Picture this scene: a new principal at the school, with the best of intentions, wants a big volunteer appreciation event to cap off the school year. Volunteers play a significant role in this elementary school, so instead of the understated annual volunteer tea, the principal envisions a big awards ceremony. The invitations are sent out but, because of an incomplete volunteer list, not all volunteers receive an invitation. On the night of the recognition event, the volunteers that are present find themselves paraded onto the stage and six awards are announced to highlight the work of six individual parent volunteers.

“It was a fiasco,” recalls Jocelyne Halladay, the school council chair at the time of the event. “The volunteers didn’t want a big production and were embarrassed having the spotlight shone on them. Feelings were hurt.” The experience certainly shaped how Halladay now approaches volunteer recognition in her role as administrator of the Kingston-based Fort Henry Gymnastics Club, a role that includes overseeing a small group of volunteers.

Day-in-day-out recognition

Halladay understands that fundamentally you have to know your volunteers and how they would like to be recognized. She makes sure she knows her volunteers by name and remembers details about their families. “Most volunteers aren’t looking for an annual splashy event,” she says, “but rather a day-in-day-out kind of recognition.” Halladay has learned that recognition can mean giving a volunteer a job that involves more and more trust, or it can involve implementing a suggestion made by a volunteer. When you make a volunteer feel like an important part of the team, you are, indeed, recognizing them.

Still, large events do have their place. Halladay finds that the larger events are good for showing volunteers what other volunteers do in an organization. Large events can also rejuvenate the sense of excitement that volunteers felt when they first started working for the cause. However, there probably won’t be any award ceremonies whenever Halladay is in charge. “The whole school experience made me think twice about picking people out of the crowd for an award. If you’re going to have a volunteer of the year, just have one because for every award you hand out, someone is going to feel left out. If I do choose someone, it will have to be for something that is so over the top that no one would question why that volunteer was chosen.”

Educating colleagues about volunteer recognition

At Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, you’ll find both the large, annual appreciation event and day-in-day-day-out recognition of volunteers. There are a lot of university students who volunteer at the hospital in preparation for careers in healthcare. Joanne Fine-Schwebel, director of volunteer services, organizes an annual volunteer appreciation luncheon, but instead of holding it in April during National Volunteer Week – which falls right in the middle of exams – she waits until June.

Over the years, she has discovered that as much as the students enjoy the event, they want more recognition from their immediate supervisors for what they do on the floor. So, Fine-Schwebel educates staff on the finer points of effectively recognizing volunteers. During National Volunteer Week, she sent a flyer to each department to remind supervisors of the event and to provide suggestions for recognizing volunteers. “For example, I stress to staff that, for students, recognition could be arranging to see a procedure or something that would help them apply to med school.”

Recognition in the form of personal development

The Saskatchewan 4-H Council went through an organizational renewal project in 2002 that included reviewing their volunteer recognition practices. There are 1,200 volunteer 4-H leaders in the province of Saskatchewan. Executive director Valerie Smith explains that these volunteers receive no financial reimbursement; there is no per diem rate for board members and no mileage reimbursement for board members or the volunteer leaders (and in rural areas, volunteers may be driving quite a distance to their monthly meetings). Even still, in the 2002 review, volunteer leaders said they were happy with the amount of recognition they receive.

The type of recognition they did ask for more of was personal development and opportunities to come together as leaders. As a result, the provincial 4-H Council established a leader’s conference. At the conference, the provincial Council provides workshops on topics such as working with the media, dealing with stress on the farm, and tips to help leaders plan their monthly meetings for young 4-H members. “Now that more and more of our volunteers are supplementing their income with additional work off the farm,” says Smith, “we are able to provide resources to help them plan their meetings when they don’t have time themselves.” This, too, is a form of volunteer recognition.

Professional volunteer resource management practices

When it comes down to it, Ruth Mackenzie, director of Volunteer Canada‘s programs and operations, tells people that “the most important way you can recognize your volunteers is by demonstrating that you use solid volunteer management practices. Showing volunteers that they’re valued, that they’re taken seriously, and that the time they give is important to the organization meeting its mission and mandate is the best recognition you can give someone.” She says the best way to achieve this is by thoughtfully designing volunteer roles, having a methodical intake process that appropriately matches volunteers to positions, providing the training and tools to do the job, and offering feedback as well as recognizing a volunteer’s efforts.

Even though another National Volunteer Week has come and gone, there are 51 more weeks to express appreciation to volunteers for their contributions – through special events, day-in-day-out recognition, listening to what volunteers want more of, and by implementing solid, professional volunteer management practices.

Louise Chatterton Luchuk is a freelance writer and consultant who combines her love of writing with experience at the local, provincial and national levels of volunteer-involving organizations. For more information, visit www.luchuk.com.