Mounted search and rescue

[<Jorene@CEOates.com>]

The local chapter of Red Cross last year came up with the great idea of annually creating a "Local Heroes" calendar with photos of local law enforcement, fire, medical, SAR, etc., and relation captions This year I made a point of connecting with those creating the calendar and sent them to our SAR web site to choose what they wanted, then I provided them with the high resolution originals. We've already had some recruiting from the web site, and I suspect we'll draw even more interest once the 2004 calendar is out with several SAR "action" photos.

 

Local SAR teams might investigate doing something like this as a fund raiser, perhaps as a collaboration with others. Get sponsors up front to at least cover initial expenses, do media releases identifying the sponsors, etc., and get the calendars out to the public no later than November 1. If set up as a tax deductible non-profit you can sell X cases of calendars to local places like Wal*Mart and large grocery stores, where they'll take the donation write-off and tuck a calendar into shopper's bags. Also have cases of calendars at the sponsor locations to draw people in to that location to buy a calendar for $10 or whatever. Another option is to put out stacks of calendars at various stores with a "donations can" at the checkout line where people can take a calendar and put $$ into that can - on the honor system. ;)

 

Any other suggestions for fund raising and recruiting?

 

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Jorene Downs
Tulare Co, CA
SAR, MSAR, Swiftwater Rescue, US&R,
Technical Rescue, Cave Rescue,
Hasty Team, ICP
www.CEOates.com/sar
Tulare-Kings CERT Program Coordinator
www.tk-cert.org