A Volunteer Organization Serving the Community

What does it mean to be a volunteer

organization serving the community?

Since its founding in 1937 as the Chevy Chase First Aid Corps, the Rescue Squad has been run by volunteers who set out to serve the community and save lives by “Answering the Call.”

Neighbors Serving Neighbors

In the beginning, Rescue Squad volunteers ran all the emergency calls. Volunteers lived and worked in the community, and many were able to leave their jobs during the day to respond to emergency calls. With changes in demographics and living patterns in the 1960s and the toll exacted by the Vietnam War, the Rescue Squad began hiring employees to staff its apparatus during the daytime. Today, in addition to a group of daytime volunteers, the Rescue Squad has a regular daystaff, funded by community donations. In addition, two Montgomery County Paramedics staff a paramedic unit during weekdays. Volunteer “night crews” continue to staff apparatus during the evenings, nights, and all day weekends. This strategy ensures that professionally trained personnel are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week to respond to calls.

Exacting Standards

Whether volunteer or paid, all Rescue Squad members who respond on emergency calls take the same training courses and are certified by the State of Maryland to the same standards. Rescue Squad personnel are also authorized to provide emergency medical, fire, and rescue services in the District of Columbia, pursuant to inter-jurisdictional agreements.

Volunteers–the Heart of the Rescue Squad

It is the Rescue Squad’s heavy reliance on volunteers that has defined its history and its character. The Squad’s 150 dedicated volunteers save the community $3 million in personnel costs annually. The obligations that the Squad places on its members are legendary and have no doubt contributed to the Squad’s status as one of the nation’s strongest volunteer organizations.

Upon joining, volunteers make a minimum time commitment of 12 hours a week – or 624 hours a year. This is in addition to time spent receiving the professional training required before volunteers can take charge of emergency incidents. This time commitment far outstrips the median 52 hours a year that Americans spend volunteering. (According to “Volunteering in the United States,” a report released January 23, 2008, by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, volunteers in the U.S. as a whole spent a median of 52 hours per year volunteering in 2006-7. See http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/volun.pdf .

The fact that research scientists, college students, government officials, small business owners, school teachers, lawyers, corporate executives, and others volunteer with the Rescue Squad is both a reflection of the community the Squad serves and a tribute to the Squad’s reputation for excellence. We serve as a model for other volunteer organizations nationwide in level of service, quality of training, and dedication to task.

Volunteer Management

Even the Squad’s upper management, including the entire Board of Directors, serves without compensation. All Board members are drawn from the volunteer membership and have served (or still serve) the Rescue Squad and the community as emergency medical technicians, paramedics, firefighter/rescuers, or administrative members. Most are seasoned professionals in some walk of life, including nonprofit management, business, finance, law, government service, and many other fields.

Community Support–the Lifeblood of the Rescue Squad

The community’s financial support is no less critical for the Rescue Squad’s success. Though it is one of the busiest fire/rescue departments in the area, the Rescue Squad does not receive regular budgeted funds from any government. Millions of dollars of voluntary donations from the community have paid for state-of-the-art apparatus, equipment, the current headquarters building, and, of course, the operating expenses for what has become one of the best trained and most advanced rescue squads in the nation. Our fleet of vehicles, valued at over $3 million, is provided by generous community donations, foundation grants, and occasional state and federal grants.

The Rescue Squad raises more than half of its $1.5 million annual operating budget through a door-to-door campaign every fall, in which our volunteer members visit every house in our service area. Unlike many local fire departments, we do not use paid solicitors to go door-to-door for contributions. The Squad relies on other donations throughout the year from individuals, foundations, and businesses, contributions from grateful patients, banquet hall rentals, and occasional state and federal grants to round out its operating budget. Few locally-based organizations enjoy this kind of broad-based support, and the Rescue Squad is grateful for the community’s strong support.

“Answering the Call”

Today the Rescue Squad carries on the legacy left by Don Dunnington and his co-founders by providing, at no cost, professional emergency medical, ambulance, rescue, and fire services to the Bethesda-Chevy Chase area, as well as Upper Northwest Washington, D.C. The Rescue Squad’s fleet includes seven ambulance/medic units, two heavy rescue trucks, a mobile air unit, a rescue air compressor trailer, a medic chase car, and various command and utility vehicles. In responding to more than 10,000 emergency calls per year, the Squad’s 150 dedicated and professionally-trained volunteers and staff let nothing get in the way of “Answering the Call.”

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