Some of your recruitment strategies come down to how attractive is your brigade to new members?
If the general community thinks the brigade a bunch of "old farts" who wouldn't know the first thing about dealing with an emergency, then the brigade is unlikely to gain too many new members (although it may just attract more of the same!!)
The truth about the brigade, and the perception of the community may also be miles apart!!
<big snippo>
Pip
As usual, Pip has hit the nail on the head. For us, anyway.
Especially the truth vs. perception bit.
Also some community interaction/ownership stuff that we are working on.
Have, over some time, been working up a "new residents information pack".
Includes pointed reference to absence of paid fire-fighting sevice in the district.
Also useful phone numbers - fire permits, capt, hotline, region, etc., summaries of
"stay or go early", brigade info, fire restrictions, etc. 8 colour pages in a $2
display binder. Initial feedback is good.
Fiddling with a specific recruitment hand-out for elections & etc.
The CFS HQ one is, in our opinion, ill-conceived.
Or at least, inappropriate to our demographics.
Personal interaction essential in all of this.
Without it, the paperwork is junk mail.
People are getting better at filtering out impersonal advertising.
Have been looking at fire development demo videos on youtube & the like. eg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwpqNc0Hxig Very do-able.
The smoke detector message being a natural carrier for the "join us" message.
Oh, and a press gang was a recruiting strategy used unofficially & illegally pre-1900
by some Royal Navy captains. At the time, RN hands' conditions were even worse than
Australian or UK call-centres, and with a much higher likelihood of becoming dead or
maimed. So they'd send out a bunch of blokes with cudgels on the night before sailing to "recruit" any shortfall in crew from solitary drinkers departing bars. By the time
the recruits recovered consciousnes, the ship would be well off-shore. There may be a
good reason why it wouldn't work for the CFS but I can't quite put my finger on it...