Pitt Volunteer Pool Supports University, Community

By Sharon S. Blake

Whether it’s serving Christmas dinner to the homeless or staffing the finish line of the Pittsburgh Marathon, members of the Pitt Volunteer Pool are a familiar sight at many regional weekend and evening events.

The volunteers also spend long hours working on projects out of the public eye, such as repackaging surplus medical supplies to ship overseas or painting the interior of an elderly resident’s home.

Pitt’s spirit of volunteerism is evident in the growing number of participants. The pool, part of the office of Community and Governmental Relations (CGR), was launched in 1989 and attracted several hundred people; today its membership is 2,100.

Pitt’s Day of Caring Set for Sept. 5 The 12th Annual Pitt/United Way Day of Caring—Pitt Volunteer Pool’s biggest undertaking—is scheduled for Sept. 5. It is expected to attract approximately 400 participants. The volunteers, with their supervisors’ approval, will spend that Thursday in activities ranging from visiting the elderly to painting outdoor murals. Transportation, lunch, and T-shirts are provided, and all volunteers are invited to the Mellon Arena for a late afternoon party. The deadline to sign up for the event was Aug. 16, but event co-coordinator Gwen Watkins, special services community coordinator in Pitt’s Office of Community and Government Relations, said last-minute applicants can still be put to use, providing there are open slots at any of the 13 project sites. “We maintain the database with everyone’s first, second, and third choices, but when a site fills up, we sometimes call to see if they can accommodate one or two more people,” she said. Pitt faculty, staff, and students have set a standard of excellence for their participation over the years, and in 2001, the University won special recognition by being named to the Pittsburgh Chapter’s United Way Hall of Fame, which recognizes organizations that “consistently conduct extraordinary campaigns in terms of financial results and the use of creative and innovative fundraising techniques.” —Sharon S. Blake

Steve Zupcic, assistant director of CGR’s Community Relations, noted, “Many, many more people are volunteering at least once or twice a year. We really have engaged much of the University community.”

According to Zupcic, the volunteer pool is mostly staff-driven; some of the more dedicated volunteers are women in their 50s who frequently are single are heads of households. Their high school-age children often accompany them to the site, where they pitch in to plant vegetables, walk dogs, or staff a booth at the South Side Summer Street Spectacular.

The pool has always attracted more women than men, said Zupcic, partly because the women represent more than half of Pitt’s workforce and partly because personal relationships that develop in the workplace appear to be more highly valued by women than men.

“Women seem to take a more holistic view of the workplace, so it would only make sense that when they are offered the opportunity to volunteer as a kind of appendage to the workplace, they’d be more likely to,” Zupcic said.

Volunteers select their assignments every few months from a list sent to them through campus mail. While some agencies call and ask for help, Pitt employees themselves often suggest other projects.

The volunteer pool staff carefully screen all requests, weeding out those that aren’t able to handle a team of volunteers.

“When people in good faith give up a Saturday and then spend their time just standing around, well, that doesn’t work for anyone,” Zupcic said. “And I see part of my role as making sure that doesn’t happen.”

For the volunteers, the reward of volunteering runs much deeper than the free parking, lunch, or T-shirt offered at the end of their shift.

Kathy Rud, faculty actions coordinator in the Office of the Dean of the Faculty and College of Arts and Sciences, has been volunteering through Pitt since the early ‘90s.

“I think I’ve tried everything on the list,” she said, noting that her favorite projects are with the AIDS Task Force and PERSAD, a community counseling center that works with sexual minorities and people affected by HIV or AIDS.

Volunteers are involved at every stage of a project, from mailing invitations for the Art for AIDS Auction to helping out at the auction itself and at the patrons’ party.

“It doesn’t matter how busy my life is,” said Rud, “I could never give up the volunteering—it’s that important to me.”

It’s not unusual for a volunteer to discover a special niche. For example, the Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) program, in which participants become advocates for youths within the juvenile justice system, has recruited Pitt staffers for a more long-term project. Each volunteer makes a commitment of 16 to 18 months to follow a case through, visit the child in his or her home, accompany the child to court, and become his or her advocate.

“Volunteers find this enormously rewarding,” observed Zupcic, adding that he has seen volunteers gravitate to the CASA program and continue with it exclusively for years. “I love losing volunteers that way,” he said with a chuckle. “We don’t try to control our pool or keep our people in it. Ours is a very fluid, open-ended structure.”

The Pitt Volunteer Pool also prides itself on being a good neighbor, staffing many beautification projects on or near Pitt’s urban campus. When residents of a neighborhood that borders the campus asked for help in removing a massive growth of grape vines that were choking hardwood trees in Schenley Park, the pool sprang into action and launched its two-year War on Vines effort. Teaming with Citiparks and Partners in Parks, the volunteers cleared the area. The felled trees were then given to the volunteers as free firewood.

“That wasn’t even Pitt property—it’s city property—but we wanted to work with them as good neighbors,” said Zupcic. “Even though we’re an international institution with a national and international mission, we also need to work with and pay attention to what’s going on right next door.”

Looking ahead, Zupcic hopes to tap into the population of Pitt retirees.

“I would like to build a strong retiree base,” he said. “They could still be a part of the University community, and there’s a broad range of ways they could contribute.”

For more information or to join the Pitt Volunteer Pool, call 412/624-7709 or e-mail gwatkins@pitt.edu.