5-5-5 Fitness is an nonprofit organization founded by firefighters, focused on reducing preventable firefighter line of duty deaths related to cardiac events.
The “Strength is Our Foundation” Grant Program is 5-5-5 Fitness’ latest endeavor. Fire Departments across the country are now receiving free functional fitness equipment packages totaling over $3000 per package, solely funded by the sale of 5-5-5-Fitness t-shirts, stickers, challenge coins, bags and donations through their website.
The “Strength is Our Foundation” Grant includes a Concept 2 rower, medicine ball, squat stand, utility bench, kettlebells, barbell, customized 5-5-5 Fitness “Never Forget” weights along with several more items based upon the needs and requests from the winning applicant.
January 5th though January 14th marks the open enrollment for applicants,. After visiting http://555fitness.com/pages/grant-program to download the application form, fire departments will submit an electronic copy of their applications to 555grant@555fitness.com
Once an application is submitted, the staff of 5-5-5 will go through all entries and any applications that are not completed and signed are disqualified. Each 5-5-5 Staff member then picks from qualified applications to forward the top applications to a panel of judges that are not a part of the organization but are related to either the fire service and/or fitness world.
All names and identifying marks are removed from all applications forwarded to the panel of judges. Each application is numbered and each judge votes for the application/s they deem most worthy simply by their number without knowing anything about who the applicant is or where they are from.
After the judges have ranked the applicants, the winning department is chosen, notified and allowed to package of equipment from three pre-set packages that best suits their member’s needs. At this time, a date is set for delivery of the equipment and two of the 555 staff members come to the department to formally present the equipment and give the members of the department the necessary training on the equipment.
