Volunteer Thank You Event - advice needed please

posted by Slush Puppy on Mon, 17/01/2011 - 12:24pm
Slush Puppy's picture

Hi Guys - I have to put together a volunteer thank you event for our volunteers across the county and I'm not sure what I should look to include - has anyone got any ideas or advice?  They would be muchly appreciated!

 

Many thanks :)

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Events, training and learning

On Wed, 19/01/2011 - 5:55am

Hi there,

 

I'd say the first thing to think about is the timing of your thank you event - could you maximise publicity for your volunteers and organisation by coinciding it with Volunteers Week (1 - 7 June), Student Volunteering Week (if appropriate - last week of Feb) or other occasions?

 

As for the event itself, there's any number of activities you could include, depending on what you think your volunteers would appreciate. Perhaps you could invite a local dignitary - mayor, councillor, MP, celebrity etc to present certificates and/or other awards to your volunteers. This will help attract local press coverage too.

 

Perhaps there could be a presentation to volunteers from some of your organisation's clients / service users about how much they appreciate the support received. If it isn't feasible for this to happen, then maybe some sort of 'thank you' noticeboard where clients can show their appreciation in advance.

 

Above all, try to make sure that every one of your volunteers, whether they can attend the event or not, feels as if they have been individually thanked in some way for what they do.

 

Volunteering England's Good Practice Bank on their website at www.volunteering.org.uk should give some more guidance, but I'm sure there'll be other ideas from the AVM site too.

 

Best of luck with your event, and if you do hit on a particularly successful or novel way of recognising your volunteers, feel free to share it with other volunteer managers here!

 

Mike Gale

Director, Association of Volunteer Managers

By mike_gale

On Thu, 20/01/2011 - 3:33pm

what type of organisation are you? Is there a way in which your end users could say thank you?

are the volunteers aware of the difference or impact that they have had on the organisation?

I have had events where long standing volunteers in one part of the organisations have had the opportunity to visit projects in other parts of the organisation for the first time ever, or where clients have made gifts, or where we produced digital stories or photographic slide shows showing the contribution made by volunteers, or enabling volunteers in different parts of the country or in different projects to meet one another for the first time ever

All of these were cheap to do, why not ask a fw of your volunteers what they would like? you may end up having several different ways of saying thank you to different volunteers - keep us posted and share your ideas with others! best of luck

 

By debbieu -- Debbie Usiskin