Our Volunteers Make the Difference!

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The operation of a clinic is somewhat dependent on where you want to be in the future. Even though successful … the RotaCare Santa Cruz Clinic visualizes itself within 3 years as a highly successful clinic.

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In defining what a highly successful clinic looks like we developed a Strategic Plan. The Plan had 4 Strategic Priorities.

1) Get the word out to those who need our service;

2) Get enough volunteer providers to handle our maximum of 24 patients on clinic nights;

3) Do enough fundraising to cover our annual budget;

4) Look at the systems in our clinic to maximize our efficiency and delivery of care.

 

We are working on all 4 Strategic Priorities. One of our volunteers, Brenda Mee, a Real Estate Agent had a desire to work on our first Strategic Priority. She started by making 4 sandwich signs that are placed on the street and near our front door. A bus stops near our front door. One day we had a person come to our clinic who said that they saw the sign as they stepped out of the bus and decided to come right on in.

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Brenda not being the kind of person to rest on her laurels decided to work on getting the word out in our area’s Spanish Language newspaper, La Ganga. We put together a notice and worked out a deal with the paper for a half page spread. In the notice we said that one should be in line by 5:00 PM on clinic night. The first week that the notice ran we had 10 people in line at 5:00 PM.

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The same week we put together a notice that was put in the grocery bags of 4,000 senior citizens getting free groceries in Santa Cruz County. The organization that allowed us to do that was Grey Bears … at no charge. The thought being that these senior citizens might have friends or family members who could use the services of RotaCare.

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All of this was spearheaded by Brenda. The last thing that she pushed us to do was a radio advertisement on a Spanish Radio Station. We are having several new patients every week and are not always able to identify where or when they found out about us. 

Planning with the use of a Strategic Plan, defining the priorities, and having a volunteer who wants to step up to match their volunteer efforts with a priority by using their skills has great benefits.

Thank you Brenda Mee, RotaCare Cruz Clinic Volunteer.