private company support

[rescue5271]

On the news this week  it was announced that the QLDRFB where to be given sponsorship by a insurance company  so that 20 brigade's could buy new equipment for the coming fire season and into the future. What are people's views on this?? For many years we have seen this in other state's(westpac rescue chopper,surf life saving,CFA and other's) My view is if they are willing to donate the money and its put to good use take it and give them what every acknowledgement they want.

In the same interview it was also stated that large company's are willing to donate money back into community groups but not to many take up that offer for what ever reason we don't know why they don't. At a time when goverment's are cutting back in how they spend money,should we not take any help or offer that looks good to our service so that we can replace those aging appliance's or give our members better PPE.....

[Pipster]

It's sort of like CFS 15-20 years ago - when brigades needed funding from various sources, just to be able to put fuel in the truck, buy basic PPE etc.

Queensland Rural Fire brigade, in terms of funding (and other things) is at least 20 years behind what we have here - no ESL style funding, relying upon the local community, and local Government to provide funds, with the occasional bit of funding from State Government.

The money provided in this type of sponsorhip may be a matter of survival for some brigades in Queensland!!

I don't have any problem with private companies making donations to volunteer fire services - but it is perhaps a little trickier here in SA as, in the view of some, we are "fully funded" by the ESL and hence don't need money from other sources....

Pip

[bajdas]

I believe last year or the year before an agency went for private money to buy equipment. I think it was all arranged, but then nothing happened.

The agency's association was also trying for part of the funding but could not convince the company they would get the publicity return.

[Robert-Robert34]

Accepting donations of equipment from private companies sounds like a real good idea but it pends on what they want to donate whether its fire fighting equipment or something along the lines of a fax/phone,radio,scanner,GPS or portable weather station