Tech for those who answer.
Software for volunteer fire departments
Halligan Works builds one thing, the VFD Platform: a public website, a donation page and an operations console, on one subscription. Built with a rural department, for departments like it.
01
Why department websites go quiet
A volunteer department gets a website built once, usually by a member or a member’s nephew, and then has no way to add anything to it. There is no workflow for getting a photo from a call onto a page, so nothing gets added, so nobody visits, so the donate button never sees traffic. The site ages in place until the most recent thing on it is years old.
01
The content stops
Nothing on the site changes after launch, because changing it requires the one person who knew how, and they moved.
02
The money follows
A donation page nobody has a reason to visit does not raise money, however well designed it is.
03
The binder stays paper
Gate codes, lock box locations and access notes live in a printed binder that gets flipped through in a moving truck.
02
What every department gets
01
The public website
Apparatus, roster, events, coverage area and contact. What appears on it is decided in the console, page by page.
How it worksClose
Apparatus with photographs, the roster, events, the coverage area and contact details. Where the apparatus actually is never appears — that is operational information, not something we forgot. Every page is built to open on one bar, because that is where it will be opened.
02
Donations
Tiers a chief can set, settling directly into the department’s own account. Halligan Works never holds or routes the money.
How it worksClose
A chief sets the tiers himself — a length of hose, a set of turnout gear — and can run a goal against a specific piece of equipment. Funds settle into the department’s own merchant account. Halligan Works never holds or routes them, so there is no percentage to take and nothing to reconcile.
03
The incident log
Calls recorded by an officer, with what gets published to the public site decided separately from what gets recorded.
How it worksClose
What gets recorded and what gets published are two separate decisions. A call can be logged in full for the annual report and the grant application while the public page shows only that the department turned out. A live call drives a banner on the public site, and that banner expires on its own rather than sitting there for three days.
04
Conditions
Burn ban and fire weather, read from the state feed. A source that cannot be reached reads as unreachable, never as "no ban".
How it worksClose
The burn ban is read from the county feed where the state publishes one, and a chief can override it for a bounded window when he knows something the feed does not. The rule underneath is the part that matters: a source that cannot be reached reads as unreachable. "We could not check" and "there is no ban" are different sentences, and only one is safe to act on.
05
Volunteer applications
A form that works on a phone, without printing anything, and lands somewhere an officer will actually see it.
How it worksClose
A form on a phone. No PDF to download, no printer, and no puzzle to prove you are a person — the audience skews older, and a test that punishes somebody for being slow costs a volunteer. Applications land where an officer will see them rather than in a mailbox nobody opens.
06
The installed app
Adds to a home screen with the department’s own name and icon. No app store review, and no per-department app to get rejected.
How it worksClose
It installs to a home screen from the browser, with the department’s own name and icon. No app store review to pass, no per-department app to get rejected, and no second build to keep in step with the website. When the signal drops it shows its own page rather than a browser error.
03
Paid modules
A department gets what it pays for. Everything else is invisible rather than merely unlinked, and only Halligan Works can switch a module on — a chief cannot grant himself one.
The Box
Scene photos, reviewed by a named officer before anything is published — and shared across the departments that ran the call together.
Read more →Size-Up
The gate-code binder, searchable, on a phone, and working with no signal.
Read more →The Roll
Landowner enrollment and a ledger of who owes what. The platform never touches the money.
Read more →04
What this platform will not do
These are architectural commitments, enforced in the schema. They are not policy that changes with a price list.
Rule 01
Never touch the money
Donations settle directly into the department’s own merchant account. Halligan Works never holds, routes, or takes a percentage of a donation.
Rule 02
No advertising, ever
A department may credit up to eight sponsors. There is no ad inventory and the limit is enforced in the schema, not in a contract.
Rule 03
Nothing publishes from an active scene
Photographs from a call are released by a named officer against a checklist, after the call is over, and every decision writes a record that names the person who made it.
Rule 04
Payment status never reaches a crew
Whether a landowner has paid is invisible on every screen used during a response. What a fee buys is maintenance of the record, never its existence.
Talk to us
If you are a chief, an officer, or on an ESD board and want to see the console rather than read about it, get in touch and we will walk through it.