Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Station10Capt106 on April 28, 2008 at 9:48am

Getting volunteers is tough for any organization wether it is the fire dept, Lions club, Rotary, or any other group. People do not seem to have either the time or the desire to get involved like they used too.

Our dept just started a junior firefighter program last year. We will let people 16 yrs to 18 yrs on and work with them to get them trained. Then once they turn 18 they can become full fledged members and then go on active fire calls with us. We have 4 junior FF's on our dept now. We do anticipate that most of them will move on after high school, but figure that hopefully at least one out of 4-5 will stay local and stay with our dept. The ones that move on hopefully will join another dept to help them out.

PR is the key to generating and maintaining members. Every breakfast or fundraiser we have we mention that we are looking for new members. Every fire prevention program we put on we mention becoming a volunteer. Every time the newspaper comes to us for a story we mention it too.

We also do as much training outside as we can so people can see us out and about. Make the training fun and challenging and your current members will talk it up with their non-fire dept friends saying what an awesome time they are having. This will help make others consider joining for the "fun" (while we do try to make it entertaining, we are also very diligent in regards to stressing the importance and seriousness of firefighting).

Your dept can have a membership contest. The member that brings in the most new members over a set time will win a special prize.

And perhaps the best way is to always present yourself in a professional and respectful manner. Let the public see that your dept. is truly there to serve and protect your community. Be proud when wearing your dept Shirts and don't do anything to soil the dept's reputation while you are wearing them. Remeber that there are always eyes on you and that the public is watching your every movement.

Best of luck in your recruitment.

John

Permalink Reply by Joe Siegert on May 11, 2008 at 1:18pm

I agree with everything John has said, and would like to add to it.

Being a Chief for a number of years has led me to believe that, the only way to keep firefighters motivated is to train often. Our station used to train 1 time per month. That is until I took over as Chief. We now train once a week, manditory. Granted, we have lost some members due to this, but with every step backwards, we have taken 5 steps forward. When I first steppen in as Chief, My department had 4 interior firefighters of 16 members. I immediately lost 4 firefighters when making it manditory to train. Since then, I know have 16 interior firefighters of 22 members. Moral has never been higher. The community feels safer, making them feel irreplaceable.

Since we train so often, we have been able to expand our levels highly. We are all now vehicle rescue certified, first responders, and most are hazmat trained as well. They want more training, and more experience. The community see's us training all over the place, drawing more people into our organization. We never used to be seen "hanging out at the fre hall" until now. You can almost find someone at the station at all times. Not bad for being 100% volunteer.

Being together so much, not only has formed bonds between each other, but our families as well. In doing so, more and more family members "try" to be more involved. each day as we go on, our little group get stronger and stronger. The more we respect ourselves, the more the community respects and supports us.

Permalink Reply by Cap on May 13, 2008 at 2:08pm

One thing that might help is don't make every member fight the fire. I have found that its all the extra's we ask our fire fighter to do that can cause burnout. If you have an older gay or gal that is willing to come help with the station up keep it helps reduce the burden. Also things like do you have an accountant that will take care of the money books or an office assitant that could come in and help file and type letters to reduce some burden there. This will leave some extra precious time for training which will form stronger bonds between memebers. Sometimes we need to think outside the box. Many hands make the big job small and gets us all home a few hours earlier. As always be safe and make sure everyone goes home.

Permalink Reply by WCFPD2003 on May 14, 2008 at 10:12am

Our district does a junior program also. I am getting ready to start a mentoring program for my station to assign a FF mentor to a junior. We haven't had many problems but I think it will help with some of the training, especially with station duties etc.

We have 7 stations located throughout the County. 2 or 3 of the stations don't have the numbers that the rest have, but I think a lot of that has to due to the residents live close enough to join the department in the town. My station is also HQ so a lot of times I get to see how big the application stack is on the Deputy Chiefs desk. There are times where it is like whoa...we need to slow down, but other times when we don't have any for a few Months. It's not that we don't need more volunteers as a dist, just some stations don't need more at times. At HQ and a couple other stations there are always signs out saying that we are accepting applications. We as a dist stay right around having 70 members.

I agree that I think a lot of it has to do with training. I also try to get new people and juniors into a structure after the fire is out to help with salvage and overhaul. I remember that being a big deal with me back in the day when I was a junior. I try to keep them (proby and jr) involved as much as I am able to. So far it seems to be working.

My station has 2 meeting/training nights a month. I also try to schedule a couple saturday trainings through the summer (extrication, etc). The FF's also get to stay active by having to do weekly details that rotate monthly....LOL!

STAY SAFE!

Permalink Reply by Brittany on December 15, 2008 at 7:00pm

That's awesome! With the new law in effect saying we need so many CEU hours, training has become a much bigger priority. Ours is not mandatory yet, but it has become a lot more frequent. I also hope in the near future that we get more of our members trained to higher levels or different specialties. There is no downside to knowing more and training more!

Brittany

Permalink Reply by Stephen Russell on February 23, 2009 at 9:38pm

Yes I will agree when I came into the fire service, the entire county was volunteer and it meant something to be a firefighter in your community, now not so much. I now work at a paid department (but have not forgotten where I came from) and they take volunteers from all over the county, but they do'not respond POV they have to pull duty shifts. They sleep at the station and respond with the paid shift on duty. They are required to pull 36 hrs a month( in any configuration 12's, 24,) and attend 60 hrs of training a year. It works about 85% of the time and people come and go, but you can't make everyone happy.

Motivation ? We give them a time line for things to be completed and get them involved with projects and assistance with training evolutions. In my experiance if they are tasked to perform on a project, they usually will surprise you. Good luck and if find the answer please let everyone else know. Keep training HARD and Often.

Permalink Reply by Capt. Tom on March 2, 2009 at 9:27pm

Not to throw a wet Blanket Chief, but if you made weekly training mandatory for me Chief, my first question would be "what do you want me to give up?" I already average about 20 hours per week for my department as an Officer, I teach for the County fire training assoc., I have CME's to attend, and my own classes that I like to take (700 hours in 4 years). Again, not to sound negative because it sounds like you have found a winning formula and you didn't have much of an Officer corps before you took the helm. At some point you are going to have to adjust the rules because you need some of your line Officers to get involved outside the department and bring new stuff back. Congrats on a program that works for you, this is what matters.
Capt. Tom

Permalink Reply by jbwonfire on May 14, 2009 at 9:27pm

I believe its all about the people. In a volunteer fire department you can have decent equipment or the best there is, but if the people aren't right, neither is the dept. I came from what I still today after 13 years on the job career, the best volunteer fire dept I have every had the pleasure to serve. I still use skills I learned there and the firefighters there held there selves to a higher standard. It was about taking care of the community they lived in, serve its people, and take care of one another. Its the age old problem. Lots of volunteer fire depts are clubs for pager toting, light flashing, siren running want to be club members that give real volunteers a bad name, and career departments are politically run, retard hiring jobs where people just think its another job which give career guys a bad name. Sometimes I think it would just be better if you could start you own dept.