The Nonprofit FAQ

What are some ways to thank volunteers?

Lucy Bradley (bradleyl@ag.Arizona.EDU) said on HORT-AGENTS on Sat, 16 Mar 1996: We recently had our annual awards celebration for Master Gardeners in Maricopa County, AZ, and once again spent way more than we can afford. We obtain donations from nurseries, garden catalogs & magazines, memberships to gardens and zoos etc. and put them on three tables at the back of the room. These items are raffled off (all Master Gardeners who attend the event receive a free ticket to the raffel and no tickets are sold) through out the evening. Every time we switch categories of awards we pull three names, one for each table and the winners go back and pick out the gift of their choice. For the actual recognition, we provide awards that will support the group in doing what they do for the MG program rather than individual gifts to the recipients (e.g. we got a computer for the folks who work the phones at the extension office (hand-be-down from the University), and we got the folks who help with clerical work a new office chair. We started a lending library for teachers in honor of the school gardening team and each of the books has a book plate acknowledging that it was donated in honor of a particular Master Gardener in the school garden program. We purchased slide carousels for the speakers bureau, a banner for the special events crew, a gift certificate to home depot for the demo garden crew, and books and software for the Satellite offices, etc. We added a small bar below the badges of all the MGs who completed advanced training (Master Entomologist, Master Composter, Master Fund Developer) and gave each of them tie tack pins to go on the bars (ants for the Entomologists, pitch forks for the composters, acorns for the fund developers) [BTW we have paid the die casting fees for these pins so if any of you want to order them through us we can send you the information] we also provided each of the past board members with silver stars for the bar, previous past presidents with silver stars with a green "emeraldish" chip, current board members have a gold star, acting past pres. has a gold star with a green chip and current president has a gold star with a "diamondish" chip. Each Master Gardener was given a "Master Gardener Certification Card" which when folded in half is the size of a business card. The front is the certification card with their name, the back is a list of nurseries that give discounts to Master Gardeners and when you open it up the center is the MG mission statement, and a brief profile of the program (number of members, total hours contributed last year, key projects. etc. We do wall plaques (room for new name each year) for most hours of the year, and leadership positions (Director of the Satellites, President of the Board and Annual Conference), added a new one this year called "The Mystery Gardener Award" for those strong silent types who are always there, quietly in the background making sure everything comes together and goes off with out a hitch. Also added "The Caliche Award", got a good size piece of caliche (bigger than a softball smaller than a basketball, and had it ingraved "The Maricopa County Master Gardener Caliche Award". (For those of you not from the South West, Caliche is a hard "rock" formation, often forming an inpenitrable layer slightly below the soil surface. It is the bane of gardeners because it is so solid that it prevents water from draining so a "Chimney" must be cut through to prevent roots from drowning.) The award, which will be past on each year, goes to one of those master gardeners who is "solid as a rock" and always there when you need them. Each spouse was given a "Honey Do List". We printed them on recycled paper that we collect from rejects at the copy machine. They are the size of half a sheet of paper, have the MG Logo in green in a half tone full size on the page. Across the Top it says "Honey Do List" and below has two lines each with a box to be checked in the front. The top says, "Before you go to the garden please....." the second line says, "When you come back from the garden please......" We gave administrative staff (secretaries, receptionists, printer, ect.) vases with the promise to fill them regularly through out the year. We gave admin folks at the University cups with the MG logo on it.