HACKER SAFE certified sites prevent over 99.9% of hacker crime.
A FREE Customer Service from CHIEF
CHIEF - More Responsive to First Responders

Get the Grant!

Attend a

CHIEF Grants Seminar

Learn More & Register

Early-bird
discounts available!

Part 1 of 2: Patience, Perseverance & Planning: How a Department Overcame Severe Financial Hardship in Less Than Three Years

The Fund Finder News
Public Safety Grants Consulting

Issue 47, July 2006 - Grant News & Commentary by Kurt Bradley, CHIEF Grants Consultant

Creative planning and community outreach helped SARS construct a new $1.5 million station.

View larger image

SARS was able to overcome their financial hardship, and in less than 3 years was able to fund and complete projects such as this new, $1.5 million station.

This two-part Fund Finder is a case study relating the success story of the Second Alarmers Rescue Squad in Pennsylvania. Utilizing the traits mentioned above, they overcame a severe financial hardship and turned their organization around in less than three years. Read on for how they did it, and for how your agency can too.

No Matter What, There Is a Way

A good grant writer needs the above three traits – patience, perseverance and planning – ingrained into their very soul, in order to be effective. If you have been tasked with being the "money man" for your department, someday you will be asked to find a grant for some big project like building a new station. This is when you will discover that there may not be a single grant program available to fund that particular project. The above mentioned traits will come into play and become the determining factor of your success or failure.

This is where you are going to have to recall the lessons of "alternative funding" and properly utilizing "grant strategy", which we teach in our seminars. Do you just give up and admit defeat, simply because there is not a grant to build the new station? Or are you going to take the bull by the horns and solve your agency's dilemma?

There is always another route you can take to arrive at the final destination. Being a creative thinker and learning to "think out of the box", is the key to all successful grant writers.

I want to relate a real-life story to you. It is a lesson in "Patience, Perseverance and Planning".

About This Story

This special edition of the Fund Finder is in two parts:

  • Part 1 of 2: After one of their own embezzled a $2 million building fund, one man tries to bring the agency back from the ashes but needs to find new ways to get funding for the agency survive and grow.
  • Part 2 of 2: How Jamie Haddon used some creative thinking, community outreach, teamwork and CHIEF Grants training to gain ongoing donations and fund a new station, a water rescue team, EMS bicycles and more.

Betrayed: $2 Million Embezzlement Brings Squad to Its Knees

Second Alarmers Association and Rescue Squad of Montgomery County, Incorporated (SARS) provides Emergency Medical, Fire and Rescue Services to six municipalities in the suburban Philadelphia area. Founded in 1938 as primarily a canteen service to area fire departments, they have had a long and distinguished history of service.

They have continued to grow and expand their services to become the largest, standalone, non-profit, EMS provider in their region, responding to nearly 10,000 emergency dispatches each year. They are a combination department, composed of 91 career members and over 110 dedicated volunteers, staffing and maintaining 19 vehicles (10 ALS ambulances, 1 ALS Heavy Rescue, 2 Utility Vehicles, 4 Officers Vehicles, 1 Utility Trailer with EMS Bike Team and Mass Casualty Tent, 1 Swift Water Rescue Boat). They operate from 4 stations.

In 1999 an unscrupulous officer embezzled the SARS Building Fund account – to the tune of over $2 million dollars.

That's right: $2 million dollars.

This money, that had been scrimped and meticulously saved during 16 years of fundraising efforts and countless hours of volunteer man hours, vanished into thin air.

This crushing blow not only brought SARS to its knees financially, but cast an ugly pall over their entire organization. During the next two years SARS continued to struggle for its very existence. The trust of the community and others left them in a "poor credit" risk category for obtaining commercial loans. Fundraising support efforts from the community all but stopped, as their trust is SARS had been broken as a result of the embezzlement.

No Luck Getting Grants Funding or Raising Money

Resurrecting this organization from the ashes would require Herculean efforts. Yet, who would ever consider assuming that mantle of responsibility and agree to inherit these monumental problems?

Enter Jamie Haddon, a third-generation firefighter with a BA in Business Administration who has logged more than 1000 hours of external fire and EMS training. He took over as Executive Director of SARS in December of 2002.

Suffice it to say that when he took over the reins of this organization, it was in dire financial and organizational straits. Jamie previously had a strong background in non-profit fundraising. Having held several leadership positions with local nonprofit organizations through his career, he was no stranger to "sticking out his hand" to the community in efforts to regain the organization's financial footing. He launched himself into this task like the Space Shuttle Discovery roaring off the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center this past July 4th. Unfortunately, just like the Space Shuttle Challenger, his launch never achieved orbit.

He quickly discovered that what he had learned about grants in the private sector of non-profit fundraising, held little value to him in applying for funding from DHS funding streams. Additionally, since they were considered an EMS agency, SARS had very limited access to what programs he did know about. From 2002 through all of 2003, SARS was turned down at every effort Jamie tried. He was unable to raise any funding for the organization.

Hard Times Call for New Ideas & Strategies

At about this same time CHIEF Grants had decided to "take it to the streets" and launched our first Public Safety Grant Writing Seminar series. Jamie was a student in our very first class, held in Philadelphia in January of 2004.

He was a bit leery of attending, but he decided to take a shot at it and see if he could pick up anything new that might assist him in what he was trying to accomplish with SARS. Jamie kept an open mind and listened intently to what he was being taught. He left the seminar reinvigorated and convinced that he could turn his organization around. He would later prove to become one of our "CHIEF Grants Star Students".

Continue to Part 2

In Part 2 of this two-part Fund Finder, you will hear directly from Jamie Haddon, Executive Director of Second Alarmers Rescue Squad. He will tell you in his own words how he took his experience, knowledge and dogged determination and turned his agency away from the brink of disbanding. Discover how using proper planning, grant strategy and having patience allowed SARS to build and open their brand new $1.5 million stationhouse, and a whole lot more!

Continue to Part 2 »

Visit the Fund Finder News Archives

Back to Grant News and Information