the future holds for their non-speaking child.

We use everything from picture communication symbols, sign language, all the way to higher tech devices like computers and computers that are operated with eyes, eye gaze.

These complex systems can be difficult to train and learn how to use and we love to do that here and we love to expose individuals with disabilities to these high tech pieces of communication.

We also have a medical clinic here on campus, a pediatric medical clinic and an adult medical clinic.

And in these medical clinics, individuals with disabilities and their families receive primary care services, physical, medical, and rehabilitation services, vision screening services, durable medical equipment services, pretty much everything that you can think about except really specialty services that these individuals or their families might need.

Accessing medical care is not very easy for children and adults with special needs.

Typically, their medical care is more complicated, takes more time.

They may not be really good communicators.

So it makes it difficult.

Having our United Ability Clinic here is just tremendous.

It makes all the difference in the world.

It's so hard, you just pick up a phone and try and make an appointment for a child who's in a wheelchair, who can't communicate.

What you're going to hear the majority of the time is, "I'm sorry, but we don't care for those people in our practice."

[Interviewer] I can tell there's so much passion in your heart for this work.

I mean, it really makes, it makes a huge difference.

(upbeat music) [Narrator] With the help of United Ability, many people have been able to live not only average lives, but extraordinary ones.

People like Chris Biggins, the Country Club of Birmingham golf pro and one of the top disabled golfers in the world.

So I was born with cerebral palsy, and for me it affects both my legs and my lower back.

Growing up, I had a lot of pediatric care.

I had everything I needed, it was awesome.

When I was three years old and five years old with two brothers, that's all I wanted to be was a professional athlete.

And the world kind of said, "No, disabled people can't really be professional athletes," but this world I live in now said, "Yes."

I moved down here to Alabama after college and I started to really struggle.

My back got a lot worse, my legs got a lot worse and I was starting to think maybe this is just the downward spiral of my disability.

But then I heard about United Ability.

I showed up right here to the Ability Clinic and they opened the whole world for me.

After one visit, they knew exactly what I needed.

They'd seen it a hundred times before 'cause they specialize in working with people with cerebral palsy and all different types of disabilities.

It wasn't just a normal run-of-the-mill doctor, it was someone especially designed to help me.

And so I walked out of that appointment, I had my treatment, and I mean, the last 12 years of my life since then have been incredible.

In 2016, I started disabled golf, and the environment for disabled golf has really grown in the past 10 years.

In fact, we actually have our first professional event with a prize purse in September.

So we're now gonna have a professional tour for disabled golfers.

I was ranked number three for about two years and that got me invitations to play in something called the G4D Tour, which travels around the world.

So the European tour, now called the DP World Tour, has partnered with the disabled organizations and they have tournaments, 10 tournaments a year in conjunction with their own events, and it all leads towards the DP World Tour finale, which is in Dubai, so I've gotten to go to Dubai.

Earlier in the year I went, or last year, I went to Australia.

I went to Kenya earlier this year.

We've been to Scotland a few times and going to Ireland next month, been to London a bunch.

And so I never left the country until disabled golf came in and now I've seen 16 countries outside of the United States.

Yeah, I mean there may have been a time in my life where I would've been upset that I have a disability, but I'm so thankful that I have a disability, so thankful I have cerebral palsy, because the things I've been able to do are viewed as more impressive because I have a disability.

And I'm able to show others who may have it better than me or worse than me that there are endless possibilities out there.

If you really try hard, if you put your best foot forward and you have help and you reach out to help, then anything's possible.

And so it's just giving me this extra little tool to inspire people to be their best selves.

(upbeat music) My name is Brittany Herrera and I work with United Ability.

We are currently at the Hibbett Sports Distribution Center and I am a job coach here at our Summer JETS program.

It stands for Job Exploration Training.

And so we have a few high school age students here working at the warehouse.

They're currently learning lots of job skills.

They're learning what they do here at the warehouse, and they're getting paid, which is awesome.

This is a six-week program during the summer.

We work from 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM here.

And my hope for all of my students is that they gain these skills and that after our program they can seek out employment in the future.

This is one of the nine sites that we are in.

We are here in a warehouse setting, obviously, but we also are in a lot of different hospitals.

Some of the soft skills that we want to learn are problem solving, asking for help, advocating for yourself, and gaining a sense of independence.

And a lot of times this'll spark something in them where they're like, "You know, I didn't wanna work before, but now I do, and I have this goal."

Sometimes it's going to be, "Hey, maybe I don't wanna work here.

Where else can I work?"

In some of the hospitals, they can work in the kitchen, they can work in patient transport, they can work in environmental services.

So learning these skills that can be transferred to other jobs after the program.

For a lot of people, this is going to be their first job, so they're gaining all of these skills, all of the soft skills, all of the hard skills that they need to become really good employees in the future.

If you have an employee, somebody who has a disability, they want to be there, they want to work.

Somebody who doesn't have a disability, they just get up in the morning without thinking about it.

They stand up, put on their clothes, eat their breakfast, and go out the door.

But for somebody with a certain type of disability, just getting out of bed and getting their clothes on may be excruciatingly painful and it may take them four times as long.

So that required extreme amount of effort.

So they really wanted it to just to get up and get into their place of work.

(workers laughs) United Ability has been working here with us at the City of Birmingham Greenhouse for about two years now.

And the people that work with us, they're incredible individuals.

They're incredible people.

They work hard every day.

They never complain about anything that they do.

They're ready and willing to work.

And they have been a tremendous blessing to every one of us who works in this facility.

I'm Jill Smith and we are at the Horticulture Center for the City of Birmingham.

And the adults here are working on plants.

They're learning job skills of planting seeds.

They plant the flowers and everything that grows in Birmingham, that you see around Birmingham, they're very proud of that.

They can walk around and see all the beauty around Birmingham and they have had a hand in that totally.

[Voiceover] We have them dipping pots, which they clean our pots, they help us plant the pots, plant the flowers, they help us with everything we need.

You can't buy that kind of blessing with money, what they bring to us every day.

They're always happy, they're always ready and willing to work.

It's a great, great, great partnership that we have with United Ability with them working here, and that's just an incredible partnership I hope continues from now on.

Because of all of our work in employment services, we rely on many employers in this community to employ individuals with disabilities.

And in 2006, we made the decision that we needed to model that.

We needed to understand what it felt like to be an integrated competitive employer in the disability sector ourselves.

So we created Gone For Good, which is a shredding and document destruction company.

Over 50% of the individuals that work at Gone For Good have a disability.

I'm Miracle Jackson, I'm a shred technician for Gone For Good.

What I do here is I help shred, and then also from the one that's over our department, Abe Bernstein, he allowed me to help with the customers and do the things that we had.

It became very good for us, I mean, for Gone For Good.

Everything about Gone For Good is a win-win for the community and for individuals with disabilities.

Our one site here in Birmingham, Alabama saves over two million pounds of paper waste every year from the landfills, over two million pounds.

In addition to that, we're employing individuals with disabilities, and the business generates a net profit which we reinvest back into carrying out the wonderful programs that you're gonna see about and hear about at United Ability.

In 2001, I was involved in a serious automobile accident.

I was driving a company brand new 1500 pickup truck, and from the history of what I learned from it, I had an accident with an eight ton cold truck head on.

From the accident, I was told that I had TBI, traumatic brain injury.

I was 31 before I had the accident, I mean, after I had the accident, then I had start my whole life over.

I had to learn to walk, talk, eat all that back all over.

And when I was at the facility spine rehab, they tell me I was wearing diapers, and that's like going back to a baby stage.

But thank the Lord for His grace and mercy and thank the people from Gone For Good for allowing me to see what I can perform.

And it's been a successful experience.

So like everything that United Ability does, we focused on the highest level of quality, and that's no exception with Gone For Good.

We are AAA NAID certified, which is the highest level of security certification that a document destruction company can get.

That enables us to provide document destruction for federal organizations and agencies, for banks, for healthcare, for anyone in the most confidential of fields.

It's so interesting to hear all these companies, big companies like Alabama Power and Protective Life and Vulcan Materials talk about how much they look forward to seeing our Gone For Good employees when they come and empty their bins.

I enjoy working with a lot of good people.

and people that I work with are very good to work with.

And even with my supervisor, he allowed me to learn different things and learn to deal with the job more effectively.

And it's been a good experience.

So even though we serve over 1,200 businesses here in Greater Birmingham through Gone For Good, we have the capacity to serve many more.

It has been such a successful business model that we have embarked on franchising Gone For Good throughout the Southeast.

We already have a franchise owner in Huntsville, Alabama, and they are gonna be opening their doors soon.

And so we're really excited about this.

And every franchise owner will be required to employ a percentage of adults with disabilities.

Because first and foremost, that's what Gone For Good is about.

And we know that individuals will be excited about having a profitable company that also contributes to such an important mission.

Wow!

[Narrator] To get more buzz for Gone For Good, we reached out to United Ability's longtime marketing partner, Champ Creative, to provide the nonprofit with all new marketing materials, including a new commercial.

So like I said earlier, we love not just Gone For Good and what they do, but the people they work with and how they impact their businesses.

And so outside of normal public relations and social media and advertising that we're doing for them, we've also created a video suite and like kind of outlined that.

So what we want to do is create a 30-second PSA true advertising commercial.

Not just to help grow their business, but to help tell their story around Birmingham and get other businesses involved and let them know that this incredible, incredible group exists.

Yep.

And so it won't just grow Gone For Good, it'll help grow United Ability, but really tell the story of Gone For Good.

I love it, I love it.

Well, thank you so much.

I can't wait to see what you guys come up with.

I'm excited, I can't either, I'm ready.

Hi, Mary Timmons, we're so excited to see you again and just so appreciative of everything that Champ has done for us in terms of marketing and excited to hear what you have to share with us today.

Well, I'm excited to be back, so thank you.

Okay, so where we are right now is we've updated your primary and secondary marks, your logos, the color palette, typography patterns, you have new photography, the ambient and the portraits that we shot.

We've also been working with David and Abe on social media for the main account.

And then also just providing some collateral for any franchise accounts that come on as well as public relations and the video suite of testimonials about how that Gone For Good is doing.

And then these are some examples that you've all seen and some updated brand guidelines.

So the updated color palette, just the example of how we're handling the social media, and then some of the imagery.

Obviously, this is not the full brand guideline, just some examples, a refresher.

What's next?

We thought the perfect thing to add and wrap would be a 30-second anthem or PSA that y'all could run for Gone For Good just to encapsulate all the good that y'all are doing, but the warmth and the hominess that your employees feel when they work for Gone For Good.

But also just a really quick recap of like, this is what Gone For Good is, a very feel good video.

That's what we have for you today.

So I'll go ahead and play that.

[Narrator] At Gone For Good, we see the good in everything.

Like turning a pile of old documents into good jobs, or turning trash into a good day's work.

And at Gone For Good, we're doing tons and tons of good every day.

Sounds pretty good, right?

So make a good call, you'll be in good company.

And we'll make sure when you need it gone, it's gone for good.

I love it, very tremendous, that is fantastic.

I thought the PSA was wonderful when I was seeing all of those smiling faces.

It was hard not to get choked up because those are real people in our lives every single day.

Okay, so now that y'all have seen the video, what our next steps are gonna be as Champ is to seek local placement opportunities for the anthem PSA, not to just gain more awareness for United Ability and Gone For Good, but to ultimately bring in more corporate clients for you so that you can expand employment options for the individuals with disability and kind of grow Gone For Good locally a little bit more.

I know that this will excite more and more companies about becoming customers for Gone For Good because we have the capacity to serve them.

And so that in turn results in more and more individuals with disabilities obtaining employment, and that's a game changer in their life.

It gives 'em the ultimate independence to be able to have a job and to thank you.

Absolutely.

We look forward to meeting all these new clients that are gonna come through this video and expand not only employment opportunities for individuals with disabilities, but revenue so that we can serve more- Yeah.

Individuals through United Ability.

-Thank you.

-Absolutely, absolutely.

We're excited, yeah, absolutely.

Thank you for watching our buzz about United Ability, made possible by The Daniel Foundation of Alabama and Joseph S. Bruno Charitable Foundation.

Next up on "Buzz," we explored the lifelong potential of early childhood literacy through the nonprofit Small Magic.

Sometimes we have to work out our anger and we have to maybe step away.

-Ready?

Whoa!

-(upbeat music) One more shot, with me.

All right, good job.

[Narrator] "Buzz" has been highlighting and helping non-profit organizations since 2020.

Stay connected with us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, even TikTok at buzz4good.

Or watch previous episodes on our YouTube channel, also at buzz4good.

Do you know a nonprofit in need of some buzz or do you want to support our mission?

Contact us via our website, buzz4good.com.