Volunteer View: Don’t Treat a Volunteer Fire Department Like a Business

Some communities that depend on volunteer fire departments struggle to find the balance between providing cost-effective public safety and promising residents that well-trained and professional responders will be there to help them. It’s difficult to both recruit new folks to be trained in courses that can span hundreds of hours just to bring about minimal qualification (and retain those same people) and to convince elected municipal officials that just because a fire service is volunteer doesn’t mean that it’s free.

It also is bluntly true that volunteer departments can be a little different organizationally than career departments, because volunteer members serve on their own time. It’s time that they spend away from families, friends and jobs, to fundraise, to train and to run a fire station.

For all of these reasons, all of us who are involved must stop dealing with volunteer departments as if they are businesses.

That statement might make some cringe. It even might seem as if we all should take it easy on volunteer departments because “they have it so hard.” That isn’t at all the purpose behind the statement. Volunteer departments must be held to a high standard. Residents and taxpayers must know that their firefighters are equipped and prepared to respond to any incident. Elected officials must hold these departments accountable for the money that’s allocated to them and for handling personnel issues according to policy.

Policies

It’s essential that all departments have policies that stipulate how certain situations and incidents will be handled, how positions are filled, how meetings are run and who can handle money. Departments also should have standard operating guidelines/standard operating procedures (SOGs/SOPs) that explain in as detailed a way as possible how structure fires, vehicle accidents, potential exposure, etc., are handled.

The purpose of these policies isn’t for the policies to be read during a call. It’s so all personnel are aware of and train on the expectations of the leaders who created the policies, because it’s in the best interest of the department from an organizational risk perspective and for firefighter safety.

Personnel issues

Personnel issues typically are very sensitive to volunteer departments for numerous reasons, and they represent a significant difference between the world of the volunteer department and career departments.

At work, if you violate company policy, you can be disciplined with or without pay, suspended or terminated. At the volunteer level, suspension without pay obviously isn’t an option. So, immediately, serious offenses go to either warnings (verbal or written), suspensions or permanent expulsion. That said, the reason that these issues can be so sensitive is because volunteers of a given firehouse often are each other’s neighbors, close friends, relatives or potential foes that have decades of bad-relationship histories.

Of course, it’s important that volunteer departments address personnel situations appropriately and to the extent that’s warranted but also address them quickly.

The first step in getting personnel decisions right is a disciplinary policy that’s developed by department leadership but is shared with and approved by the department body. Such a policy creates buy-in from a majority, awareness about what will happen if someone steps out of line and metaphorical lanes for people to stay in. The latter is important, because a given person could fill two or three roles on both the operations and administrative sides of a volunteer department. So, if the president is on a call and sees someone violate department policy, is it appropriate for the president to suspend or warn the policy-violator in a written way? Many people asked this likely would say it isn’t.

That’s why the next step is to create a disciplinary committee. The committee should consist of administrative and operations leadership, to facilitate a coordinated and balanced approach to organizational discipline and personnel decisions and to protect the department from a situation in which one company-level leader unilaterally suspends another company-level leader as well as from a costly lawsuit.

It also is important to let situations die down before handling them (unless it’s a life-safety issue where someone must be suspended immediately before someone is injured or killed). It’s best practice to write a document: a printed paper that states the report of the issue and the date, to explain to the committee what happened; an email of the same nature; or a mailed/registered letter of the same nature. This provides time for all parties to take a step back and detach from the situation on an emotional level. Some departments might opt to have the person who is the subject of the potential discipline stay away from the firehouse until that individual’s committee meeting, when that person’s side of the story can be shared.

Keep in mind, the harsher that the department is on a person, the more likely the individual will quit and never come back. So, find the balance of what’s worth it and what isn’t.

Finances

The word “policy” holds true for how volunteer departments should approach financial operations, too, for a lot of the same reasons that are mentioned above.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars are stolen from volunteer departments each year by their own members. The method of theft can range from fraud, to the taking of physical money that’s kept in the firehouse, to theft by deception. It’s critical to have strict policies regarding who can handle actual notes, who can spend money, who has access to firehouse inventory, credit card users, and who has access to bank and investment accounts. The more accountability that’s required of members of a volunteer department, the less likely that money will be stolen.

One of the easiest ways to build a risk-management strategy around almost any area of risk in a firehouse is to talk to an insurance carrier about the policies and procedures that it would like to see.

Some things that the insurance company might suggest are:

• Two approved signers sign each check for payments
• Auto-pay monthly and quarterly expenses, so they read easily in financial reports, and regular amounts easily are seen
• Relatives or members of the same household can’t have the same financial authority; for example, a husband, who is the fire chief, and his wife, who is the vice president of the department, both can’t have authority to sign checks, access bank accounts, etc.
• Require invoices to be provided for any credit card charges
• Create company-invoiced accounts, so credit cards, checks and physical notes aren’t needed as much

Community partnerships

Just because the letters and numbers on the apparatus indicate that the department is completely volunteer doesn’t mean that it gets a pass for professionalism and the level of service that it provides. Residents probably don’t care what color the fire truck is or who arrives first after they call 9-1-1. They likely are in one of the darkest times of their life, and they can’t help themselves. It’s the department’s job to have the equipment ready, to know its role, and to be courteous and professional at all times.

The risk of poor decision-making, poor planning and/or the lack of professionalism can cost individuals their position, the department donations from the community and personnel availability. Worst of all, it can cost someone’s life.

Take pride in the department’s work. Make sure that the department is represented well at all times. Remember, if the department’s volunteer efforts are listed in social media accounts, every post could be taken as a representation of the department. Poor personal decisions could reflect poorly on the organization.

A position to succeed

Treating and running volunteer departments as if they are businesses must be put to an end. These entities must be treated as volunteer organizations, because, at the end of the day, volunteer departments encounter situations that often can become very personal because of those who serve in each firehouse.

Competing with career departments must end. We all must work together, because we all want to help people. We just have different approaches to getting there. In addition, career departments operate differently, which means that their personnel and financial operations will be handled differently.

Set up your volunteer department for success and keep the people who you have. It’s difficult to replace those who leave because of unwarranted discipline or ineffective company procedures.