Recognizing Contributions and the End of Service

Acknowledging achievements, marking conclusions

Member recognition

By publicly recognizing your members' contributions, you can help them feel that their work is worthwhile. At the same time, you can also promote your program and its mission in the community. While recognition is often tied to the end of the service year (or to the end of the school year in school programs), it can be an ongoing way of motivating and encouraging members and volunteers.

Recognition can take many forms. The Youth Volunteer Corps of America (YVCA), a National Direct Grantee headquartered in Kansas, suggests a number of personal and public ways to recognize and reward members' efforts. Print their great ideas and adapt them for your own program.

Document achievements

Members achieved a lot this year. Be sure they have documents from your program that track the important skills they developed. Aside from letters of recommendation and lists of trainings you provided, give members a more official certificate of training to place in their personal portfolios. With this certificate template, you can present members with their acquired training hours after each training.

End-of-year celebration

While recognizing achievement is important all year, it's an especially important part of your end-of-year celebration. For a variety of creative ways to mark the conclusion of the service year, print these suggestions from the Washington Service Corps.

This handy checklist will help you keep track of recognition activities.

Print these tips for inviting prominent community members and civic leaders to your end-of-year ceremonies.

For more information about the importance of recognition and celebrating the end of service, check out these links:

Electronic Gazette for Volunteerism
www.volunteertoday.com

Volunteer recognition ideas/manuals
www.energizeinc.com/ideas.html

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