Gas Card for Volunteer EMTs and Firemen

[catskills]

Just got my yearly gas card for volunteer fire and rescue squad work. :excl:

We have lawyers that backup our gas card program, which is now in its 3rd year.

The gas card idea originally came from another thread on this forum. Our gas card program has been an excellent program for volunteer fire and rescue recruitment and retention. The younger volunteers seem to prefer the gas cards over a retirement program.

Many thanks to EMTLife forum for the original idea.

 

[WARR]

Looks like you'll need it - gas is god damn expensive. It costs me around $60 to fill my tank up.

Congrats

 

[brentoli]

Just got my yearly gas card for volunteer fire and rescue squad work. :excl:

We have lawyers that backup our gas card program, which is now in its 3rd year.

The gas card idea originally came from another thread on this forum. Our gas card program has been an excellent program for volunteer fire and rescue recruitment and retention. The younger volunteers seem to prefer the gas cards over a retirement program.

Many thanks to EMTLife forum for the original idea.

What is this gas card? Whats on it? How do you get it?

Tell us a little more about your program please?

 

[catskills]

Large gas stations like Mobil and Hess for example sell gas gift cards. The cards are purchased by the fire department and rescue squad with a certain dollar amount on the gas cards. The gas cards are given to members that have gone on enough drills, calls, and meetings to justify the gas card. The idea behind the gas cards is to help cover personal travel expenses for Firemen and EMTs for drills, calls, meetings, and training. In our case its an all or nothing. If you make enough drills, meetings, and calls, then you get a gas card. If not you get nothing. This encourages higher membership participation and training. Nothing worse than having a large structure fire or serious MVA and the volunteers have not trained in many months.

 

[medicdan]

Great volunteer motivator. Question: Do you have members that will come just for the credit-- show up to training and not be mentally present? Or come to calls and be no help? Or towards the end of the year, show up to everything to "get credit"?

 

[catskills]

Great volunteer motivator. Question: Do you have members that will come just for the credit-- show up to training and not be mentally present? Or come to calls and be no help? Or towards the end of the year, show up to everything to "get credit"?

To be honest I don't know how much additional participation is the result of the gas cards. Lets face it most volunteers do this crazy stuff because they enjoy doing it. As you know sometimes the time commitment and interference with family life takes its toll. Handing out a gas card at the end of the year help improve morale We have an awesome group of volunteers. There is almost no end of the year going on every call and training to make up the gas card requirements. Many of the members meet their requirements for the gas cards in less than half the year. That said we do have a lot of members that don't meet the requirements for a gas card.