SAFER Tuition Reimbursement Question

[morrischief17]

I am currently writing my departments SAFER grant for tuition reimbursement, and I have a few questions. We currently run 225-275 calls a year with 25 active members.With this call volume and manpower pool how many people do you think we can get funding to provide tuition reimbursement? Were thinking 7500 year for 10 people 5 for retention and 5 for recruitment. Should we apply for 50% going toward retention and 50% going for recruitment? What stipulations have you placed on the members that recieve this funding?
We are probably requiring anyone under recruitment to acquire there ff1, hazmat ops, nims courses within one year, and ff 2, and vehicle rescue courses within 2 years. Any member recieving this for retention shall already have these courses before recieving any funding. Do are ideas sound to far fetched? And do you guru's think that this project is fundable? Thanks in advance for any help.

[Andy2802]

I am currently writing my departments SAFER grant for tuition reimbursement, and I have a few questions. We currently run 225-275 calls a year with 25 active members.With this call volume and manpower pool how many people do you think we can get funding to provide tuition reimbursement? Were thinking 7500 year for 10 people 5 for retention and 5 for recruitment. Should we apply for 50% going toward retention and 50% going for recruitment? What stipulations have you placed on the members that recieve this funding?
We are probably requiring anyone under recruitment to acquire there ff1, hazmat ops, nims courses within one year, and ff 2, and vehicle rescue courses within 2 years. Any member recieving this for retention shall already have these courses before recieving any funding. Do are ideas sound to far fetched? And do you guru's think that this project is fundable? Thanks in advance for any help.

Good luck with SAFER.. it seems to be an under-used funding source, but it seems hard for them to come off of R&R money.

We have a similar size volunteer department. We didn't have luck for tuition reimbursement, we were told trainig should come under operations grants. If you can make an R&R case, go for it (and let me know if it works).
But we did request and get $100 per student, 6 students per year, ($600 per year) for POV travel mileage/expenses reimbursement while attending a Firefighter 1 academy.

They shot down our plan for using dress uniforms as a recruitment tool (if you look good, you attract more recruits), and as retention incentive (get Fire1 and we buy your dress uniform).. but they did allow $3,000/yr for recruitment advertising (we asked for $10,000).

[jam24u]

Good luck with SAFER.. it seems to be an under-used funding source, but it seems hard for them to come off of R&R money.

We have a similar size volunteer department. We didn't have luck for tuition reimbursement, we were told trainig should come under operations grants. If you can make an R&R case, go for it (and let me know if it works).
But we did request and get $100 per student, 6 students per year, ($600 per year) for POV travel mileage/expenses reimbursement while attending a Firefighter 1 academy.

They shot down our plan for using dress uniforms as a recruitment tool (if you look good, you attract more recruits), and as retention incentive (get Fire1 and we buy your dress uniform).. but they did allow $3,000/yr for recruitment advertising (we asked for $10,000).

Since they shot down the dress uniforms as an incentive for recruitment, would they be more open to department jackets or station wear that would have department logos, etc?

[islandfire03]

We were successful in 08 for a SAFER R&R. We put in for funding to apply to our existing scholarship program. It is open to any active member or the dependents of active responding members.
We asked for 5k per year
We also received funding for advertising in the local monthly newspaper for recruitment , tied in with a fire prevention message, and to print up and mail out a flyer for recruitment to local residents.
2,400.00 first year and 1200.00 each successive year.
So far we have gained four new members since september and have a couple more possibilities we are working on.

Dress uniforms and work uniforms don't seem to have been approved for funding recently.