OSDD is now a part of Glenkirk.  We are one of Glenkirk's Vocational Programs and are looking forward to growing to serve more customers and employ more disabled workers!

When Opportunity, Inc. was founded in 1976, persons with physical, developmental and mental disabilities had few choices available to them than they do today. There were no not-for-profit manufacturing and service companies that provided full-time employment – along with competitive benefits – where these individuals could apply for meaningful career employment. The only employment programs available in 1976 in the Chicago metropolitan area were in sheltered workshops which provided day training along with traditional piece rate work.

It was in this context that Opportunity was founded in 1976. The founder, John Cornell, who is himself the parent of a child with developmental disabilities, wanted to create a place where his son and other persons with disabilities could obtain a full time job in a real integrated business environment. Opportunity was designed to help people with disabilities develop to the fullest extent possible.

Founded in Highland Park, IL with only five employees – including one unpaid director/supervisor – and working in space donated by Sunset Foods, Opportunity began doing simple collating and packaging. Revenues in 1976 totaled only $26,000, but the organization quickly grew in numbers and income.  The organization became active in the assembly and packaging of single-use medical products and was an FDA registered contract manufacturer.   In the 1990’s, at the high point in its medical device manufacturing, Opportunity operated two shifts employing nearly 200 persons – the majority of whom were persons with disabilities, welfare-to-work mothers, and others with significant barriers to employment. Starting in 1998, (and in spite of Opportunity receiving numerous awards for quality and service) customers began moving manufacturing to Mexico and China due to price pressures. Since 1998, Opportunity, Inc. lost more than $6 Million in annual revenue and close to 200 jobs.

Looking for other options, Opportunity decided to try and develop another business, Opportunity Secure Data Destruction (OSDD).  Of the many secure destruction companies operating the in Chicago area, OSDD is one of the few that is AAA-Certified by the National Association for Information Destruction (NAID). Our customers include corporations, law, accounting and security firms, as well as not-for profit entities throughout the greater Chicago area.  Opportunity Secure Data Destruction is now part of a national alliance of not-for-profit social enterprises that provide secure document shredding for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Department of Defense (DOD), as well as Fortune 1000 customers.

The demise of the parent organization, Opportunities, Inc. threatened the existence of OSDD, but Glenkirk, a non-profit agency serving the developmentally disabled, acquired OSDD to save the jobs of the remaining 20 disabled employees.  OSDD has become a Glenkirk Enterprise and joins their broad array of services for people with disabilities.