Don`t call Donna Zanzola a ”workaholic”-just say she has a
”volunteer`s mentality” that propels her into the Joliet community to help people after her workday ends.
”Joliet is a great town,” says Zanzola, who was hired as director of volunteer services at Silver Cross Hospital three years ago. ”But people have to work to keep it that way. It has an abundance of needs, and those who are able have to take care of them.”
Zanzola, 44, a lifelong Joliet resident, works hard for her town`s welfare. She is on local committees that coordinate area social services, control gangs and advise high schools on combining some of their cooperative education curriculums. She also has worked regularly on church and school committees.
”I have a very understanding family,” she says of her husband, Albert;
daughter, Andrea, 19; and son, Matthew, 16, who also have volunteered in various capacities.
As director of volunteer services, Zanzola recruits volunteers by visiting residents of retirement homes, advertising on local radio stations and organizing recruitment programs held in the hospital, such as the
”Volunteers Are All Heart” tea held last Valentine`s Day.
”We got 13 volunteers from that one,” Zanzola says. She acknowledges that Silver Cross-on the west side of town-is in tight competition for volunteers with St. Joseph Medical Center on the east side.
Zanzola speaks proudly of the 550 volunteers she oversees, trains and places in hospital positions: 150 work in the hospital, and 400 work on hospital fundraising.
In 1988, she says, fundraising volunteers logged more than 50,000 hours and raised more than $100,000. They work in the hospital`s resale and gift shops, and organize a yearly ball, a bazaar and two entertainment events a year, called Celebrity Spotlight, held in Bicentennial Park.
Zanzola, who was director of volunteer services for nine years at a nursing home complex in Joliet before coming to Silver Cross, says she instills pride in her volunteers by frequently giving them compliments to acknowledge their accomplishments. She also plans festivities to honor them, such as an annual Christmas party.
A former junior-high math and science teacher before rearing a family, Zanzola entered the field of health care volunteer administration by answering a newspaper ad. The opportunity to work with so many people attracted her, she says.
”She`s done everything she can to meet our requests,” says Dorothy Worst, a registered nurse who retired from Silver Cross in 1982 and has been volunteering in the hospital`s medical library since then. ”She`s a great asset. It`s great to have someone like her who knows the ropes of the hospital.”
Jane Mitchell, director of the hospital`s Home Health Services, calls Zanzola ”very organized” and a person with wonderful ”people skills. She has accomplished a lot in a limited amount of time.”
Zanzola returns the favor by letting volunteers know how happy she is they`ve chosen Silver Cross as a place to volunteer.
”People are torn in many directions,” she says. ”The Red Cross wants you. The Kiwanis Club wants you. And once people start volunteering, they spread themselves all over the community.
”We`re starting to see an upswing in the return of the mentality that you give something back to society. A lot of people are saying, `Maybe my BMW isn`t giving me everything I need to make me happy.` ”
To accommodate the busy lifestyles of volunteers, Zanzola has to offer short-term placements and career-oriented jobs to high school and college students and women seeking to enter or re-enter the workforce after their children have grown.
She`s only too glad to offer them flexibility and options, she says.
”With all the cutbacks in health care, volunteers are emerging as a valuable asset, besides being that extra set of hands,” Zanzola says.
In addition to performing expected volunteer duties, such as filing, typing, clerking in the gift shop and serving as receptionists, volunteers at Silver Cross do more ”creative” things, she says. They program computers, visit patients, greet visitors and outpatients and escort them to their destinations. They also rock, feed and change babies as part of the hospital`s 6-month-old Rock-a-Baby program. The program is for premature babies from neonatal intensive care units at other hospitals who are sent to Silver Cross to gain weight before they go home.
Though many of Silver Cross` volunteers are female retirees, ”it`s no longer just the little gray-haired lady” who volunteers, Zanzola says.
She notes that others don`t fit that mold: the 30-year-old unmarried accountant who offers his services to the hospital`s accounting department;
the teenager who volunteered in the Rock-a-Baby program and was accepted at age 18 in a six-year medical school program at a Southern university; the 89- year-old ”gentleman” who for three of his seven years there has worked 12 hours a week escorting patients to the triage area of the emergency room; and several teachers who volunteer after school as a respite from their classrooms.
Volunteers at Silver Cross mention wanting to help others as the main reason they volunteer. This is the same reason given by participants in a national survey conducted in 1987 by J.C. Penney Co. Inc. for VOLUNTEER-The National Center, Zanzola says. Enjoyment of their work is their second reason. ”And quite a few volunteers are former patients or relatives of patients who want to give back to the hospital what they or their loved ones have received from Silver Cross,” she adds.
Despite the hospital`s constant need for volunteers, Zanzola doesn`t take just anyone who walks through the door. ”We screen out those who are unskilled and think volunteering will lead to a job,” she says, adding that it might but that she makes no guarantees.
Volunteers are required to undergo three hours` general training and work four hours a week. They must be able to maintain confidentiality and refrain from offering medical advice to patients.
Silver Cross` volunteers should reflect the population of the community and paid staff, Zanzola says. She is trying to recruit more minorities, particularly Hispanics. Her efforts get her out into the community, which she says she greatly enjoys.
Zanzola`s volunteer work includes serving as a member of the Community Services Council, a coalition of social services in Will County; the fundraising committee for the Joliet Gang Reduction Task Force; the board of directors of the Greater Joliet Area YMCA; the advisory committee for vocational education for Joliet Township High School District 204; and the task force to recruit membership for the Chicago-based Illinois Society of Directors of Hospital Volunteers. She also has been secretary for two years to the board of the Council of Directors of Health Care Volunteers of Metropolitan Chicago.
She also was president of the school board when her children were in elementary school. She has served on several committees at her church, and until three years ago was a volunteer usher at the Rialto Square Theatre.
In September, she plans to resume her studies toward a master of business administration degree in human resources at Lewis University in Romeoville, to further her professional skills in working with people because ”I`m a people person,” with an ”inner need to get involved.
”When I retire,” Zanzola says, ”I plan to do the same thing as these
(hospital) volunteers.”
