SAFER grants: Path to a competitive application

Over the past 20 years, the number of volunteer firefighters across the country has dropped by 10 percent. At the same time, the age of volunteers who are answering alarms today has increased dramatically.

The smallest age cohort in fire stations used to be the number of volunteers over the age of 50. Today, volunteer firefighters in that age group makeup the largest percentage of firefighters. An answer to reversing this trend for your department may lie with the completion of a competitive SAFER grant application.

It appears as though it won’t be long until the SAFER (Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response) grant window opens. The SAFER program provides funding to career, volunteer and combination departments for the hiring of firefighters activity and to volunteer and combination departments for recruiting and retention activities.

Myth busting
There is a myth out there that all of the money from this grant goes to the big cities to hire additional firefighters. This is simply not the case. The grant has built-in funding levels for all of the activities to prevent something of this nature. In other words, volunteer and combination departments should consider SAFER as a prime source for addressing their recruiting and retention issues.

The key to compiling a competitive application for SAFER recruiting and retention funds is to determine the reason people are not joining your department or not staying active with your department.

Next, you need to develop a list of incentives to answer these reasons and you need to develop a budget breaking out the cost of each one.

Sounds fairly simple and it is.

There are, however, some issues that you should keep in mind as you develop your narrative.

Identify specific needs
Does your department currently meet NFPA standards for staffing and response times? Are there four personnel on the first-arriving apparatus? Do you meet the 2 in 2 out rule?

If the answers to these questions are “yes,” then your application is not going to be very competitive. If your department does not meet these standards, then why doesn’t it? To answer this question, you need to be very specific.

Remember the three-person panel that reads and scores your application knows absolutely nothing about your department. In fact, they may be from the opposite side of the nation.

You need to back up your statements with facts and statistics. For example, if the number of firefighters answering each call has dropped from 8 to 3 in the past five years, let them know this. If you are having a “time of day” problem and the number of firefighters answering alarms between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. has dropped dramatically, state this in your narrative and back it up with numbers from your call sheets.

Remember SAFER is a very individualized grant. The reason your membership numbers are down may be completely different from any other department. The way you propose to solve this problem may be equally unique and neither of these will cause your application to get turned down. What will doom your application is your failure to convince the reviewers of your situation and its solution.

2 SAFER priorities
There are a few priorities that you should keep in mind. SAFER gives priority to applications that contain provisions to hire a program or project coordinator. In reality, if you want your program to be successful, you need a program coordinator. The coordinator is a designated person who handles all of the activities and reporting for your SAFER program.

SAFER also gives priority to applications that contain provisions for new recruits to have NFPA 1582 compliant physicals and immunizations. The cost of the program coordinator, as well as the physicals and immunizations, can all be paid for by the SAFER grant.

As always, if you have any questions or need grant assistance, you can contact us at Firegrantshelp.

Good luck.