Start Planning for Fall Volunteer Recognition Events

If you use the holidays that are coming up in the Fall to have a special event for your volunteer recognition, it's time to start the thinking and planning process. Halloween, Thanksgiving, even Christmas are popular times to hold a volunteer recognition event.

This kinds of events do take some planning and foresight. The time between Thanksgiving and Christmas are very popular for holding annual parties for companies and organizations. That means many good venues will be booked ahead of time. So it will take some searching on your part to find a good place to hold your event.

You also need to consider who you need to approvals from. Often times, you need to get on the calendar for board meetings, if they are required to approve an event like this. Again, advance planning helps.

Dealing with menus and themes are important considerations, too. If you like to celebrate Halloween with your volunteers, you can find some fun and easy ways here. But, you may also be using this for your annual volunteer recognition event, so awards and personalized gifts will need to be ordered.

Starting early for your planning will help you have a more leisurely fall and a much better volunteer recognition event this year. So don't put it off. You'll thank me later. 

Recognition Ideas for Summer Volunteers

For many of us, those students off for summer vacation have volunteered their time to help us out. It's getting on time for them to return to school. It's time to start thinking about the ways that we will thank them for being part of group.

The extra hands during the summer certainly made a difference for us. So we want to do something special to show our appreciation. For our boys who have helped out, we are giving them personalized caps. Each has their name on it and a note of thanks from us. We included our logo in the design.

For the college bound girls, we are giving them a treasure box. Again, personalized with thanks and our logo. For the high school and younger girls who helped, we have chosen a personalized notebook. 

An ice cream social is in order to celebrate the many hours of time they all put in to help us out. All our student volunteers enjoy ice cream so this was a no-brainer for us. For you, there may be other types of fun food that you can make an event out of for your student volunteers who are returning to school.

Because we have had recognition events and given appreciation gifts to our student volunteers for many years, we have gotten some wonderful volunteers returning each year to help us out. I'd say that's an investment in our future success.