You probably have lots of ways to thank your volunteers. If you want, leave a comment and tell us your favorite way to thank volunteers and your favorite way to be thanked when you've volunteered.
Maybe lots of organizations who use volunteers do this, I don't know. But a certain organization very dependent on volunteers (700 volunteers, 60 staff, 40,000 hours/year) logs in volunteer hours and they have a dinner and slide show once a year (or maybe 2x a year, I'll tell you at Christmastime). I don't know how many hours you have to have...
My first opportunity to go and I couldn't go but I wanted to go. Wanting to go to something like that is unprecedented for me. I wanted to go because I wanted to see the slide show. This is an organization with a lot going on. It's easy for the left hand not to know what the right hand is doing. If you work there at all you'd love to see a slide show about what everyone else is doing. And I would have really liked taking my better half to see the slide show, too, because it's something I do that he doesn't do.
Do churches do that? Did you ever have a special dinner for your volunteers as a "thank you" with a slide show to celebrate all the work they've done (and all that God has done)? Given the digital technology available these days taking pictures all year and putting them into a power point presentation isn't that hard, even for me. You could even utilize your less visible techo people and it could be pretty cool. Actually you could even let your teens take the pictures and put it together. Especially if the kids are better at it than the grown-ups. :)
Just a thought...
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I have provided a thank you dinner with a chance to reflect on the kids and what they have done within the past year.
ReplyDeleteMore commonly I write a note to each volunteer each month to reaffirm what they are doing and how it is impacting the kids they are ministering to.
Here is my experience. I know that a lot of churches host these thank you dinners and live it up really big. I've never done this and I'm not really sure I plan to start. Now, maybe this shows a flaw in my leadership ability, but many of my ministry volunteers won't come to a dinner. Now, my core leaders and those who are sold out as well as a certain segment of volunteers would be touched and wouldn't miss it for the world. However, so many of my volunteers are just really, really busy. Between sports, school, clubs, and family time there just isn't that much left over. Although most all volunteers would appreciate the idea, a thank you dinner would get trumped by another event.
ReplyDeleteMy goal is to get all my volunteers into some kind of orientation two times a year. A big trainig event and a small one. I try to create the thank-you event within training. So, that way our volunteers (who feel the responsibility to fulfill volunteer obligations to attend a training) can get a special thank you while getting trained. I've found this to be really efficient. We've had our senior pastor address the volunteers, we've given away special gifts to all the volunteers such as giftcards, hats, t-shrits or whatever.
I also strongly believe that we should be consistantly thanking the volunteers, loving on them and such all year long. If your volunteers honestly feel loved and apprciated, you don't need to hold a special event to tell them this.
We do 2 thank you events (other than the weekly little thank you notes). Well, sort of 3. In the fall, we do a kickoff. Last year, we did a tea tasting, and this year it will be chocolate themed. Then around Christmas (well usually in January), the kids make gifts, cards, and other reflections for the teachers. Then in the spring, we do an end of the year celebration. This year it was Club MED (marvelous educators), was beach themed, and we got students from the nearby massage school to provide massages. The spring event was not as well attended as the other two, which leads me to think that the timing was bad. People just have too much to do in May. The ones who couldn't attend, though, appreciated the thought, and that was what mattered.
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