Looking for anyone who can share information about a successful Volunteer of the Year Award at a large hospital (we are 900+ volunteers).  We curently recognize our volunteers with the following: 

-certificates, pins and nametags for various for hours of service milestones (all presented alongside employees at the monthly Service Recognition event) and announced in our monthly newsletter

- an Honor Board for 5000+ hour volunteers located in the main hospital hallway

- nominations for recognition as a Healthcare Hero at the hospitals largest annual black tie fundraiser (typically one chosen per year)

- Volunteer Week and an annual recognition event

We have stayed away from a Volunteer of the Year award because I have heard from several colleagues who have said it can cause hard feelings among some of the volunteers that do not receive the recognition but I have been asked to investigate this again.

Thank you,

Eileen Pelletier, CAVS

Hartford Hospital

Eileen.Pelletier@hhchealth.org

Our hospital isn't as large as yours, but we do award the Volunteer of the Year. I'm not a huge fan of it, for the same reason you listed, it's hard to recognize one volunteer over the others - which is perceived as valuing one over the others. But I have worked so hard to align our volunteers with our employees, and they award an Employee and Physician of the Year, so we will continue to do the same for Volunteers.