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Sponsor a Firefighter

Volunteer departments are at the mercy of the community they serve and often the businesses within it. Maintaining a working relationship with your local employers is crucial to ensuring daytime response — and one option may be to set up a “sponsor a firefighter program.” Sponsorship options can include time off, promotion of volunteerism and even cash donations.

Your local businesses have a vested interest in the success of your organization, even if they may not realize it. Their building and equipment is literally at risk and riding on your success, but fire coverage is often taken for granted.

In order for any sponsorship or involvement program to work you may need to first educate the public on the services you provide, cost savings and your needs. When your local business finds out what is needed, you may be surprised by their willingness to help.

Help can come in many forms and may be tailored to your department’s needs. It is very rare to find a department that has more members than they need, so most business relationships revolve around helping the department with staffing.

Staffing assistance may include allowing existing volunteers to respond during their work hours to actively recruiting new members for your organization through volunteer initiatives. It may be too much to ask for the company to pay their staff while they respond, but some companies have been willing to allow “flex time” or the like to make up for the time lost.

Either way will help your department, but if businesses do work with you on letting their staff out then you need to realize that it is costing the company money, time and/or productivity. This means you will have to limit the amount of time that you use its staff, which may mean allowing them to be cancelled off the call or leave before all of the cleanup is completed.

This may not be popular, but if members are busy hanging out at the firehouse socializing or doing paperwork rather than getting back to work, the partnering businesses may give up on the program prematurely. It becomes a question of gaining a responder for a short part of the call or not getting them at all.

Unique programs have been developed to allow for “associate members” for volunteers who are members of organizations where they live and who respond in a different town where they work.

This type of loan program allows you to share volunteers who have received their training elsewhere but can volunteer with your organization. It may take a bit of time to orientate them to your specific needs but a hose is still a hose and they know which end water comes out of.

Good programs not only share members but allow them to use responses in another town towards their local LOSAP program or the like with information and resource sharing.

Another unique, albeit a bit more controversial program, is to allow non-firefighter drivers of your apparatus, who may be “borrowed” from local businesses. Many businesses have professional drivers who could easily be taught the nuances of operating a fire truck without becoming full firefighters.

There are benefits and drawbacks for these driver-only programs, but if having a non-firefighter driver frees up some of your fully qualified members to fight fires then the job is done.

If you can truly get a business to sponsor your organization and buy into this type of program you may even end up staging one of your apparatus at their location for daytime response. In this way, you may have a three or four-man crew ready to go, even if it is responding from a location other than your fire department.

If the business is large enough they may appreciate having fire coverage directly on premises and having the apparatus parked at their location is a great public relations demonstration.

In order for a partnership to be effective, both sides have to benefit. If a sponsorship program is to work, once businesses realize the need they will have to see the benefit. Your department should regularly recognize partners by alerting the local press to their efforts along with plaques or other signs for the business to proudly display.

Together businesses and volunteer organizations can help provide for better public safety and benefit each other. It may take some creativity, but that is the only way we are going to be able to cope with the changing times.

Volunteer fire departments face a unique set of challenges. Learn how to manage or serve on a volunteer department with Jason Zigmont, founder of VolunteerFD.org, in his FireRescue1 exclusive column, ‘Volunteer Professionals.’
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