Here in Frederick County, Maryland, we are fairly well integrated and yes, we do have many issues, but we have been working on resolutions for several years. We have approxamaelty 350 career personnel and approximately 900 volunteers (I would say about 65% are active) spread across the county. For the most part we have intergated Fire/EMS, although we do have a few separate EMS and Fire Companies. My station (Independent Hose Co #1), has the highest number of Fire and EMS calls in the county and responds with the career staff handing approximately 85% of the EMS calls and approximately 50% of the Fire calls. We have a number of young bucks that live at the station who are required to respond to calls while at the satiation, so we have fairly good volunteer response.

On the technical rescue side of things, we have percentage wise, a very small number of calls, but have the greatest amount of training to undergo. At 55, I am the second oldest member of the team and for the most part (I have had two situations with severe heat/dehydration issues) keep up with those much younger. I try and work smart not harder, whenever possible. I have no idea how much longer I will be able to respond, but hope I can for at least another 5-7 years, we’ll see.

Recruitment of volunteers is tough, especially with all of the training requirements before an individual can even ride apparatus. We require Firefighter I, First Responder and HazMat Ops, before you can ride on the fire side of the house; this represents at least 150 plus hours of training, making it challenging to recruit and retain volunteers.

Pete

OK, I'll join in.

I'm in Bucks County, PA.

EMS is mostly paid here, Fire is volunteer, I am unaware of any paid companies, but there might be in the south end of the county, which is nothing like the north (rural) end of the county where I live.

We have very, very low volunteer rates. The volunteers we have are mostly overweight men in their 40's and 50's, with the exception of a few.

In PA, Firefighter 1, Hazmat, First Responder and the rest of the initial training is about 200 hours. That's without EMT, and without Auto Extrication, both of which are basically core calls.

In Upper Bucks County, the fire companies are seriously under-funded, and the company I used to run with barely got any money at all from the municipalities, so there's a lot of fund raising too. Add to that running the corporation of the fire company and it's a LOT of non-fire time. All in, I calculated for the small company I was with, you were looking at about 480 hours a year in training, fundraising and meetings (9.2 hours a week), and with calls that jumped to 550 hours a year (10.5 hours a week). Remember the old ""One weekend a month, two weeks a year" - a former recruiting slogan used by the U.S. Army National Guard? Yeah, well a small Rural Fire Company has more of a time commitment than that. (admittedly they don't use that slogan any more)

In the last 5 years of my service with the fire company, we added only TWO members under the age of 25 (the Chief's son and the Assistant Chief's son) and all of the others who joined were out within the first 20 months of service.

My turn.
I'm in Vermont, 95% of the Fire/EMS is volunteer. Some of the Vol. depts do pay per call or have a stipend of some sort. My dept gives a stipend of about 1500 per year. Training is FF1 with Hazmat ops level being included. Some of our members choose to go on to EMT level which requires at least another 150 hours of class room and practical training/observation. As We are a Fire District. This is in a sense a small municipality that allows taxation for purposes of providing water service and fire protection. We have about 4 full time employees who provide service for the water side of things only. WE actually have a pretty good retention rate. Most of our new members are in the mid 20' to early 30's. I'm 38 and just this year hit the 20 year mark. We seem to be one of the few depts in the county that have a waiting list for membership. With us if you make it past the 2 year mark you are usually in for life. Malletts Bay Volunteer Fire Dept

I am not involved in volunteer services but I thought this might be useful to somebody, just as a possible source of ideas.
http://www.volunteerottawa.ca/vo-clean/index.php?/eng/about_us/mission_and_strength

I also know that one of my nieces did a turn as a volunteer on an ambulance service at Wawa when she was looking for experience to help her get into nursing.
I remember a few guys I worked with rigging who were volunteering for fire departments and other services to get High Angle Rescue certification.
So you might be able to attract volunteers who are looking for a way to break into a career. Maybe you will lose them once they are certified, maybe not, but it could still be a possibility.