MARKETING YOUR FIRE DEPARTMENT

摘要

The vast majority of the people who read this magazine can drag a hoseline, cut a roof, search an apartment, or run a fire practically in their sleep. That is the reason most of us take the time to read Fire Engineering―because we know what our job or task is (paid or volunteer, it makes no difference to the customer who calls us), and we strive to get better and better at it. Volumes of training manuals, textbooks, and other training materials illustrate fundamental and advanced firefighting evolutions and other rescue techniques. There are, however, other important parts of our job that most firefighting text-books do not cover. Marketing and budgeting are two of them. I do not profess to know a lot about the budgetary process. I, like most firefighters, give little thought to how we get the money to operate unless the money (for operations or my own personal paycheck) is not there. However, in the scheme of things, budgeting and, even more so, marketing your department's budget play a great role in what we can and can't do on the fireground.