How Do We Award Our Awesome Volunteers At The Wildlife Refuge?
As a boomer interested in wildlife, conservation, etc., the last thing I need is another dust catcher, but a donation in my name to a conservation group, or a brick on a path made up of all of the volunteers that represented the hours of service I’d done, or a patch on a quilt would make me happy. Something that shows appreciation for the work your volunteers have done that other people can see and enjoy would be good.
If you’re going to go the gift certificate route, I’d go with The Alpine Experience vs. REI – it’s local to Olympia instead of up in Tacoma and locally owned instead of a big chain (not that I don’t shop at REI too but it’s nice to support the little guys when you can). Once place I volunteered had yearly pins made up for the volunteers to wear on their uniforms or hats or whatever. So people who had been there five years had five pins to wear. Similar to what rtha’s talking about. To be honest, depending on the group dynamics, I’d think a nice dinner out with all the volunteers and the staff that worked closest with them would be pretty cool, especially if they’ve been all over the place and haven’t had a chance to get to know each other. It avoids the “one more thing to dust” / “another one of those” problems that you run into with more mature volunteers and lets them all get to spend some non-wildlife refuge time together. Or, depending on the f
