Industry Best Practices: Money for the Taking...

     In these tough economic times, EMS managers who have given up on making any new purchases probably just don't know where to look, says Bob Hargis, CCEMT-P, EMS director for Southern Oklahoma Ambulance Service in Ardmore, OK. "The money is out there," he says. "But the people who have it won't come looking for you."

     In 2007, Hargis applied for and received grant monies totaling $1.1 million, which enabled his agency to purchase six new ambulances, plus a bonus seventh with funds received from another agency that came to him after hearing he was buying a new fleet of vehicles. "I applied for six separate grants from six different agencies, although two of the larger organizations gave the largest percentage of money," he explains. It wasn't that the entire fleet fell apart at once, he says. "Three of the ambulances had fewer than 50,000 miles on them, but there were chassis problems that kept them in the shop a lot of the time. One ambulance had been out of service for nine months and only had 48,000 miles on it."

     So where did the money come from? "I used a book called the Oklahoma Foundation Data Book, which is just for Oklahoma, but I think they make them for each state," Hargis says. "The 600-page book outlines every agency in the state that is required to give away a percentage of its funds—that's the way they're set up. If you research these places and write a genuine, but persuasive narrative that gets them interested in your organization and helps them understand the good it's doing for the public, people out there will give you money. Some of them actually give you positive points for future grants if you followed through on your project the way they asked you to do and the project was successful. It's not a matter of pestering them. It's about getting them to 'feel' your project." For more resources on grants for EMS providers, visit EMSResponder.com/grants.