By Gretchen Keiser

When your budget can only go so far, and the work to be done outruns the funding, what do you do? Where do you find the "many hands" needed and how do you keep them when you've found them?

The answer being pursued in Catholic Social Services is to work with volunteers, but that perhaps familiar concept has been given a professional approach. Jane Wood, who until this year had worked with Services for the Elderly in CSS, began in 1982 a new post as coordinator of volunteers for the agency. She describes her job as being to volunteers what a personnel director might be to paid staff -- the person who does the interviewing, makes sure that the right person is lined up for the right job, and that a match-up that starts out well continues to work out for everybody involved.

While the economy and federal budget cuts have placed new emphasis on the use of volunteers in many agencies, the idea had surfaced within Catholic Social Services earlier, Mrs. Wood said. "We don't use that much federal money, so the idea of volunteers really came before that," she said. "We wanted to reach more and more of he community" with the different services offered by the agency and volunteers were a very good way to stretch resources. In addition, she said, "using volunteers is a statement to our faith -- that we witness through our service to one another."

Under the umbrella of Catholic Social Services, a wide variety of work goes on, some of it within the community at large and some directed to specific groups that need special types of assistance.

The agency's staff includes professional counselors who work with individuals and families and many different trained people working with those in special need such as the Hispanic community, newly arrived refugees, the elderly and women needing help during and after pregnancy.

In the past, the concept was to have the staff professionals providing service to the community, said Steve Brazen, executive assistant to the director of CSS. "Now we're looking at the staff becoming facilitators," he said, "enabling other people to provide service."

Some of the work being offered to volunteers is at the agency's offices in the Catholic Center on West Peachtree Street. A target area is the first-floor Emergency Drop-In Center, where people who come to the center looking for help are directed. Staff members had been taking turns working a day a week in the center. Now they are getting help from Fred Millenbaugh, a Sacred Heart parishioner who is retired, and is being trained to work with people dropping in at the Center. Eventually, "we would like to have volunteers just about running that office," Mrs. Wood said. They would become specialists in the types of emergency help available in Atlanta and directing people to the appropriate resources.

Volunteers are also working with Hispanic services, serving as translators, guiding people to doctors and job interviews, and answering information calls on the phone. Volunteers are manning a Crisis Pregnancy Service hot-line and making home repairs for the elderly. And more volunteers are needed for all the types of work, Mrs. Wood noted, since one traditionally full-time staff position may be filled by five, six, or more volunteers working different hours and part-time shifts.

This part of the approach may be familiar. However, Mrs. Wood's job also entails treating volunteers "with the same professionalism" that would be given paid staff. "You have to plan for the volunteers step-by-step," she said. "What benefits can we offer them? What we are trying to say to the community that might motivate them?"

"… If we think it through, we can usually offer them quite a lot," she said. Among those who are attracted are women who want to re-enter the job market and retirees who are looking for a job that will use their skills and really provide meaningful work.

In addition, the new approach toward volunteers is not just trying to fit people into slots, but to look toward the community for areas where volunteers want to work, Mrs. Wood said. "We're open to new ideas, decentralization of services at the parish level. We're not just saying we have this program going and need volunteers down at 680 W. Peachtree St." If parishes are interested in a service project, "we're willing to share expertise and technical knowledge about whatever they're willing to do," she said.

(Anyone interested in volunteer work or in starting a service project may contact Catholic Social Services at 404--881-6571)