Volunteer of the Month – September 2016

Congratulations Marcia Griffin, the September 2016 Volunteer of the Month!

Marcia has been volunteering with the American Red Cross for 15 years, starting out in Service to the Armed Forces and later moving to Staff Services.

“Marcia came in and trained in Staff Services,” explains DAT Response Supervisor Melisa Myers, who nominated Marcia for the award. “Within a month she was able to take over the Disaster Services Intake queue. This is a huge accomplishment. It means Marcia is talking to every single new disaster services volunteer. She creates accounts for them, registers them for initial courses and gets them to staff points of contact.”

“Not only is Marcia handling incredibly very detailed time-sensitive information, but she has completely taken this off the Staff Services plate,” Myers adds. “This has been a tremendous time saver on the overall department of Staffing.”

On the national level, Marcia also helps deploy disaster responders by preparing Mission Cards—prepaid credit cards that must be loaded with funds so volunteers can travel to needed areas. During major disasters, like the recent flooding in Louisiana, Marcia is part of a team that is on call to assign numbers, verify information and allocate funds for food and lodging to get responders to a scene quickly. “It’s a lot of responsibility,” Marcia says. “There’s a lot of donor money there. We don’t take it lightly.”

“We work long hours during a disaster,” she adds. “There’s a great team, and we all step up to the plate.”

A mother of two and grandmother of four, Marcia also works part-time as a switchboard operator for Mayo Clinic. She is an avid quilter and donates many pieces to hospitals, women’s shelters—“any group that needs one”—through the La Crosse Area Quilt Guild.

The 67-year-old Onalaska resident credits her parents for her desire to help the community.“I love to do charity work,” she says. “My parents put that ethic in me. They instilled in all us kids—you have to give back. And today I preach that to my children.”

“There’s such a need out there,” she adds. “You have to start volunteering.”

Thank you, Marcia, for proudly representing the Red Cross in your community and for giving back to others in so many remarkable ways!

If you would like to join Marcia as a Disaster Services volunteer, visitwww.redcross.org/volunteer or contact the Office of Volunteer Resources atvolunteerwisconsin@redcross.org. The American Red Cross has many volunteer opportunities, including disaster response, supporting military troops, helping with blood donation drives and more. Red Cross volunteers are united by their service and the feeling that in changing others’ lives, their lives are also changed.