Draft Choices

Volunteer fire departments, whether they realize it or not, compete for recruits. Sometimes with other volunteer fire departments but most often with a busy home life, other community organizations, volunteering opportunities and a wide array of social activities.

What if our recruits, like in college recruiting, were in competition with other recruits wanting to be selected by our fire departments? Would we see more or less candidates? More or less qualified? Or are they already in competition with each other?

More importantly, what can we learn from college athletic recruiters like the NCSA who set up this registry for potential recruits? Do you use language like: “SEIZE the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity – and change your life” to describe the benefits of joining your volunteer fire department?

Burning Question: Is a Co-Op Campaign Right for You?

Has your fire department ever considered conducting a co-op advertising and marketing program for recruiting new volunteers, promoting fire and life safety or just generally good public relations?

Maybe you should. Think of the benefits of partnering with a local business, corporation or even another community group or non-profit organization. Cost sharing is the most obvious outcome but there are several underlying themes that could benefit both parties in the partnership.

A recent article in Fast Company Magazine got me thinking once again about what the fire service can learn from other industries and disciplines — both good and bad.

While the article titled “3 Ways to Win in a Brutal Economy” focused on retail businesses, it certainly offered great suggestions that we can apply to our service-driven business.

NVFC Launches new Junior Firefighter Recruitment Video

The National Volunteer Fire Council has launched a new recruitment video aimed at attracting young people to the volunteer fire service. Funded by a grant from Tyco, the video shares testimonials from several existing junior firefighters, leveraging the power of referral from these young adults.

The NVFC page that introduces the new resource also includes insight for marketing your local junior firefighter program: http://juniors.nvfc.org//itemDetails.php?itemid=24

Are You Ready to RecruitNY?

SHARED COURTESY OF FASNY and Nell Killoran, Senior Editor, The Volunteer Firefighter [www.FASNY.com and www.abcideabased.com] Images created or modified by FireRECRUITER.com

Erie County is supporting their 94 volunteer fire departments in their VolunteerNY efforts by offering free design and marketing assistance

Recruiting and retaining manpower is one of the greatest challenges, if not the greatest challenge, we face in the volunteer fire service.

To help address this issue, FASNY created and launched the Recruit NY campaign last April in 2011. Hopefully this rings a bell for you and your department was able to draw in some great new recruits from the event. If your department did not participate last year, this is your year to get involved.

As you may or may not remember, the campaign’s objective was primarily to implement a statewide recruitment initiative during National Volunteer Week in April 2011. This new approach saw FASNY, the New York State Association of Fire Chiefs, Association of Fire Districts of New York State, Volunteer Fire Police Association of the State of New York and County Fire Coordinators Association of the State of New York all join forces to assist fire departments in expanding their recruitment efforts. This was a first-of-its-kind type of effort and a very successful one, at that.

Video Killed the Recruitment Star

OK, maybe that’s not how the song goes, but I have to thank my good friend Bill Schumm over at FireGeezer.com for doing my FireRECRUITER work for me.

In his February 17th Morning Lineup features (and updated on February 20th), he discusses and demonstrates the effectiveness, or ineffectiveness, of using video as a recruitment tool. While his perspective on why we face the recruitment and retention challenges we do are certainly part of puzzle, the value of his commentary lies in the subliminal call to action that we need to be more creative in creating the solutions.

Certainly, a recruitment video with appropriate visuals and a good, solid message can be effective, but FireGeezer proposes that we need to do something about our culture, our society, to inspire and perpetuate volunteerism. I couldn’t agree more.

However, I feel that before we can tackle the 300 pound elephant of societal viewpoints, we should first look inward at our own culture. No longer can we afford to act as a “secret society” — shunning those who don’t necessarily fit our traditonal demographic or the model of what a firefighter “used to be.” While we must certainly strive towards those who can embrace or already share our value system, reality is that those people come in different shapes and sizes, colors and backgrounds too.

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.

Got Cash for College?

Photo Courtesy of http://www.RaisingLaddersPhotography.com

A college education is one of the greatest gifts and rewards we can ever offer a volunteer firefighter.

Giving them the opportunity to earn a college degree makes them more employable. Making them more employable offers them the opportunity to secure and succeed at a better paying job. Succeeding at a better paying job offers them a better opportunity to remain local, allowing them to give their time and dedication to serving your community. That’s what’s called: ROI – Return On Investment.

It’s a relatively simple equation — stuff you don’t even need a college degree to figure out that it can work for your fire department and your fire service.

Funk or Junk? Rockland’s Bravest

The FireRECRUITER’s helmet is off to my good friend and fellow recruiter Frank Hutton and Rockland County’s Creative Approach to the Fire Service Committee for putting forth a great effort in addressing recruitment and retention in their region.

With the help of a SAFER grant from the US Department of Homeland Security, they’ve produced a web site with cool videos for all age groups. B1O1.org features a music video and lots of great content in focusing on challenging prospective volunteers to “Be One of the Ones.”

And they’ve integrated collateral materials to support the web campaign including tent cards, brochures, kiosk, radio and outdoor advertising; and a complete package approach with a program folder wrapper.

A Touch of Gray

This article from Long Island NY talks about an often-overlooked audience in the volunteer fire service today: 40+.

Age is Nothing But a Number at Syosset Fire Dept.

Joining later in life is becoming more the norm

I love the fact that Syosset allows each company in the department to have its own identity. I took this photo when I visited all three of their stations about a year ago with my good friend Rob Leonard.

Don’t discount or write-off the value of people coming to the fire service with some life-experience under their belt. That maturity can turn out to be a huge advantage to your fire department, especially when teamed with the free spirits of Generation Y.

As I wrote in “From the X-Box to the Box Alarm” — This demo includes settled homeowners; their kids are growing to an age of independence; focused on giving back; perhaps even looking for an outlet – or just an excuse to get out of the house.

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.