Ideas for public realtions

Greetings and Slautations,
I have recently 'volunteered' to serve on the public relations committee in our station and am wondering if anybody has ideas on how we can get the word out to the community. We are a volunteer FD and are limited financially. I have a few ideas that have come from other posts in the forum areas, ie:blood pressure checks, smoke detectors, cpr and first aid classes, open house. I would like to hear about successes and horror stories, maybe you have something that may help us not make a maistake or worse. Thank you in advance and hope to hear from fellow firefighters.

I know you said that your finances were limited, but if you can get some businesses to sponsor some sort of newsletter, that's a great way to get info out.

Something else we do is what we call "Lunch with the kids".
We go to the local grade schools once a month and eat lunch with them. We talk about what ever comes to thier minds. It has made us "approachable" whether we are just out and about or on an emergency scene. You will usually notice the kids dragging their parents to you, which is a good way to meet them too.

The volunteer department that I served on for many years would hold a poster contest for school kids, in conjunction with Fire Prevention Week. It would be broken down into age categories, so kids would compete against their own age groups. The fire department officers or committee would judge the entries and the winners, along with their parents, were invited to the firehouse for the awards. These were usually simple; savings bonds, gift certificates, small trophies, etc.
The local newspaper was usually on hand to take photos of the winning students posing with the Chief.....with an engine or truck as the background. This was usually done during an open house, during Fire Prevention Week. The mayor and Fire Commissioner were also invited, along with appearances by Sparky the Fire Dog and Smokey Bear.

It was very inexpensive, yet very successful in promoting public relations. The kids and parents loved it and looked forward to it each year.

Good luck in whatever you decide to undertake!;)

The firefighters and our auxillary along with the sheriffs department have an annual "Kids Care ID" day. Poloraid Corp. provides the materials including the camera for taking photos of the child, fingerprints and a booklet similiar to a passport. The information is placed in the booklet along with the photo and given to the parents. Check Poloraids web site for details.

The material is not free but you can enlist the help of local companies to offset or cover all of the costs. Hold the event at your fire station. It gets families in the door and you can also run other programs on fire prevention and safety along with law enforcement. It also gives you a chance to talk to people in your community. A "fact" sheet about your department is also a good handout. Limit it to one or two pages that explain what you do, how you are funded, and future plans. Do a press release for your local media. If you do it on a weekend, you will probably get coverage of the event as weekends are normally "slow" for broadcast media.

Something our Department has been doing for about two years and only cost a little man power is a American Red Cross Blood Drives, they supply all the poster, and other materials. We use our local boyscout troop to help ditribute the posters and we man the rehad booth the day of. Great for meeting new people and telling them what the fire dept is all about. We even went as far as to have a raffle for donors were we gave a gift certificate to local stores.

During Fire Prevention Week we do three thing in our town for our town
1 we do fire drills at the three old folks home in our town and give them the opertunity to make suggest about how they could get out faster, and answer any questions they have.
2 we do a fire drill at the school.
3 we have an open house were we play games with the kids offer door prises (ie. fire escape board games, smoke detectors, videos on fire safty.