Volunteers are crucial to making fundraising events function. They not only help fill labor gaps for the event, but they’re a big part in ensuring attendees have an amazing experience from the moment they arrive to when they depart for home.
Effectively expressing gratitude to volunteers can greatly impact retention rates. In fact, showing your appreciation to your hardworking volunteers can combat burnout and cultivate a sustainable, long term relationship.
You want your volunteers to feel valued and understand the important role they play in making your fundraising event a success. This guide will share four unique ideas for showing gratitude to volunteers after fundraising events that reinforce relationships and ensure they return to help in the future.
You want your fundraising event to be memorable for everyone involved, including volunteers. Foster a deeper connection with your cause by creating a personalized memento from the event just for volunteers to help express your sincere thanks for their assistance in making it a success. It doesn’t have to be costly or complicated, but make sure whatever you give volunteers is something that captures memories from the event.
For example, let’s say your nonprofit collaborated with a partner business to host a charity corporate golf event in which your nonprofit was the beneficiary and your organization recruited volunteers to help execute the event. You might thank volunteers with:
A volunteer impact report helps volunteers understand the true impact they have had on your mission, which can inspire them to continue their support into the future. This type of report can be specific to the fundraising event you held, but can be aggregated to create a comprehensive volunteer report.
Continuing with our golf event example from above, a volunteer impact report would describe the outcomes of the tournament, such as:
If the fundraising event has been held before, you might also detail the changes in the above metrics, showing the increasing number of dollars, volunteers, and volunteer hours.
It’s also a good idea to include specifics about what the money raised will enable your organization to do. Be as specific as possible! For instance, instead of a generic statement like “The money raised from the golf event will feed families,” you should drill down to share tangible outcomes, such as “The money raised from the golf event will feed 50 local families of four for one month.”
You might even take it a step further and highlight the parts of the event that were the most successful or profitable and give the volunteers who helped a special shout out. If the highest grossing contest and most talked about on-course activity at the golf tournament was a hole-in-one contest, be sure to mention the volunteers who ran the contest or served as witnesses.
Most of us are part of some type of loyalty program. Whether it’s at your grocery store or favorite coffee shop, it feels nice to be rewarded for being loyal to a particular business. It works the same way for volunteers—they work hard and give of their time for your organization and its mission, so finding ways to reward them for their loyalty is a great way to show appreciation for their commitment.
One way to do this is to implement a point system that rewards volunteers based on how, when, and where they volunteer. It might look something like this:
Another option is to create tiers or levels of volunteers, based on the number of events or years they’ve volunteered. For instance, Rookie Volunteers are just starting their volunteer journey with your nonprofit, while Diamond Volunteers have volunteered at more than 25 events.
For either option, or any other type of volunteer program you create, you’ll want to use your volunteer management system to track each volunteer’s points so nothing slips through the cracks. Offer rewards of increasing value they can cash their points in for, such as branded merchandise, gift cards, or special experiences.
Whether you establish a page on your website, add a feature in your monthly newsletter, or create a volunteer wall in your nonprofit’s offices, shining a spotlight on volunteers is another great way to show your appreciation and honor volunteers’ contributions by helping at your fundraising events.
An easy way to do this is to create a page on your website that’s updated regularly and includes photos, a story or interview, or comments from the volunteer about why they choose to donate their time to your event and cause. This works well because your volunteers, donors, and constituents already likely visit your website frequently, making it a great place to communicate with and honor them. Such a page can also directly support retention efforts by inspiring volunteers to sign up to help at additional events right on the spot. Add calls-to-action that quickly and easily guide them to signup pages.
Another option specific to your fundraising event is to add a Volunteer Spotlight on your event website. In the golf tournament example used earlier, you might describe a longtime volunteer, sharing the story of why they love to volunteer at the golf event on the tournament’s website. Your tournament website should be specific to golf, attractive, and easy to navigate. GolfStatus suggests looking for the the following features in a tournament website provider:
It will likely take some time, trial, and error to perfect your volunteer appreciation efforts. You might start with a survey of your volunteers to solicit their feedback about their work with you. Ask what they liked, what they didn’t, what you can do differently, and how they would prefer to be thanked.
Be sure to engage in informal conversations with your volunteers before, during, and after your fundraising event to gather additional feedback to help you get new ideas that improve your volunteer program. Above all, be genuine in your thanks. After all, your events likely wouldn’t happen or be as successful without your volunteers.
Logan Foote has been around the game of golf nearly his entire life. He first picked up a club at the age of four, and despite thousands of attempts, he’s never had a hole-in-one. He earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and pursued a career in sales.
Logan came to GolfStatus in 2017, where he channels his passion for golf to help nonprofits raise money through the game. As Sales and Education Manager, Logan oversees a team that works with thousands of nonprofit clients to maximize their golf fundraisers with the GolfStatus platform, and shares his golf fundraising expertise through GolfStatus’s free educational webinars. He lives and golfs in Lincoln, Nebraska with his wife and three sons.
Jen Wemhoff, Communications Manager at GolfStatus
Jen Wemhoff accidentally discovered her passion for nonprofits in college. An internship while earning a degree in Communications from Doane University led to a 20 year career in the nonprofit sector, where she found a strong desire to be part of something bigger than herself. Her vast nonprofit experience includes roles in marketing, fundraising, and direct programming.
When Jen came to GolfStatus as Communications Manager in 2020, she was struck by the power of the sport to raise money to power nonprofit missions. She tells GolfStatus’s story across platforms and channels and develops educational tools and resources to help nonprofits tap into golf’s giving power. Jen, her husband, and two daughters call Lincoln, Nebraska home.
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