Canoe England Regional Volunteer & Recognition Awards 2012 – click here to read about the winners
Canoe England’s Paddlesport Rewards Scheme is a great way to recognise your volunteers free of charge! – for more information, click here.
Rewarding and Recognising your Volunteers:
If your club is thinking about how it can ensure your volunteers feel valued and rewarded for their time, then this is the section for you! Whilst awards are a great way to reward volunteers, there are many other ways that you can thank your volunteers.
Volunteers are the lifeblood of sports clubs – without them the majority of clubs just couldn’t function. Volunteers are extremely valuable and deserve considerable praise and thanks, so it’s essential that volunteers feel that their role and their actions are important; they want to feel welcome, needed, useful, part of the club and thanked.
So how can you reward your volunteers? Sometimes it’s the simple things that make a difference – just saying thank you or offering praise while they are doing their role. Other ways you could thank your volunteers include:
– Nominate your volunteers for the Volunteer and Recognition Awards
– Have an interest in how your volunteers are getting on
– Praise your volunteers for what they are doing
– Ensure volunteers are formally recognised at committee meetings/presentations
– Acknowledge your volunteers in club newsletters and on the noticeboard
– A thank you goes a long way
– Download the volunteer recognition certificate and give this to your volunteers
– Make sure you nominate your volunteers for local awards
– Nominate your volunteers for other National Awards
– Send them birthday and Christmas cards
– Listen to their ideas and implement their suggestions where possible
– Organise a social event for volunteers
– Pay for your volunteers to attend relevant skills and training events
– Provide deals on club membership
– Give them complimentary tickets to special events and functions
It is also worthwhile to ensure that club members understand the impact that volunteers have on your club. This can be done through raising awareness of what the volunteers do within the club. Your club could produce articles in the club newsletter which focus on a particular role – for example, ‘a day in the life of your club secretary’. Your club could also create a noticeboard that explains the different roles at the club.
Most volunteers get pleasure from volunteering but we all like to be treated well and thanked when we give our time for free. Rewarding volunteers is an essential part of retaining your club’s workforce – it can’t be left to chance!
Many thanks to runningsports for their help on the above article. Top tips and quick guides are available on their website for volunteers and clubs, click here.