The IAFF Strive for Excellence Summit is five day conference with thousands of attendees, and more than 100 workshops covering everything from fire ground operations to behavioral health to contract negotiations. It’s where fire service leaders come to get better at the job — all of it, not just the part that happens on scene.
This year, the Union Strong App team was on the ground in Las Vegas to be part of that conversation. And across five days of sessions, hallway discussions, and informal conversations over coffee, one theme kept coming up that you wouldn’t necessarily expect to be the talk of a fire service summit: communication.
Not public relations. Not media strategy. Internal communication, the day-to-day work of keeping members informed, engaged, and connected to their union.
The modern fire service looks very different than it did twenty years ago. Departments are managing new risks, adopting new technologies, and facing higher expectations from both members and the communities they serve. The work itself hasn’t gotten easier—what’s changed is the level of complexity behind it.
That reality was reflected at STRIVE. The range of topics covered wasn’t accidental; it underscored what today’s fire service leaders are expected to know. Fireground expertise still matters, but so does behavioral health, financial literacy, legislative advocacy, and effective communication with members.
Of all those areas, communication often gets the least attention. Yet based on what we heard at STRIVE this year, it may be one of the most important.
Talk to enough local leaders and the same frustrations surface. The intent to communicate is there. Most officers are genuinely trying to keep their members informed. The problem isn’t effort, it’s infrastructure.
The tools most locals are relying on are showing their age, and the gaps are becoming harder to ignore.
Email has become increasingly unreliable as a primary communication channel. Open rates are low, inboxes are cluttered, and there’s no guarantee that a time-sensitive message is going to be seen before it gets buried.
SMS used to be the dependable fallback—a direct, immediate way to reach members. But that’s shifting. Carriers are flagging more mass texts as spam, messages aren’t always getting through, and the cost can add up quickly for locals working with limited resources.
Union websites serve a purpose, but they’re largely passive. Members have to actively seek out information, and the reality is that most won’t unless they’re already looking for something specific. Many local websites also haven’t been meaningfully updated in years, which doesn’t help.
Social media reaches people, but on its own terms. Algorithms decide who sees what and when. And it only takes one disgruntled commenter or bad-faith actor to turn a routine update into a public mess that takes time and energy to manage. For information that’s sensitive or time-critical, that’s a real liability.
This matters more than it might seem on the surface.
Unions are built on trust. Members pay dues, show up, and follow their local’s lead because they believe leadership is working in their interest and keeping them in the loop. That relationship depends on consistent, reliable communication.
When members feel out of the loop on contract negotiations, safety concerns, legislative updates, or anything else that affects their lives, it creates a vacuum. And vacuums don’t stay empty. They fill with rumors, misinformation, and frustration. The erosion of trust that follows is slow, but it’s real, and it’s hard to reverse.
The solution isn’t more communication. It’s more intentional communication — a direct, trusted channel that gets the right information to the right people at the right time, without the noise and unreliability of the tools most locals are currently piecing together.
That means a few things in practice:
Reach without friction. Members should be able to receive important updates without having to seek them out. Push notifications, properly implemented, solve a problem that email and websites can’t.
Control over the channel. Unlike social media, a dedicated communication tool gives leadership control over who sees what and how the conversation is managed. There’s no algorithm to negotiate with and no public comment section to monitor.
Cost that makes sense. Communication infrastructure shouldn’t be a budget line that locals have to debate. The tools should be accessible, not a luxury reserved for better-funded locals.
Simplicity on both ends. Leaders need tools they’ll actually use. Members need an experience simple enough that adoption isn’t a project in itself.
Events like STRIVE matter. The training is strong, the networking is real, and being surrounded by people who care about the fire service brings clarity to what actually matters.
In Las Vegas, one thing stood out: communication isn’t secondary anymore—it’s operational. The locals who recognize that and invest in it won’t just run more efficiently; they’ll build stronger, more engaged memberships.
In a world where trust is everything, that changes everything.
The fire service has always adapted. This is the next challenge—and the ones who take it seriously will lead the future of the fire service.
Want to talk about communications for your union? Contact us!