2019 Vol­un­teer of the Year Spotlight

November 26, 2019

This fall, KYC was thrilled to spe­cial­ly rec­og­nize the extra­or­di­nary efforts of two ded­i­cat­ed vol­un­teers as the 2019 Vol­un­teer of the Year and the 2019 Young Vol­un­teer of the Year, a new award to cel­e­brate a youth vol­un­teer (stay tuned for a spot­light for our youth vol­un­teer, com­ing soon!). Each of their con­tri­bu­tions has helped shape the course of KYC’s pro­gram­ming as they worked to pro­vide bet­ter ser­vice and bet­ter out­comes for our com­mu­ni­ty members.

2019 Vol­un­teer of the Year: Donna!

Although she has earned a relax­ing retire­ment after a chal­leng­ing career in IT lead­er­ship, Don­na has chan­neled her skills and ener­gy to serve her com­mu­ni­ty through mul­ti­ple KYC pro­grams for the last 12 years. The for­mer Chief Infor­ma­tion Offi­cer has her daugh­ter, Lisa, to thank for con­nect­ing her with her post-retire­ment ser­vice through KYC. Lisa want­ed to ensure that Don­na had projects to work on after she fin­ished her pro­fes­sion­al career. So, she recruit­ed Don­na as a vol­un­teer at KYC’s for­mer resale shop, where she began to build rela­tion­ships and a greater under­stand­ing of KYC as a whole.

Find­ing Her Niche

Don­na’s work at the resale shop turned out to be just the begin­ning of her dynam­ic vol­un­teer career at KYC. Although she has held a vari­ety of vol­un­teer roles with­in KYC, Don­na found her niche in help­ing clients with their finan­cial concerns.

Finances and Fix­ing Lightbulbs

Through her pre­vi­ous vol­un­teer roles, Don­na was con­nect­ed with Jean in Ken­neth Young Center’s Old­er Adults divi­sion. Jean man­ages the mon­ey man­age­ment pro­gram that pro­vides guid­ance to old­er adults as they nav­i­gate the com­plex finan­cial aspects of aging, and she invit­ed Don­na to vol­un­teer through that program. 

As a mon­ey man­age­ment vol­un­teer, Don­na began work­ing one-on-one with old­er adults in the com­mu­ni­ty to help them take con­trol of their finan­cial sit­u­a­tions. She works with two to three clients at a giv­en time, and reg­u­lar­ly meets with each of them indi­vid­u­al­ly in their own homes to eval­u­ate their bud­gets, needs, and oppor­tu­ni­ties to low­er expens­es. She reviews their finan­cial doc­u­ments and helps clients apply for pub­lic ben­e­fits and tax pro­grams that help save them mon­ey. She also reviews pay­ment sched­ules to ensure that accounts stay on track. She has learned that some­times sim­ply chang­ing the pay­ment due date of a recur­ring bill can make a huge dif­fer­ence in a clien­t’s abil­i­ty to keep their accounts cur­rent. She has helped clients who were once over­whelmed by debt col­lec­tion calls begin to feel less stressed, less stuck, and more free.

Typ­i­cal­ly, the clients that Don­na sees have lit­tle to no fam­i­ly sup­port, so Don­na becomes one of their con­nec­tions to the com­mu­ni­ty. She often goes above and beyond her duties as a finan­cial coun­selor to ensure that the peo­ple she serves are liv­ing as well as pos­si­ble. She has helped frus­trat­ed clients hook up their TVs cor­rect­ly, and she’s helped them recy­cle the old stacks of paper they’ve been mean­ing to clean up. She con­nects them with appro­pri­ate KYC Ser­vices or the Vil­lage Nurse when they’re not feel­ing well and don’t know where to turn. She has even arrived at an appoint­ment with a new role of toi­let paper when she heard that her client had just run out. Don­na under­stands that replac­ing a burnt-out light­bulb relieves the clien­t’s imme­di­ate stress, and allows them to set­tle in and focus on their planned finan­cial tasks. 

More impor­tant­ly, these small acts of kind­ness show her clients that she tru­ly cares for them as peo­ple, not as just sets of finan­cial line items to rec­on­cile. She builds hon­est, valu­able trust. Per­son­al finances are just that — very per­son­al — and so it’s impor­tant for her clients to trust that she has their best inter­ests in mind. As her clients learn that they can rely on her, they often share more infor­ma­tion and more per­son­al his­to­ry. Some­times that addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion can trans­late into addi­tion­al avenues of sav­ings for the client that would nev­er be uncov­ered by a stan­dard check­list of inter­view ques­tions — all because she took the time to fix that loos­ened lightbulb.

Grow­ing Pro­grams and Grow­ing Impact

Don­na is also gra­cious­ly ded­i­cat­ed to serv­ing clients through KYC’s behav­ioral health pro­grams. Don­na’s daugh­ter, Lisa, leads KYC’s com­mu­ni­ty liv­ing ser­vices team and sup­ports clients who live with men­tal health chal­lenges. Through her work, Lisa saw a need among some of her clients for extra sup­port to ensure the pay­ments for their month­ly liv­ing expens­es could be made reli­ably. Lisa enlist­ed Don­na to help build a rep­re­sen­ta­tive pay­ee pro­gram to solve this prob­lem for qual­i­fy­ing clients. Through a rep­re­sen­ta­tive pay­ee pro­gram, KYC is able to take over man­ag­ing a clien­t’s ben­e­fits in order to pay for their liv­ing expens­es, like rent and util­i­ty bills, for peo­ple who are unable to man­age their mon­ey on their own. This allows the client to have sta­bil­i­ty as they focus on their treat­ment and recovery. 

Not only did Don­na help cre­ate an effi­cient, sus­tain­able process to get this pro­gram up and run­ning while meet­ing the state require­ments, but she still devotes her time to exe­cute this process today. Between vol­un­teer­ing for the mon­ey man­age­ment pro­gram, the rep­re­sen­ta­tive pay­ee pro­gram, and lend­ing a hand with addi­tion­al admin­is­tra­tive projects around KYC, she has made an incred­i­ble impact for the many clients she serves.

Words of Wisdom

Don­na has helped cre­ate pro­grams, ini­ti­ate pro­ce­dures and effi­cien­cies, and has been an excep­tion­al advo­cate and car­ing resource for the clients that she serves. Her work is a clear and vibrant exam­ple of how impor­tant our vol­un­teers are to the ser­vices that KYC provides. 

Don­na offers a few words of advice to any­one who is inter­est­ed in get­ting start­ed on a vol­un­teer ser­vice jour­ney — just get start­ed! Get your feet wet, try out some­thing new, and if you don’t feel like you’ve found the right vol­un­teer role for you, there are oth­er oppor­tu­ni­ties to find a role that fits you. Ini­tial­ly, Don­na nev­er thought she would be work­ing direct­ly with clients. Now, after work­ing so close­ly with them, she sees the incred­i­ble impact that KYC’s pro­grams can make in the lives of the indi­vid­u­als she has helped. She reflects that lit­tle by lit­tle, you can make a big difference.

KYC is hon­ored to rec­og­nize all that Don­na has achieved and her ded­i­ca­tion to serv­ing our com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers over the last decade. Con­grat­u­la­tions to the 2019 Vol­un­teer of the Year!

Are you look­ing for an oppor­tu­ni­ty to make an impact as a vol­un­teer? Check out our Vol­un­teer roles here!

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