Beyond Volunteers’ Week: The Power of Small Acts of Appreciation

For some, preparing for Volunteers’ Week happens months in advance, something AVM supported this year when we ran a members-only online Volunteers’ Week 2025 Planning event, bringing members together to share their experiences and ideas around the week-long celebration. We held this at the beginning of March and have received feedback that it needs to be earlier, which we plan to do in 2026.

As you know, recognising volunteers isn’t a one-off thing. It’s something that is done multiple times and in a variety of ways. Sometimes it can feel hard to get right. Hard to not sound disingenuous, repetitive or impersonal. Hard to strike a balance between it being sufficient enough without blowing budgets. And sometimes it’s the small things that can take you by surprise.

In a previous life I worked at a heritage site in the visitor experience department. The Easter holidays, and especially the 4-day weekend, were usually the busiest and most demanding days of the year. One year in particular the weather was glorious, and people were queuing down the driveway before we’d even opened the gates at 10am. I don’t think that queue abated until 3pm (I might be exaggerating slightly but it was an exceptionally busy day!) and everyone, staff and volunteers, were rushed off their feet. We all got through the day, fairly unscathed and in good spirits. The following week I went to the site shop, bought some postcards and handwrote thank-you messages to those who had worked over that busy period. Nothing big or fancy, just me saying thank you for whatever it was they’d done - sell raffle tickets, manage the children’s craft activities, guard the chocolate Easter eggs. When I next saw them, I’d hand over the postcard and say a verbal thank you. Some of the reactions I received really surprised me. Whilst I thought “It’s just a postcard, probably not enough really,” people were genuinely thrilled and touched. To be individually recognised for their efforts, to know they were appreciated, to know I’d taken the time to do it, meant a lot.

I was reminded of this act at an event we did earlier this year on Rewarding and Recognising Volunteers, which had three speakers talking about this subject from different perspectives. A few things that came up:

• “Treat people how you want to be treated” doesn’t always apply. A lot of people do not want to be appreciated in front of others. Any kind of public recognition, grand or small, will make them want to curl up and hide away. Others will love it. Some want to be given badges or certificates, others don’t want any money spent on them. Some want a handshake from the big boss, others just want to be recognised by the people they work with directly. As with other areas of volunteering and working with people, taking the time to get to know your team and understand how they, as individuals, want to be appreciated is key.
• Involve your volunteers in the creation and running of your reward and recognition programmes. Sometimes we think we should have all the answers ourselves and that’s not possible. One of the speakers at our event talked about a fairly new reward and recognition programme they had developed and how they had included their volunteers in the process and how this inclusion was helping the programme be a success.
• The importance of planning. How much time do you spend planning and preparing for Volunteers’ Week? Do you apply the same level of planning to other reward and recognition activities throughout the year? Do you budget anything at all for reward and recognition? Do you have things planned throughout the year that then allow you to be a bit more fleet-of-foot as well? I must admit, I think I could do better in this space and make sure we have reward and recognition on our agenda throughout the whole year.

Reward and recognition takes time, something we feel we have less and less of every day. And yet I reckon it doesn’t take as long to show my appreciation to a dedicated volunteer than it does recruiting and inducting a new one. And it doesn’t have to be extravagant. What I’ve learnt is that it’s the small, timely, personal acts of appreciation that can be the most powerful, without breaking the bank. Something I need to remember beyond Volunteers’ Week.