Where is Recruitment on your list?

I just visited a volunteer fire department’s web site based on a referral from Facebook and was disappointed, if not dismayed, to find that “Recruitment” was listed at number 11 out of 18 options on their site’s sidebar menu.

I did a double-take just to make sure I wasn’t missing anything obvious, like perhaps that the menu items were in alphabetical order and that’s why recruitment fell lower on the list. Nope. Not the case here.

Now in their defense, I don’t know too much about their fire company other than what I learned from their web site, and maybe they’re flush with members and recruitment doesn’t need to be their number 1 priority. Or, perhaps that’s simply the order in which the pages were added to the site and that’s how they fell. Intentional or not, there appears to be no rhyme or reason as to the order of the links, which is apparent in this list: Home, Apparatus, History, Archives, Events, Downloads, Guest Book, Members, Members Zone, Photos, and finally: Recruitment.

FEMA Provides Youth-Based Workshops

Leading educators and scholars in the field of preparedness education consider our nation’s youth to be the best envoy for taking preparedness messages home to their families. In order to better prepare our nation’s youth to bring preparedness home, FEMA is providing technical assistance workshops to state and local practitioners who support youth-based programs and who are interested in integrating preparedness education into their offerings.

Sign Up Now and Share Your Secrets!

Young Blood: Newton Abbott Captain Josh Taylor at a recent fire in Orchard Park NY. ©2011 FireRECRUITER.com

Subscribe to FireRECRUITER.com before August 15, 2011 and we will email you ”Tiger’s Top 10 Commandments for Recruitment and Retention” and the “Official Recruiter’s Cheat Sheet” just for signing up.

Once you’ve read my secrets, share your recruitment secrets at VolunteerMatch.org’s Facebook App and “Like” my ‘first commandment’ entry posted on July 28, 2011.

If you’ve never used VolunteerMatch as a recruitment tool, we highly recommend it as we’ve frequently receive quality leads at www.erie.gov/fire.

Jury Duty Exemption-Good or Bad?

This article from FireRescue1 indicates that the State of Virginia Legislature is considering a law that provides an exemption from jury duty for firefighters. Police officers in that state already enjoy that exemption.

New York State offered that exemption for decades and then stripped firefighters and almost all others of it about 10 years ago.

Some folks feel it’s our civic duty to serve on a jury while others feel we deserve the exemption?

What do you think?

Valuing Volunteers

The organization IndependentSector.org released a document identifying the value of volunteers in America. The study indicates that the average value of a volunteer’s time was $20.85 per hour in 2009.

According to the report, that number was as high as $28.52 here in New York State in 2008.

The question is, how do we apply that dollar figure to the volunteer fire service in such a way that our stakeholders truly understand our value?

Certainly, on a national basis, if we were to multiply that number times the quantity of volunteer firefighters across the country and the average number of hours they spend volunteering — the number would be staggering.

Or would it?

Venturing down a new path to the Volunteer Fire Service

There’s an interesting conversation started at FirefighterNation.com that suggests the BSA Venturing program as an alternative path for young people to get involved in the volunteer fire service.

The discussion host offers what he feels is a broader opportunity to get more young people involved in their volunteer fire department by not pidgeon-holing them into just being Fire Explorers and Junior Firefighters.

Here’s what I think. What do you think?

Discuss it here or discuss it there.

SURVEY SAYS? FD Youth Programs

There’s apparently a heated debate going on at FirefighterNation.com as to whether recruiting high school students to join the volunteer fire service, in whatever capacity, is a good idea.

The discussion has so many twists and turns that I thought it was time to cut through all the ***stuff*** and survey the audience.

Enough debate, are Fire Department Youth Programs a good idea – Yes or No?