Motivating Volunteers

[jam755]

I have recently been placed in charge of fire prevention and education at my volunteer department. We have never had any kind of formal program. My question to you is how do you motivate volunteers, who are already very busy, to want to participate in fire prevention activities? Any ideas would be welcome.

[3Swings]

This is the tough question. It seems I always get help but only from the same old people. I find you will most likely have a small group of people that will help you regardless and then there are the rest of the people.

Consider asking for interested persons to meet you after the meeting (considering you probably have a monthly meeting of some sort) and aks for input. Maybe even form a small comittee out of our volunteers. If more people have input on your programs you may be able to drum up additional support from your general body. You need to make it interesting and fun.

Don't get discouraged. I'm having some of the same difficulties right now. Just keep trying.

[Bootsatcfd]

jam755 Wish I could help you with this one. I work for a combination department with a vounteer and paid staff and we sometimes have a hard time getting staff to help out with prevention. But I guess I'm lucky, a few dedicated ones always seem to step forward. Sure with a paid staff we could assign staff to prevention but I would rather have a few people who are dedicated to prevention than someone forced to help out. Do you have an auxiliary (spouses of firefighters or people who want to help out with the department but don't want to fight fire)maybe this could be a rosource. Good Luck !!!!

[jam755]

At least I know the problem is not just with my department. There are a couple of other people who are commited to helping. The problem we have is that all of us are commited to several other projects and we are stretched very thin. We do have an auxillary but most of them work full time also. Most everyone gives lip service to prevention during meetings, but when it comes down to it we have a hard time getting more than just a couple of us to help. I'll keep working at it and maybe one of us will figure out the magic formula to make prevention important.