176 – Beyond Pizza Parties: Innovative Appreciation Ideas for Volunteers

August 21, 2025

Episode #176: Beyond Pizza Parties: Innovative Appreciation Ideas for Volunteers 

In this episode of the Volunteer Nation Podcast, Tobi Johnson discusses the importance of strategic volunteer appreciation. Moving beyond traditional gifts and certificates, she explores how to recognize and value volunteers in ways that are meaningful and aligned with core human needs and organizational goals.  

Tobi provides 12 innovative appreciation ideas categorized into meeting volunteer needs for safety, connection, and purpose, and aligning with organizational goals such as program quality, DEIJ, and donor engagement. You’ll learn how to create impactful and heartfelt recognition that sustains both volunteers and the mission of their organizations! 

Appreciation Ideas for Volunteers – Episode Highlights

• [02:00] – Why Recognition Must Go Beyond Trinkets 
• [06:00] – Aligning recognition with Organizational Goals
• [14:10] – Aligning Appreciation with Organizational Goals 
• [15:00] – Mission Awareness: Mission Ambassador Awards 
• [16:00] – Recognition as a Change Management Strategy 
• [17:00] – Program Quality Champions: Rewarding Volunteer-driven Improvements 
• [18:00] – DEIJ Leadership Spotlights: Inclusivity & Serving Diverse Communities 
• [19:00] – Growth Catalysts: Celebrating Expansion & Innovation 
• [20:00] – Data Heroes: Connecting Volunteer Data to Grants, Funding, and Impact 
• [23:00] – Why Random Giveaways and Trinkets Don’t Work 
• [24:30 – The Bottom Line: Strategic, Meaningful Recognition 

Appreciation Ideas for Volunteers – Quotes from the Episode

“The bottom line here is that when we recognize volunteers in ways that meet their core needs for safety, connection, and purpose, and when we align some of that recognition with our organizational goals, we create appreciation and acknowledgement that’s not just heartfelt, it’s strategic. It sustains both our people and our mission, and we want to do that.” 

“Let’s move beyond pizza parties and really develop innovative appreciation ideas for our volunteers, because that’s what they deserve. They deserve our time and attention to these things.” 

Helpful Links

• Volunteer Management Progress Report 
• VolunteerPro Impact Lab 
• Volunteer Nation Episode #024: The Best Volunteer Recognition is a Well-Run Program 
• Volunteer Nation Episode #169: How to Meet 3 Core Volunteer Needs Right from the Start 

Contact Us

Have questions or suggestions for the show? Email us at wecare@volpro.net.

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Episode #176 Transcript: Beyond Pizza Parties: Innovative Appreciation Ideas for Volunteers 

Tobi: Welcome to the Volunteer Nation Podcast. I’m your host, Tobi Johnson, and I am hanging out in the Pacific Northwest feeling the heat. It is unseasonably warm here and for those of you who live in my neck of the woods, if you don’t have AC, I feel for you, it’s been a hot summer here and there and very dry. 

When I was growing up here back in the day in Washington state, Western Washington state in the US it was. Never really got that hot in the summer. In fact, we never, nobody ever had air conditioners, but nowadays it’s a requirement. So I hope everybody’s hanging in there with the heat waves around the country and around the world, especially in the Northern Hemisphere right now. 

Take care everybody, and stay cool. Today I want to talk about volunteer recognition and appreciation. It just seems we’re so focused on giving people gifts and trinkets and certificates, and plaques that we’re not really focused on the strategic way we can think about, uh, recognizing and acknowledging the work of our volunteers. 

It’s time for us to move beyond simply appreciating volunteers with gifts and develop approaches that are much more meaningful and will be remembered by volunteers for years to come. Volunteer appreciation isn’t just about saying thank you, although that is important. It’s about showing. That we see value and connect volunteers contributions to the bigger picture at our organization. 

When recognition meets human needs and moves the mission forward, at the same time, it becomes a force multiplier for impact. It’s that. Dual give and get that we wanna incorporate into our volunteer appreciation. So in this episode, I’m gonna share some fresh and strategic appreciation ideas for volunteers. 

So, this is going to go way beyond pizza parties and plaques and pins, and most of them are free or low cost. They don’t need to significantly impact your budget, but they will take time to develop. Not everything is budget neutral, but these are things that have a lot of meaning. I want to talk before we get started giving you ideas, and I’m going to give you 12 appreciation ideas for volunteers today, and they’re going to be in two categories. 

But before we do that, a few things I want to know, one is a big caveat, In Volunteer Nation episode 24, I note that the best volunteer recognition is a well-known program and my volunteer Pro impact lab members know that, know this because I say it a lot. The best volunteer recognition is a well-run program. 

It’s basically what’s required for your volunteers to feel satisfied in any way. So, if you have a poorly run program, there is no level of volunteer recognition that will make a big impact. In fact, your appreciation efforts may feel disingenuous if you have poor. Management practices in place. So just a reminder that if you need help rebuilding a lagging program, just check out our Volunteer Pro Impact Lab for focus, design and implementation support that can help you transform your volunteer experience. 

I’d love to help you all out. You can go to volpro.net/join. Just a reminder for you all that we’re here to help if you are ready, but let’s talk about these two. General ways we can achieve this combination in an intersection of personal meaning for the volunteers and organizational purpose and meeting goals for the organization that volunteers are supporting. 

When we can have this powerful intersection of these two areas of giving and getting, that’s where volunteers feel truly valued. And nonprofits can also build the loyalty and alignment that they need to. Thrive Appreciation is, yes, it’s of course, it’s about saying thank you. It’s the right thing to do, is to show gratitude for people who are sacrificing time in their busy schedules that are offering up their talent in very generous ways. 

We want to make sure that we appreciate those folks, but we also want to be strategic with everything we do when we engage the community in our work, because we simply don’t have time not to be strategic. Everything we do should have a strategy to it. So, in this case, strategic appreciation ideas for volunteers, I want to share two approaches. 

The first approach is to consider the essential human needs that drive a meaningful and rewarding volunteer experience. They are safety, connection, and purpose, and align your volunteer. Appreciation with those core needs. The second approach is to align appreciation with core organizational goals, like program quality, customer or patient satisfaction, community reach staff, and volunteer collaboration, innovation, capacity building, data collection, partnerships, advocacy. 

You name it, you can align your appreciation. Efforts with your core organizational goals. So, think for a minute, what’s a big goal for your organization either this year or in the coming year. What’s something that you want to achieve as an organization? And I’m going to show you some ways to strategically aligned volunteer appreciation with these. 

But first we’re going to kick it off with volunteer needs, and I’m going to talk about six volunteers’ appreciation ideas that are aligned with our core human needs of safety, connection, and purpose. And in Volunteer Nation, episode 169, I go into these three core needs in much more detail and that name of that. 

Episode is how to meet three core volunteer needs right from the start, and I really focus on volunteer onboarding and building community when you have new volunteers coming on board. So, check that out if you’re interested. I will link to it in the show notes, but let’s dive into this safety, connection and purpose. 

Safety is feeling respected, valued, and supported, and we all have. Safety needs as human beings. So, there’s a few different ways you can address these needs. One is conducting personal you matter. Check-in calls maybe once a year. You can give a set of names to leadership to call volunteers, just to thank them and ask what can we do to make your volunteer role easier or safer? 

And you may decide to reserve these types of calls to volunteers who are really contributing significantly to your efforts. So it can be seen as a volunteer appreciation activity. It doesn’t always have to be an award or a reward, right? These, there’s other ways to improve or really make the volunteer experience something special. 

Second thing. Volunteer wellness programs and kits. I can remember years ago I said, what about volunteer wellness programs? Well, you can develop volunteer burnout prevention programming and give small packages with stress relief items, tea, hand cream, inspirational bookmark, along with a note affirming the volunteers value. 

So, in this case, you are giving a gift, but that gift is linked to a bigger goal of preventing burnout. And really caring for our volunteers and to help them feel safe. So, I’m not against giving gifts, but I like to give gifts that have deeper meaning and that are aligned with something bigger. 

So, that’s that area of safety. The next area of aligning appreciation ideas with core human needs is connection. So, belonging and relationships. Everyone, human beings have these core needs to belong and to be in relationship with others. So one thing you could do is have a story swap night where you host a fun low pressure gathering where volunteers and staff share memorable moments from their work. 

It’s a way of reinforcing, so this could be, instead of that volunteer luncheon, you might host something like this instead. Another thing you can do is recognize, have shared milestone celebrations, so recognizing life events, birthdays, retirements, new jobs in team meetings or in group. Chats and just giving shout outs. 

This is a more of an informal recognition versus a formal recognition program. It’s more of an informal recognition activity, but it helps people feel connected and some people may have the same birthday or some people are retiring, or you’re giving shout outs to volunteers who’ve been promoted into new roles. 

All kinds of things you can do. Either when you’re having a live team meeting or if you have an online community for your volunteers in those group chat threads. It’s a great way to keep people coming back. And then the third way of meeting core needs is through impact and meaning. So, purpose, making sure that volunteers know that their work has deep meaning so you can create impact. 

Highlight videos with short heartfelt clips and testimonials showing how a volunteer’s contribution has changed a person’s life. You can do that for the group of volunteers. Doesn’t have to be necessarily for a single volunteer, but I think those really help people understand how much. F other people that the volunteers are working with are appreciating their work. 

You can also include clips from staff, and I’ve seen these videos other, I’ve seen some organizations develop these videos, particularly around national volunteer month or volunteer week. That’s a time where people will share these, but you can share them at any time. And then finally, a why I serve. You could create a Why I serve exhibit where you collect volunteers, personal stories and photos, and then share them in a lobby display or online in a gallery. 

It could even be something that that’s linked to your volunteer recruitment page. There are all kinds of things that. You can do around creative endeavors, especially if you are a creative organization, if your organization is involved in arts and culture. These are really fun things to do. So those are six different ways to align volunteer appreciation ideas with these three core human needs of safety, connection, and purpose. 

So I want to take a quick pause because after the break I want to talk about connecting and aligning volunteer appreciation ideas with your organization’s goals. And I’m going to give you six more ideas, so don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right back.  

VOLUNTEER PRO IMPACT LAB 

Hey, are you looking to upgrade and modernize your volunteer program? Or maybe you’re building one from scratch and you’re just not sure where to start. If so, we’ve got the perfect resource for you. The Volunteer Pro Impact Lab, having built several direct service programs from the ground. I know that it doesn’t happen by accident. It’s a clear process that takes careful attention with a focus on impact. 

In the end, you need a system in place that’s clear, standardized, efficient, and that gets results. In addition, and maybe this is the most important, you need a volunteer program design that directly contributes to your organization’s most critical goals. That’s where the Volunteer Pro Impact Lab comes in. 

When it comes to effective volunteer engagement, our bespoke volunteer strategy Success path model, which is the heart of our resources and strategic advising, will help you transform your volunteer strategy from fundamental to a fully mature what’s working now approach and all in less time with our online assessment, you’ll quickly gain clarity on precisely where to focus your efforts and we’ll provide recommendations for the exact steps needed for sustainable growth regardless of how large or small your organization is, or what your cause impact area or focus is. Our program development and implementation support model will help you build a strong foundation so volunteerism can thrive at your good cause. If you’re interested in learning more, go to volpro.net/join and we’ll share how to get started and what’s involved.  

Okay, we’re back with my list of fresh and strategic appreciation ideas for volunteers. At this point, I’m going to talk about six ideas for linking volunteer recognition and appreciation with your organization’s goals, and I’m going to go through six types of organizational goals and give you examples and ideas of ways you can do this. You can appreciate volunteers through this linkage. So, let’s start with mission awareness as a goal, as an organization goal. Sometimes organizations really want to amplify the awareness and profile of their organization in their community or nationally. 

Depends on how big your organization is, and there’s a fantastic way to recognize volunteers who help you with this by. Creating Mission Ambassador Awards where you can recognize volunteers who bring in the most volunteers, participants, program participants, or supporters. This could be around fundraising or fundraising even. 

So, you could, an example might be to award a mission amplifier plaque to a volunteer who recruited five new program participants from underserved communities. So, it could even be more specific. Goal-wise, so it may not be quantity, but it may be the types of people this person is creating connections with. 

Some of these appreciation activities are great when you’re boosting or creating, you’re creating a new program. You’re changing a current program, or you want to boost the impact of a specific program, then volunteers. You want to create rewards that help volunteers understand how much you appreciate them moving through the change process, right? 

So, recognition can be a change management strategy. What about that? That’s strategic, right? Alright, let’s go on to number two of aligning appreciation ideas with program. So, here’s program quality in some organizations. One of the goals is to improve program quality. So, you can celebrate volunteers whose suggestions measurably improve service delivery, or you can showcase a volunteer created solution to a recurring challenge. 

And talk about how it has boosted morale and program efficiency. So, volunteers come up with a lot of recommendations, especially those that are working on the front line because they can see where improvements need to be made. They can see where the bottlenecks are occurring. So, you might publicly thank a volunteer who, for example, reworked a tutoring intake process that cut wait times for families in half. 

So anytime a volunteer suggests and helps work on an innovation, you might call them out as a program quality champion and create a reward. And maybe it’s not like you’re going to choose it every year, maybe you just call it out when it happens and give them a reward for that and acknowledge them. 

I think we can do things differently in the future. I think we don’t have to have Volunteer of the year awards necessarily. I think we can reward as we go, and sometimes these surprises as rewards are kind of interesting and peak interest and create excitement rather than having the kind of tried-and-true old rewards that have been around forever. 

Now, if your volunteers love those rewards, then don’t do away with them. We don’t have to. Throughout the baby with the bath water, but we can certainly integrate all kinds of ways to additionally appreciate volunteers. All right. Let’s talk about another organizational goal that’s so important right now, and that’s in around diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice. 

You can do DEIJ leadership spotlights. As a part of volunteer appreciation, you can highlight volunteers who champion inclusivity or help the nonprofit better serve diverse communities. Why not? If that’s a big goal of your organization, why not appreciate volunteers who are helping move that forward as. 

Especially now, so you might feature a bilingual volunteer in the newsletter for launching a translation project that made resources accessible to non-English speakers. That’s just one example. There’re all kinds of ways considering what your core DEIJ activities are, think about how volunteers are supporting them. 

It’s a great way to appreciate volunteers. Another way to align volunteer appreciation ideas. With your organizational goals is around your program growth goals, so think about where you have goals for a growing program. So, you can create Growth Catalyst awards where you celebrate volunteers who’ve helped launch or expand a service. 

So anytime there’s a new program startup, or you’re expanding the scope or the number of people you serve, this is a time to look for those leaders to appreciate and reinforce. That their work is so vital to what you’re trying to do. So, you might, for example, recognize the volunteer who piloted a new afterschool club that has now grown to three schools. 

So, there you go. This is much more meaningful than just, hey, thanks for contributing a hundred hours this year. I mean, that’s sort of just quantitative number stuff. This is so much more impactful. People can see how their work has impacted the community. Much more powerful. 

All right, let’s look at number five. You could meet capacity building and fundraising goals. You might have a, now check this one out. I love this. This is particularly helpful if you’re not getting volunteers to log their hours or input data that they need to input around client contacts, et cetera. 

What about a data heroes’ recognition that. Truly strategic, right? You can appreciate volunteers who collect and share data, linking them to grant wins, funding, growth, capacity building, or just impact on people, right? So, you could give a framed impact multiplier certificate to the volunteer whose data entry helps secure a $50,000 grant. 

So, you can link volunteer data entry. Two fundraising results or two grant results. It could be that a grant was renewed, or a new grant was obtained, and you link that back to the data that volunteers were able to supply that helped make the case for that grant. This is so strategic in a way that you are showing volunteers through the appreciation, how important their data are to your day-to-day management and your future sustainability, right? So, you see how I’m really linking the program goals to the recognition activity. All right. I have a final one for you, and that is more around donor engagement goals and. I want to recommend, this is more of a general activity than a specific recognition, but you could host volunteer donor connect events, hosting appreciation gatherings that also introduce volunteers to major donors, strengthening support or networks or other appreciation events where donors meet with volunteers who are driving impact. 

Now, think about that. You could do a mission mixer evening where donors and volunteers network over stories of community change and why they care about your cause. It could be a facilitated networking event. How cool is that? Your donors are able and may recruit some donors to be volunteers, because donors are volunteers. 

We all know this, right? It’s a way for volunteers to see who’s contributing financially and it’s a way for donors to see. See who’s contributing their time and talent. I think it’s a fantastic idea. It almost is a mission multiplier of people doubling down. Volunteers are going to think about, how can I donate more, and donors are going to think about, how can I volunteer more? 

It’s a fantastic appreciation event, and it’s a feel good for everybody. The bottom line here is this, that when we recognize volunteers in ways that meet their core needs for safety, connection, and purpose, and when we align some of that recognition with our organizational goals, we create. Appreciation and acknowledgement that’s not just heartfelt, it’s strategic. 

It sustains both our people and our mission, and we want to do that. How many of you have. A case of water bottles bumping around in one of your kitchen drawers, really? Or coozies. Some people call ’em coozies. You know those little neoprene things you put around beer cans? How many people have those, or mouse pads or t-shirts that don’t fit? 

Now, I will say. If t-shirts are used to give volunteers a sense of belonging and being on the team, that’s a whole different story. But just random t-shirts not that helpful I think to appreciation. But how many of you have phone chargers? In your drawer, how many people have, of you have stuff that you’ve gotten from conferences, from different events, trinkets, giveaways that are never used, that aren’t helpful to you and are now going in the landfill. 

I want y’all to think about this. How are we appreciating our volunteers? Certainly, the easiest thing to do is to go online and buy a bunch of gifts. But how meaningful is that and does it help further our organization’s goals, or just does it just spend down our budget? So again, think about the two different ways that you can appreciate volunteers. 

One is considering their human needs of safety, connection, and purpose. And the other is aligning that appreciation with core organizational goals. Whatever your organization’s core goals are. So, let’s move beyond pizza parties and really develop innovative appreciation ideas for our volunteers, because that’s what they deserve. 

They deserve our time and attention to these things. So, I hope this has been helpful. If it has, please be sure to share it with a friend or colleague who might. Use a little inspiration. Also, if you would give us a rating, pop us in a comment, we’d love to hear from you, and then join us next week, same time, same place on the Volunteer Nation. 

Take care, everybody.