Become a Red Cross Volunteer Today!
Every day people are forced from their homes due to fires, storms, and other disasters. Single- and multi-family fires account for 90% of disaster responses. You can be part of a team that helps and responds to over 60,000 emergencies every year. From offering a caring and compassionate ear to meeting the disaster-caused needs of individuals and households, such as lodging and clothing, and connecting them with long-term recovery services, our volunteers ensure that families don’t have to face tough times alone.
While we have quite a few opportunities available, our most critical needs currently are
- Transportation Specialists - to help deliver blood products to hospitals.
- Blood Donor Ambassadors - to help with the customer service portion of the blood drive;
- Duty Officers - to assist with determining if the Red Cross needs to respond to a disaster and assigning a team member to the response.
- Disaster Action Team members - to assist in the immediate aftermath of a disaster;
- Casework roles for both our Disaster and Service to Armed Forces teams.
Transportation Specialist (Douglas County)
- Based out of Douglasville but handling hospital runs throughout the northern part of the state.
- Volunteer drivers to make the deliveries of blood products to hospitals for regularly scheduled runs, replenishment runs if a facility is running low on product and their regular delivery is not immediate and emergency runs if there is some type of mass casualty situation and the on-hand supply is inadequate.
- The runs are made from our processing facility in Douglasville using Red Cross vehicles and no commercial license is required.
- We ask that a volunteer commit to at least 1 shift per month which is about 4 hours in duration. The schedules are flexible and work around a volunteers availability so they are not required to commit to a specific weekly or monthly schedule.
Blood Donor Ambassador (Paulding, Douglas, Clayton, Cobb, Fulton, Fayette, Henry, Rockdale)
- There is an increased need for Blood Donor Ambassadors (BDAs) due to the need for additional screening and sanitizing at all of our drives. This also allows the phlebotomy team to remain on task for the donation process.
- The purpose of the role is to assist with registration and giving the donor a great experience at the blood drives in order to encourage future donations.
- Shifts are based on the individual’s availability and the scheduled drives in the area.
- Volunteers are able to self-schedule on-line with the request that they work at least 1 shift per month.
Disaster Action Team (DAT) (Paulding, Douglas, Clayton, Cobb, Fulton, DeKalb, Douglas, Henry, Rockdale)
- The DAT team members are the responders to disasters our clients experience and in Georgia this is usually home fires.
- The response may be done virtually or in-person. Our normal process is in-person and we are attempting to return to that process but due to COVID restrictions some of the work is done in a virtual capacity.
- Our disaster team provides all the training to be ready to respond but the volunteer needs access to the internet through a computer and/or phone in order to complete the required tasks.
- Volunteers put themselves on-call for at least 1 six hour shift per week. The reason for this is that we cannot predict when fires will occur in your community and we want to be able to engage our volunteers in meaningful work as quickly as possible.
Disaster Action Team Duty Officer (Statewide/Virtual)
- Our Disaster Action Teams (DAT) respond to disasters, mostly house fires, every day 24/7 to assist clients with their needs. Our DAT Duty Officers are the virtual team members who dispatch the teams to the call and support the team on the ground.
- May determine if Red Cross action is required; may decide if Red Cross will respond via DAT.
- Uses event triggers such as size, scope, and type of the event to direct the DAT response.
- Works with on-scene DAT leadership to support the response and provide technical guidance.