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NWSA Chapters

The National Wildfire Suppression Association (NWSA) started chapters to address local issues, develop a consensus, and work with local agency personnel. This involves holding regular meetings, addressing regional and national issues, and building relationships with agencies and politicians.

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NWSA Chapters

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  1. NWSA Chapters National Wildfire Suppression Association

  2. NWSA started Chapters to: • Encourage local members to address local issues. • Develop one voice on issues for consensus and work with local agency personnel to address them. • Build a working relationship with your local agency folks, county, state, federal, Office of Emergency Mgmt. and politicians. What is the role of the Chapter in NWSA?

  3. For starters you need to hold regular meetings with your chapter members? • At least one annual physical meeting where you can talk face to face… • During the interim utilize the “Free Conference” system NWSA uses to hold conference call. • Make sure the you have someone that is taking minutes and forwarding them to the members and a copy to the National NWSA Office. • What are the issues regionally? Are there issues that are of concern to the group as a whole? Get a consensus that everyone can buy into. • Are there National issues that cannot be addressed by the chapters? Are they shared issues that need to be taken forward to the national board? How do we do that?

  4. Once you have a clear understanding of the goals of your chapter start knocking on doors. • Request a Meet and Greet with – (NWSA national can provide you our info packet they use and you can customize it for your meeting) - Your regional contracting staff - The Fire & Aviation Director of the USFS/BLM/BIA, State Forestry - Regional Director of the Office of Emergency Management – (let them know we are here and would like to work on a way to get our resources statuses with them). - Regional Coordination Center Next:

  5. Cont. • Meet with the Editorial Board of your large newspapers just to let them know who NWSA is and the role our members play in fire. • Invite guest agency speakers to your chapter meetings. • But set ground rules, decide ahead of time what issues you want them to discuss. Could be very generic, a get to know you, what role they see private sector playing locally • Be very professional and structured in this visit. Do not ALLOW harassment to occur. You are working on building a two way street for communication. • Put a group together Meet and Greet visits to your local congressman’s office. We need them to put a face on our issues. Don’t go in asking for help, simply let them know who you are, what we do, and what some of our issues are (NWSA will provide you the issue paper we have put together) Let them know you are not asking for help just want to keep them informed. Get to know their natural resource aides. We send them the NWSA newsletter every quarter. They are our Ace in the hole if we need them. Next

  6. The national office can provide you with resources for setting up these meeting. Get your names, phone numbers, provide handouts and other info. • If your group has issues the would like to bring forward to the national board, state them clearly, validate them and forward them to NWSA Executive Director who will review them, ask any questions, and get them out to the board for comment. National - Regional

  7. The key to a strong chapter is its diverse membership, while we can send out membership info, you have to be the seller of the service. Promote NWSA…. It will give your chapter a stronger voice locally. • Put NWSA Stickers on your employee helmets. • NWSA bumper stickers on your trucks. • Hand out NWSA Business cards with website info. • Have an open meeting and invite all contractors in your region to attend a general meeting one time and encourage them to participate. Recruiting more members

  8. In 2002 NWSA restructured it dues in order to keep our membership dues low nationally, and allow the chapters to assess their local members for any activity that the chapter might want to sponsor. • We very specifically set our dues structure up nationally so that the Chapter could keep more funds locally if they needed to assess members? • Sponsor workshops by your Worker Comp Carrier on claims management, PTAC workshops all these are provided for free. Be active. • It is important to note that the database fees provide 2/3 of our revenue while membership dues provide only 1/3. Funding

  9. The database is set up so that each member company only pays for the number of employees that they train, therefore if you only have 2 employees you only pay $24.00 to store the training in the system. • Encourage the use of the database storage system by your chapter members. • Get some of our folks certified as NWSA Instructors that can provide training to your local members Funding

  10. What are the Benefits of the NWSA Training Program • Training is entered only by a Certified Instructor not the employer. • Training meets or exceeds the 310-1 Standard. • We have monitors for our instructors that do random reviews. • Once your employee is in the database, you as a member can access his/her records. • Print Incident Qualification Cards • Track Event History • Print Manifest • Print Training Certificates • Update certain information • The NWSA Incident Qualification card is recognized. • Website: http://www.nwsastraining.com If we don’t want to have to raise dues we need to encourage fair use of the database storage system. Database

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