Thanksgiving is in two days.  Soon, we’ll all be sitting around dining room tables with our friends and family and mountains of food that will keep us in leftovers for days.   We’ll fall asleep while watching football, only to wake up a few hours later to eat pie.  We’ll spend time thinking about what we’re all thankful for over the past year, and into our future.

Have you taken time to give thanks for volunteers?  How do you show them that you, as an individual and as an organization, appreciate the time that they give to you?  You don’t have to hold a huge and elaborate dinner to highlight your volunteers’ accomplishments.  Let your volunteers know every day, and throughout the year, that they’re important to you, and to your organization.  Here are some ideas you can use to show your volunteers how important they are:

• On the volunteer’s first day, make sure that everything they’re going to need is available for them
• Set up a “volunteer of the week” section of your organization’s newsletter
• When flu season starts, put together a wellness kit for your volunteers with tea, tissues, vitamin C and hand sanitizer
• Make sure volunteers get treated like any other employee in your organization, they’re not “just volunteers”
• Hold volunteer specific events like lunches, coffees, or educational events to bring your volunteers together
• Send volunteers cards thanking them for serving with your organization
• Try to set up some time outside of the organization for volunteers to socialize with each other
• If your volunteer is in school or employed outside of your organization, contact their boss or school administrator and send that person a thank you note for allowing them the time to volunteer
• Send notes to your volunteers on the anniversary of the day they started volunteering with your organization highlighting all of the work that they’d done over the past year
• Be sure to highlight volunteers’ achievements to other staff members whenever possible so all staff members are aware of the volunteer program and can thank the volunteers for their work

Most importantly, don’t forget to actually say thank you to your volunteers.

Related Posts:

• Nine Rules of Recognition
• Don’t Forget to Celebrate Volunteerism

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