National Volunteer Week is coming up on April 10-16. This is a great opportunity to both recognize the achievements of your existing volunteers as well as alert the community to your department’s need for more recruits.

Volunteers are a crucial component of our nation’s fire service. 69 percent of firefighters are volunteers, and there are many additional volunteers providing support through local auxiliary programs such as Fire Corps or junior firefighter programs. However, a 2014 national survey by the NVFC showed 41 percent of respondents did not know if their local department used volunteers, and 79 percent did not know if their department was seeking new volunteers.

The National Volunteer Fire Council (NVFC) recently launched the Make Me A Firefighter recruitment campaign to help raise awareness among the public of the need for volunteers as well as provide departments with the tools and resources they need to recruit new members. Departments can register for free at portal.nvfc.org to post your volunteer needs and access customizable outreach materials, ready-to-use PSAs, a recruit tracking tool, and more. The portal is designed to be your one-stop shop to implementing and managing a local recruitment campaign...