OK, here's the spinoff thread.

The question is, how do we attract new volunteers to staff our volunteer fire / EMS / or other agencies? Having a prepared community certainly helps if you have a personal emergency!

For those of you who volunteer, why? What got you to take the initial step? What could your agency do to make your service easier?

For those of you who live in an area served by volunteer emergency services who do not volunteer, why not? What would get you to do so? What would your biggest concern be?

Let's have an open discussion and see if we can't come up with any ideas on how to bring some new blood into the volunteer emergency services. The national trends are that the volunteer are getting older and harder to find, and if trends continue, the long tradition of volunteer service may die out.

I look forward to your thoughts.

How do you volunteer when you have a full-time job? Unless it's your own business, most employers frown on people just jumping up and running out the door.

Unemployed? Probably the last thing you really need is to work w/o getting paid.

Independently wealthy? Like most would want to?

If bureaucrats were better at budgeting, those crucial people in fire and EMT could be paid for the very important job they do. I would suspect that every bureaucrat/politician lives in an area of paid fire/EMTs, not volunteer.

Around here, we have volunteer. The rules: For EMTs, they'll be there in two minutes; for fire, back off and call your insurance company.

Funny, though, all the towns around here seem to be able to get 4.5 million to keep installing unnecessary and unwanted roundabouts.

Sue

Employers are usually pretty understanding and supportive of volunteer fire/ems. My cousin was in a small town in Maryland and all the employers were very supportive of the VFD and would help out in any way they needed. You have to remember that if the town ever hired paid emt/firefighters they would probably raise taxes to do so. So the employer gets less taxes in a volunteer area for one thing. They you can almost advertise having an EMT/firefighter on staff.

One of the huge issues - when jobs were local, people Could "jump" when called

I'll use Marty for an example - He lives in Bucks PA, and works a lot in NYC - even if he wanted to, he couldn't respond

It's a HUGE issue. I know a lot of Vols/former vols (aged out/Med out) who had the issue of working 90+ minutes from home. Doesn't leave a lot of responders during the day

In Maryland, we have a number of financial incentives to attract and retain volunteers. The state has a program of providing volunteers who meet certain criteria (a minimum number of hours consisting of a combination of training, running calls and fund raising) to receive a $600 state income tax credit. Locally, we have Length of Service Program (LOSAP) which using the state criteria for participation will provide a small pension for 20 years of service. Since the county considers us employees for workman’s compensation purposes, it makes us eligible for the same educational reimbursement program benefit as the career staff. The county has also examined exempting all or a portion of the local fire tax to volunteers, although due to the tough economic situation (reduced tax base) is very low on the priority list.

Although these incentives exist, the vast number of volunteers do so because it is either in their blood to be involved in their community and/or a family tradition.

My squad is the primary EMS response in our town from 6pm to 6am, Monday - Friday, and 24 hours/day on Weekends. During the work week, we cannot be assured of getting a crew out and we go dual response with the paid crew from one town over. Needless to say, if our squad does not get out during the week, you are waiting considerably longer for help to get there, but there's not much we can do about it - too many people commute into NYC for work.

New York State provides a $200 income tax credit each year that you have served for a full year with either volunteer fire, EMS, or police auxiliary. There is a LOSAP program as well, but it is only available to firefighters, not dedicated EMS folk like me. There is talk of providing free tuition to Nassau Community College for volunteers, but that's running into budgetary issues, so who knows if it will happen.

Since I grew up in Bay Shore, I have some familiarity with LI and know that like in many areas Fire will look down or want nothing to do with EMS. I think your best bet is to contact other EMS Departments to form a united front and contact local and state officials to lobby for similar benefits.

While not a long-term solution, you may want to see if there would be interest in developing a Fire/EMS cadet program in the high school career program (I think it is still called B.O.C.E.S – Board of Cooperative Educational Services on LI). We have a program here in Frederick and it supplies a small but dedicated core of younger individuals. While the primary goal is to have a potential Fire/EMS career, we find that most belong or join local Fire Companies. They come out of the program with FF I, EMT-B and HazMat Ops. Also check out college students enrolled in pre-med programs, who may want the experience to place on their applications.

Pete

I really can't give you any tips on what to do, because I have the very same problem.

I am in charge of a regional search and rescue team, and when there are no searches, people get bored and lose interest. When they've gone through most of the training, they are not interested in monthly meetings. I'm telling you, i'm just about to pull the plug, members don't even care to show up on searches anymore. There are many reasons for this lack of motivation, such as personal issues, political issues, the fact that police do most of the work now and don't call volunteers soon enough, etc.

Sometimes it's just not worth the effort. Just a thought.

$600 tax credit???

$200 tax credit???

How about a $10,000 credit? One set of useless roundabouts would give incentive to 450 prospective volunteers.

Sue

When the people want things like EMS, Fire protection, SAR, etc. enough to pay for it, it will appear.

Relying on volunteers to provide professional services has never been a very sound plan. Pay the people, cut down on the millions of dollars wasted on frivolous equipment and you'll have what people need.

Any community that's not willing to pony up for professional EMS and Fire protection, pretty much get what they deserve.

I'm not in any way knocking the efforts of the volunteers, my point is that you and your communities shouldn't have to rely on your volunteer efforts in the first place.