The Next Shift Fund
If you are a firefighter in crisis right now, or you love one who is: call or text 988, or call the Fire and EMS Helpline at 1-888-731-3473. If there is immediate danger, call 911.
Fire | A Uniform Families Foundation Fund
The Next Shift Fund
Firefighters run toward death for a living. They carry the calls home, one on top of another, for twenty and thirty years. Some of them cannot carry it anymore, and the fire service loses them. Not to a fire. To the weight. The Next Shift Fund exists for one reason: to get a firefighter to the next shift, alive.
Every firefighter who makes it to the next shift is the whole point.
Why This Fund Exists
The Calls Do Not Leave
What They See
The car seat that was empty too late. The house with the family still inside. The overdose that was somebody's kid. A firefighter sees more death in a year than most people see in a lifetime, and then goes back for the next call.
What They Carry
It does not stay at the station. It rides home in the truck, sits down at the dinner table, and wakes up at 3 a.m. Sleep goes first. Then the temper. Then the marriage. Then the quiet.
Why They Do Not Ask
The culture says the firefighter is the strong one. Asking for help feels like admitting he cannot do the job, and the job is who he is. So he handles it alone until he cannot.
Who Is Left
When the fire service loses a firefighter this way, a wife, kids, and a whole crew are left with the questions and, too often, without the support a line of duty death would bring. This fund is for them too.
What the Fund Pays For
Four Things, and Only These
Counseling, Outside the Department
Licensed clinicians who treat firefighters, paid by Uniform Families Foundation through the Counseling Stipend. No department paperwork. No record at the station. No one has to know.
Counseling StipendPeer Support Training
Training for firefighters to recognize it in each other and know what to do next, because a firefighter will talk to another firefighter before anyone else.
Family Training
Plain language training for fire wives and families: the signs, how to start the conversation, and who to call at 3 a.m.
Mental Health and Suicide PreventionCare After a Loss
When a fire family loses a firefighter to suicide, we show up with the same care and financial support we give every fallen firefighter's family. No judgment. No conditions.
Fallen Responder Family ProgramPrivate, Always
No names, no stories, no photos, ever, unless a family asks us to tell one. Firefighters and families reach us directly and privately.
Every Department
Career and volunteer, city and county, structural and wildland, retired and active. If the person wears turnouts or used to, this fund is for them.
Firefighter CommunityGive
Get a Firefighter to the Next Shift
Every gift goes to counseling, training, and care for fire families. This is what your gift actually buys.
For Firefighters and Fire Families
Reach Out. Privately.
A firefighter, a spouse, a captain, or a crew member can reach us here. You do not have to know what you need. You just have to reach out. Nothing goes to the department.
Fire and EMS Helpline
1-888-731-3473Firefighter Behavioral Health Alliance. Firefighters, EMS, and their families. Any hour.
988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline
Call or text 988For anyone, any time. Veterans and service members press 1.
Why We Built This
Because the Fire Service Should Not Bury Its Own This Way
Uniform Families Foundation was founded by a fire wife whose husband has spent more than twenty years running toward the calls everyone else runs from. She has watched the job come home. She has heard the names of the firefighters who did not make it to the next shift, in her husband's department and in departments across the country. The Next Shift Fund is her answer: pay for the counseling, train the crews and the families, and stand with the families left behind.
- Serves firefighters and fire families of every department, active and retired
- Counseling paid for, outside the department, no record
- Peer support and family training
- Full support for families after a suicide loss
- Private, always
Uniform Families Foundation is not a crisis line or a clinical provider. We connect firefighters and families with licensed professionals and cover the cost through our programs. If you are in crisis, call or text 988 now. If you are in immediate danger, call 911. Uniform Families Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Donations are tax deductible to the extent allowed by law.
Uniform Families Foundation
Serving the families behind the uniform: Fire, Paramedic and EMS, Law Enforcement, Medical and Frontline, Military, and Uniform Kids.
Uniform Families Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation. EIN: 41-5063345.