Clark-Champaign County Red Cross by the numbers
72: Volunteers last year
104: Families served through disaster relief
3: Staff members
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The Clark-Champaign County Chapter of the American Red Cross will be combined with three other local chapters by the end of this year, part of a national $43 million cost-cutting consolidation by the humanitarian organization.
The restructuring will include the elimination of several staff positions across the region and possible closure of up to three offices, said Lynne Gump, who will serve as executive director of the yet-to-be-named chapter covering Clark, Champaign, Darke, Logan, Miami and Shelby counties.
All of the services currently offered by the Red Cross will continue, she said.
“Six counties (combining) is a big difference in Ohio, but it’s not a new model,” Gump said.
Ohio has had a number of Red Cross chapters still serving only one or two counties long after others across the U.S. have moved to a more regionalized approach.
“There are a lot of best practices out there,” she said. “We’re not reinventing the wheel.”
The Red Cross, which traces its roots back to volunteer Clara Barton in the 1880s, is a key piece of the local emergency management plan, providing assistance to individuals who are victims of fires or floods, collecting blood donations and mobilizing large-scale responses to feed and shelter communities in the event of a mass disaster.
It has also taken on roles helping military families, and training the public in first aid and CPR.
All of those functions are carried out almost entirely by local volunteers, which Gump said will remain vital.
The 12-member volunteer board that currently serves in an advisory capacity for the Clark-Champaign chapter also will remain in place, President Jim Dempsey said, so there will still be a level of local representation.
The Clark-Champaign chapter had 72 volunteers in fiscal year 2014 and provided disaster assistance to 104 families.
The staff of the new chapter, which will still fall under the Greater Cincinnati-Dayton Region of the American Red Cross, will consist of Gump, an administrative assistant and two disaster services personnel. The four chapters that will be consolidated currently have five full-time staff members and two part-time workers.
The organization is still determining who will be retained, but Gump said they will be mobile, working out of all six counties as needed.
The current executive director for Clark-Champaign, Mike Larson, will no longer serve in that position and didn’t return calls for comment this week.
“This has nothing to do with performance (of any chapters),” said Trish Smitson, CEO of the Greater Cincinnati-Dayton Region of the American Red Cross. “We’ve been working on this for months, looking at different staffing levels … and how can we provide services in a very consistent manner.”
The local Red Cross chapters currently use six buildings, one in each county, and will keep at least three of them — the Springfield office on North Limestone Street and offices in Troy and Greenville.
The fate of the remaining offices in Urbana, Sidney and West Liberty is up in the air, but they will remain open initially. Some of the spaces are also larger than the Red Cross needs, Gump said.
“I have no current plans to close any offices,” she said. “But we need some more volunteer support to man those offices.”
Some local leaders were concerned about any plan to close the Urbana location, saying the loss of visibility could lead to reduced participation by local volunteers.
“I personally think it would be really bad for the Red Cross and for the county,” Champaign County Commissioner Bob Corbett said.
If there is no longer a visible Red Cross sign, he said, people in the community lose the sense that they can get in touch with the organization.
The county has been assured by the Red Cross that no reduction in emergency services will occur, but Champaign County Emergency Management and Office of Homeland Security Director Craig Evans said he fears a loss of local contact between emergency response partners could lead to issues when a disaster strikes.
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