VFDs Fighting for Fundraising and to Stay Alive

Pennsylvania Fire Chief Kyle Mummey thought he had a winner last year.

Because the COVID-19 pandemic had wiped out in-person fundraisers in 2020, volunteer fire departments were scrambling with finding ways to generate revenue just to keep the lights on and apparatus fueled. Mummey and the Sheppton-Oneida Fire Department began to offer online raffles as a way to make up financial ground.

“Thinking outside the box, we were one of the first ones in Pennsylvania to come up with the idea of the online raffle system,” Mummey told Firehouse.com. “What we did, we would offer different items that were in pretty high demand for very reasonably priced chances, and quite honestly, it took off like wildfire.”

That success, however, was short-lived. As other departments across the state began similar raffles, state officials took notice and found that these ventures violated state gaming laws. Although state authorities didn’t officially shut down the Sheppton-Oneida FD's online raffles, they did come to a halt.

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“We chose to stop voluntarily just because of the questions surrounding the online gambling,” Mummey said. “We wanted to be in complete compliance, and if we were violating the law at some point, we wanted to make sure we didn’t continue to do that.”

The department didn’t have any other fundraising alternatives and pursued frugality and austerity to get through the year. In 2020, the fire chief said the Sheppton-Oneida department lost over $75,000 in revenue.

“(The online raffle system) was kind of filling the gap in place of the in-person type fundraising,” Mummey said. “When that stopped, there was essentially no income for those months.”

Yet again the department—along with VFDs across the state—was back to trying to find ways to stay afloat and still protect the community. And while the pandemic has magnified the financial struggles for many volunteer agencies, it didn’t create them.

“Volunteerism in Pennsylvania is beyond a crisis,” Mummey said. “It was a crisis five years ago. I think it’s an absolute emergency at this point.”

And that’s a perspective some think applies not only to Pennsylvania VFDs, but departments around the country.

“It’s no one thing that’s causing these challenges. … Some of these challenges have been brewing for years and steadily putting pressure on the volunteer fire service to both continue to provide that emergency operational service and the funds to support it,” said Clarence "Chip" Jewell, the president of Maryland’s Libertytown Volunteer Fire Department and retired deputy chief/director of the Frederick County Division of Volunteer Fire & Rescue.

Across the country, volunteer firefighters make up 67% of the fire service, with most communities served by a VFD, according to the National Volunteer Fire Council. But in recent years, volunteer numbers have been dropping—hitting the lowest mark in 2017—while call volumes have increased.

Volunteer fire departments need to find ways to pay for a very expensive service. The cost to train and equip a volunteer firefighter is more than $20,000, and that’s not even factoring in equipment, apparatus, fuel and other items. At the same time, volunteers save communities roughly $46.9 billion annually.

In 2018, Pennsylvania set out to examine its own VFD emergency. Of the state’s 2,462 fire companies, over 90 percent were volunteer, according to the Pennsylvania SR-6 report looking into VFDs.

“If we lose our volunteer fire and EMS companies and volunteers, the taxpayers will face a very steep price tag,” the report stated.

Since the latter part of the 20th century, however, the number of volunteer firefighters has fallen in the state. It has gone from around 300,000 in the 1970s to roughly 60,000 in the early 2000s. At the time of the report, the number was at about 38,000.

“The significant drop in the number of volunteer emergency services ranks can be directly attributed to the fact that (in addition to fighting fires and responding to every other imaginable emergency around the clock), our volunteer emergency service responders are often the same individuals who must raise the funds to pay for their own training, in many cases provide for their own equipment, conduct administrative services and support, and maintain equipment and facilities,” the report stated. “Taken together, the many tasks performed by a decreasing number of volunteers only exacerbates the problem and overwhelms those who remain active.”

Fighting for a fundraising foothold

Last year’s elimination of online raffles was one of the many obstacles that sprung out of the pandemic for Pennsylvania volunteer firefighters, but it’s become an obstacle that Mummey hopes can be uprooted.

Earlier this year, legislation to reopen the door to online raffles was passed by Pennsylvania’s House and brought before the Senate. The measure would allow raffles to accept funds from mobile payment services, but only through May 2022 at the latest.

In April, Mummey and members of other state VFDs attended a rally at the Capitol, urging the Senate to pass the bill. West End Fire Chief Joe Gavala attended the event, as well, and he lamented the level of fundraising required just to keep up.

“How many hoagies do you have to sell and how many bingos do you have to hold for one air pack?” he told pennlive.com.

Gavala added that firefighters with his department probably conduct 10 to 20 times as much fundraising as they do actual emergency services work.

Volunteer firefighters like Sheppton’s Bob Gabardi talked about how his department was barely keeping solvent after the state shut down online raffles. In 2020, he said his department lost around $40,000 in fundraising dollars from the previous year.

“I still personally think it’s a shame that we have to fight for this,” State Rep. Ryan Warner said at the rally. “I think this is a no-brainer. We’re not asking for the world, here, folks. We’re asking for non-profits and fire departments to reveal who a winner is on Facebook Live on a small games-of-chance raffle.”

Even though the bill is a temporary measure, Mummey hopes it can be the first step in creating a valuable fundraising mechanism.

“That was kind of the grassroot movements to try and get the law changed so that beyond COVID-19 and when the pandemic is officially over that volunteer organizations can continue to do online raffles as a source for funding,” he said.

There has been no movement on the bill since April. Currently, it is in the Senate’s Committee for Community, Economic and Recreational Development.

Without passage of the bill, Pennsylvania VFDs would be forced to find ways to supplant diminished fundraising income as the state slowly moves out of a pandemic emergency. Working with local governments to establish a fire-protection tax could be one alternative, Jerry Ozog, executive director of the Pennsylvania Fire and Emergency Services Institute, told pennlive.com.

He added that while he knows VFDs in the state are hurting, he hasn’t heard of any closing. One fire company, however, had gone to its township about the ability to make payments on an apparatus, Ozog said.

Jewell knows what it’s like to see a potential financial lifeline dangled before you and then cruelly yanked away. Libertytown considered the idea of an online raffle during the pandemic lockdown, but lawyers advised that state law most likely prohibited it, even in the middle of a public health crisis.

So Jewell and Libertytown did what they had been doing for years when it came to fundraising: Be creative. In 2019, the department held its first beverage festival, which featured Frederick County’s craft beverage industry.

The event was a success, and while the pandemic and the tremendous amount of organizational commitment it requires has prevented holding it for the past two years, Jewell said he’s hopeful to see its return. In fact, he sees the beverage festival as a way to pivot from carnivals, which have seen a decline in recent years.

“But that’s the type of thing we have to be looking at,” he said of the beverage festival. “What can we do that’s unique? What can we do at a higher profit margin and hopefully with less manpower or at least the same manpower.

“It’s those types of things that you need to be creative about, as traditional ways fall off and might not come back after the pandemic,” he added.

Jewell might be a champion of unorthodox solutions, but he knows that the traditional ways can be effective, too. At the height of the lockdown, Libertytown tried to raise money through direct mailings to the community, asking for donations.

The support was positive, and Jewell counts the effort as a win on two fronts. First, it generated desperately needed funds, and second, it provided a connection with residents at a time when those were rare.

“Hopefully, it strengthens our reputation in the community so that when we do have our events, when we do our fundraising mailings, they see we’re not just here for them to run a fire truck,” he said. “But we’re here for them to provide full service to the community as a public safety agency.”

Return of in-person fundraising

Less COVID restrictions in 2021 have meant in-person fundraisers are back for departments. For Mummey and Sheppton-Oneida, that’s meant the return of a golf tournament, a gun raffle and monthly bingo games—an activity that pays for most of the department’s day-to-day expenses.

But the return of these fundraisers hasn’t meant the return to pre-pandemic attendance and revenue. Even though events are allowed, size still is limited, and the virus is still a reason that keeps others from going to public events.

“Luckily, some of our fundraising has returned,” Mummey said. “How we do those in-person events has changed drastically, and we’re now limited on space as to how many people we can put in our fire department hall for a fundraising event.

“Obviously, you want to follow social distancing, you want to follow the appropriate guidelines from the CDC, we want to be compliant and obviously we want to protect the people who support us, and obviously ourselves. That’s been a struggle,” he added. “For departments or facilities that are not short on space, it’s probably not as difficult. For us, that space limitation kind of limits us a little bit.”

Those challenges illustrate the fundraising difficulties that continue for VFDs in a pandemic world, and it’s why Mummey and others have been so vocal about the ability to hold online raffles, even when COVID concerns have been reduced to a minimum.

“Obviously, the online raffles were the safest way to do things because everyone could do it from the comfort of their smart phone or their home,” he said. “That’s kind of where online gaming would fill the gap.”

Jewell has welcomed the return of in-person events, as well. The department has brought back traditional fundraisers, like bingo games, a golf tournament and their very popular sportsman raffles, and focused on renting out its outdoor carnival facilities to the community.

Seeing these legacy events crop up again in 2021 also has been a reminder of another fundraising concern for Jewell: Finding the next generation to take over the department’s centerpiece events and activities.

In recent years, Libertytown has lost some of its senior “primary people who really ran the big money projects,” and it has been a struggle to find another person to fill that role. To paraphrase the old sports saying, the best ability for volunteering is availability, and that can be a challenge when members are expected to train and respond, along with working a regular job.

“It’s not that (the senior members) have the institutional knowledge, it’s also that they have the time and commitment to take on these major projects so that we can maintain that profitable income from it,” Jewell said

“You need to have the person there, wiling to step in. You need to have that progression, that redundancy. The people who are there, who are trained, who are willing to step in. And that’s not always easy, either. Depending on one person for one thing, it’s a scary thing.”

Member support

Mummey also is concerned about keeping members from being overloaded but still maintaining public safety and raising revenue. With short staffs, responding to calls can become a challenge for members who also need to juggle personal commitments with their life-and-death volunteer work.

“So with lack of manpower for emergency response, which is our primary objective, it becomes even more difficult for personnel to raise funds,” Mummey said. “And then the pandemic took away the normal way we would raise funds, so not only couldn’t you do in-person fundraising, now you had to be unique and creative to find a way to kind of get around the hiccups of the pandemic, so you could raise money. And some organizations were very good at that.

“We’ve been successful. But it’s been a struggle.”

Mummey praises the department’s ability to retain members, and he credits last year’s victories to the way the Sheppton-Oneida’s volunteers faced the unusual and trying circumstances of last year.

“Our membership really rallied behind the pandemic,” he said. “With very strong teamwork, we were able to weather the storm. Our job is unique in that we’re volunteers in charge with life-and-death decisions, and I’m proud to say that our ability to serve and protect was not at all affected during the pandemic due to the dedication of our membership.”

The pandemic not only rallied the volunteers behind the department but also the community. Residents donated masks, water and cleaning supplies, and some even joined “because they saw our organization needed the help.”

“Community support during the pandemic was phenomenal,” Mummey said. “Our community support is very much throughout the year, and that was even moreso in the pandemic.”

Navigating future fundraising

Jewell is hopeful that the worst is over when it comes to the pandemic and the damage it has done to many volunteer fire departments. He sees relatively clear—albeit choppy—seas ahead as he helps navigate his department through this crisis.

Last year, Libertytown was able to survive thanks to what fundraising could be generated, a “pretty good contingency fund available” and COVID relief funds from the county. It’s kept the department financially stable as it decides how to proceed next.

“I’m cautiously optimistic we’ll be OK,” Jewell said. “We’ve put together a business plan to see what we need to maintain our debt load and planned out what kind of events to have over what period of time to meet that income level based on past projections. ... I’m always concerned, but I believe we’ve put together a pretty good business plan.”

Despite the rough waters of the pandemic and the unexpected washout of online raffles, Sheppton-Oneida was able to weather 2020. But Mummey isn’t sure if the department—or many others like it—could withstand another emergency of this size.

“If this was to happen again in the future, it would cripple just about any volunteer service,” he said. “It’s extremely important to note how important that fundraising is to any volunteer organization. Because 95% of our operating budget comes from fundraising. "When you take that out of the mix, it’s very difficult to buy equipment, to buy trucks, to honestly put the lights on in the building or heat the building when there’s no income coming in. I don’t see many organizations surviving another pandemic to this magnitude.”

Volunteer fire departments were struggling before 2020, and that year’s events showed how vital it is for these organizations to be able to improvise when it comes to finding financing. It’s why things like online raffles can add a grain of security to an uncertain and tumultuous future.

“It’s extremely volatile, and I don’t think anyone really knows what’s going to happen,” Mummey said. “I think everyone is holding their breath and waiting to see what the Pennsylvania legislature is going to do about changing the law with regard to the online raffles.”