By Mary Jo Blackwood, American Red Cross

It's one thing to have an active Red Cross chapter building where volunteers can congregate and learn from each other, but how does the Red Cross retain committed and engaged volunteers in areas far away from a bricks-and-mortar building? Community mobilization is the secret, and the Red Cross is very good at that.

Take the community of Montrose, Colorado, situated an hour south of the Grand Junction Red Cross office. Christie Caster, executive director of the Red Cross of Western Colorado, is very excited about the creativity and passion local volunteers have applied to keeping connected and providing Red Cross services in rural areas. 

"The Red Cross of Western Colorado Chapter encompasses 21 counties and two tribal nations. That's a lot of territory. Volunteers in the Montrose area kind of lost touch during COVID, so we had to find a way to build them back up."

What she did was to focus on a core group of very dedicated volunteers to start the process. Chris DePuy, a volunteer for over 20 years for logistics and the Disaster Action Team (DAT) was a natural choice. Betzy Bicknase has been a DAT volunteer for more than three years. Bryan Hartwig assists with shelter and logistics in Montrose. Beth McCorkle, a former Red Cross employee, was also recruited for the mobilization effort.

Caster is based at the Red Cross office in Grand Junction. There is another office in Durango, but none in Montrose or Delta County. "We have a board member from Montrose, but we decided that with these core volunteers and working with our community partners, we could recruit other volunteers from the Montrose area. The City of Montrose emergency manager is a big supporter of the Red Cross."

Beth McCorkle had thought she was done with the Red Cross after she left their employment, but she was recruited to get involved as a volunteer in April 2025. She is the community volunteer leader in Montrose, the face and point of contact.

Beth knows that keeping good volunteers is hard if you can't give them volunteer opportunities. Last summer, she spearheaded a shelter training in Montrose and got eight volunteers to participate. That offered learning experiences and a chance to connect when there wasn't a disaster to respond to. Another way they have been able to keep the volunteers engaged is through Sound the Alarm smoke detector installations and education in the area. 

To create a space where volunteers can congregate, the volunteer leaders started having monthly coffee meetings at different area coffee shops. These meetings served miltiple purposes: to increase small business awareness of Red Cross and provide a place volunteers could meet and decide where they wanted to have a presence in the community.  

Volunteers will staff a booth at Montrose Pride in June. To raise more community awareness, Beth created the "Purple Team." The Montrose and Delta volunteers sport purple T-shirts and meet in community locations to draw attention to the Red Cross in the area. They have also been reaching out volunteers to Delta and Ouray counties to include them in the get-togethers.

Soon to come will be green and yellow teams for other areas of Western Colorado. They have now built that up to some twenty volunteers and are holding volunteer recruitment fairs, with other events planned this year for Red Cross to have a presence at.

Another thing that helps McCorkle's recruiting efforts is her position as the community coordinator for Region 10 Area on Aging, which recruits senior citizens for volunteer positions, including for the Red Cross.  

Betzy Bicknase came to Red Cross from another direction. "Growing up, all I knew about the Red Cross was from taking CPR and babysitting classes from them. Then in December 2021, my house burned to the ground. I had recently lost my husband and now had lost everything.

"I had no wallet, no clothes, nothing," Betzy said. "I got to a motel and the next day, the Red Cross came to help me get back on my feet and take care of my immediate needs."

A while after that, a friend suggested she volunteer with the Red Cross. Now, she is part of the DAT team, responding to single family emergencies like she had, and has all her training completed to staff a shelter when that is needed.

"All my life, I have enjoyed making order out of chaos and Red Cross fits that so well," Betzy said. "We have meetings to get together and plan activities. Sound the Alarm helps keep the interest up. Delta now has an even bigger group than Montrose, but some of them come to Montrose to help out.

"Rural groups have to be flexible to help support each other.  We often leave our immediate areas to help serve clients whose DAT team may be busy or unavailable.  Teamwork is crucial in the rural areas!"

Any other area in the Colorado and Wyoming Region that wants to increase volunteer recruitment and retention has only to look to Montrose for guidance.