What resources are available for volunteer organizations? 

Welcome to today's EMS leadership, Q&A. One of the questions we have here is what resources are available for volunteer organizations. It's a really great question. And I think there's probably so many directions. We could take this, this question, Lisa, but first I'm just gonna point out that career or volunteer. We're all professionals and we're still committed to doing the same work.

And I think if you keep that kind of front of mind when you're talking about when you find yourself differentiating between, Oh, but we're just a volunteer organization, I think that's really important for our industry. But if you're asking this question around funding resources, I think the number one funding usually for EMS organizations is local funding and your local government. And this is a real opportunity for you to develop strategic partners with your elected officials,

educate them. I used to go down to our town board every year on an annual basis and make sure we had a meeting with them. I'd bring the, the little toolkit and a presentation. And I'd explained because frankly they don't know or have much of a clue about what we do or the difference between a paramedic and an EMT and why it's important and that,

Oh, well maybe you bill. Well, what are our billing practices? Why should we bill and that? So I think it's really important point to develop those relationships. And then if you look at the high, a different level, you've got community foundations across the country. If you search for the community foundation for your region, they usually have many resources where they pull resource sources together and take grant applications annually.

There's the FEMA AFG in the United States where there's money set aside for EMS. Although it is a pretty appalling, 2% of the money is set aside for EMS. There are other fundraising opportunities that you could do at a local level. The medic one foundation out of Seattle is I think a great example there they're pretty famous for their fundraising and they even encourage patients and survivors and community members to develop endowments.

And really that's a really larger source of funding and ongoing funding for your organization. Yeah. And I think it, it's just Googling that question, you know, is a great idea for people because there's a lot more available than we often know. But if you're coming from the mindset is, Oh, we're a volunteer organization. You know, we have to,

we have to operate on a shoestring budget, then it limits your capacity to discover what's out there. So I think that's really important. And I think the developing the strategic partnerships that you mentioned, but I also think it's important to think in terms of how can you expand the diversity on your board, not just in terms of the way we normally think of diversity,

but also in terms of, do you have business people on your board? Do you have people who specialize in public or communications and, you know, you need folks with a lot of different perspectives because it opens up the possibilities of, of just endless possibilities and, you know, and we have N we have a lot of resources available on our website for leadership development,

strategic planning, you know, just a lot of ways that you can access free resources and, you know, even some ones to invest in. But for sure you want to sign up for our nine one one leadership email list because you will get information all the time on what, what will be beneficial to your organization. Excellent. That sounds great. Thanks,