The Thank You Gap Pt. 1
How gratitude can be lopsided in volunteer-driven work, and what we can do about it
Scene Setting
As I have written about before, I really cut my volunteer-teeth with the American Cancer Society (ACS) Relay For Life (RFL) fundraising events. Each event has an assigned ACS partner who (depending on the event size) manages a slate of 3-6+ events per “season.” This person’s primary job is to shepherd the all-volunteer planning committees through the process, budget for the events, manage all the money, help recruit corporate sponsors, and (generally speaking) ensure success while also making everyone else feel appreciated and thanked.
It’s a lot of emotional labor.
I didn’t always realize just how much emotional labor they extended until I served as the chairperson of a large RFL event in my twenties. I remember thinking that we, as a committee, should come up with a meaningful way to thank our staff partner and show her gratitude for her hard work. But, as the event got closer, we were exhausted and so focused on execution that it fell to the wayside. There was probably a note, and maybe even a bouquet or something presented to her at the event, but, looking back, it really wasn’t enough.
The Thank You Gap
Over the years, I have reflected a bit about recognition and what it typically looks like vs. what it could look like. Most of my thinking on this has been through a corporate lens (one of my past jobs was to manage a sales organization’s commission program, and I became somewhat obsessed with the relationship between motivation, rewards, and recognition, but that’s a post for another day). But even outside of the corporate world, the core principles of motivation and rewards hold. Both for-profit and nonprofit organizations alike rely on people to carry out the organization’s mission, and motivating people is not as simple as dangling a carrot.
I could really start spinning out here about reward vs. recognition, but that’s not at the heart of what I hope to express in this piece. What I want to discuss is the imbalance of gratitude between volunteers and nonprofit staff. That is, that gratitude flows primarily from staff to volunteers, often without much reciprocation.
This gap between who is thanked for their hard work is the Thank You Gap.
Why The Gap?
The complex relationship between relational power and the work we perform is probably too much to get into in this piece (and there are many researchers and writers who examine this with beautiful insight). Even so, the relationship is real, and we can observe how an imbalance of power manifests itself in volunteer-nonprofit relationships.
The Cultural Norms of Volunteerism
Thanking volunteers is an established cultural norm. We have a dedicated Volunteer Appreciation Week, but (beyond your generic “employee appreciation day”) nothing special exists to commemorate the work and contributions of nonprofit employees.
(By the way, if I’m wrong here and a dedicated day does exist, please let me know! My googling yielded nothing convincing.)
Volunteer swag, special awards and recognition, appreciation brunches: a lot of gratitude flows from nonprofit employees to their volunteers. To be clear, I don’t see this as a bad thing. For many nonprofits, volunteers are critical to carrying out their mission; it makes sense to thank them. But, wouldn’t it be nice if gratitude flowed a bit more equally in both directions?
Assumptions About Staff Roles
It is no secret that compensation in the nonprofit sector is lower than that in the for-profit side of the economy. In turn, this leads organizations and individuals to emphasize the mission as a non-monetary driver for engagement and motivation.
Three somewhat contradictory assumptions about staff recognition emerge:
It’s their job - work is transactional
They get paid to do this - their compensation is the thanks they receive
They chose this field because they love it - their intrinsic love of the work is all that matters
What we know about gratitude in the workplace, regardless of sector, is that it leads to improved results for everyone. Even so, gratitude gaps exist in all workplaces, but they don’t have to.
Invisible and Emotional Labor
Statistics vary, but between 66-75% of nonprofit employees in the USA are women. Despite what gender/culture-war activists might claim, the gender imbalance in emotional labor at work is a well-documented and well-researched phenomenon.
There is a clear, quantifiable connection between gender and emotional labor. Add a healthy dash of do-gooderness and power imbalance, and the labor becomes heavy. Nonprofit staff are consistently asked to bend over backwards to meet the emotional needs of not only their constituents and clients (which is at least directly aligned with their missions and organizational purposes), but also for their volunteers.
A few examples of the invisible and emotional labor that exists in volunteer management:
Matching volunteers to the right roles - understanding preferences, skills, and program needs
Preparing the environment to make it “volunteer-friendly” - snacks, nametags, materials, etc.
Quietly fixing things that weren’t performed 100% correctly - fixing volunteer errors to ensure consistent results
Tracking hours and impact data - spreadsheets on spreadsheets.
Relationship tending - remembering details about volunteers to ensure they feel appreciated and welcomed.
Keeping morale high - smiling through the rough days for their volunteers.
Navigating volunteer conflict - mediating personality clashes and resistance to change.
Saying “no” with empathy - turning away volunteers who aren’t a fit, declining donations that do not fit needs or align with values, and generally speaking, working to keep everyone happy and not-pissed-off.
Acting as the most public face of the org - staff members who interact with volunteers (members of the public) have the immense responsibility of being “the face” of the organization, especially in the social media age. (Honestly, the least-appreciated, but most critical, emotional and invisible labor that nonprofit staff perform.)
Expressing gratitude constantly - thank you notes, celebrating milestones, and making everyone else feel appreciated and needed (regardless of their performance).
Closing The Gap
We all have a role in closing the Thank You Gap.
While it is not the volunteer’s responsibility to right the wrongs of systemic challenges, like how the collective “we” assigns value to different types of work, we (as the volunteers) can certainly do better in acknowledging, appreciating, and thanking our nonprofit staff members for their work.
Below are 5 ideas for how everyday volunteers can help close the Thank You Gap:
Share Impact Stories with Staff and Peers
Volunteers often engage in direct service with nonprofit clients and constituents, providing valuable insights that staff may not have the resources to capture frequently, adding rich qualitative data to their organization.
Sharing your personal testimonials and stories (especially prepared in written or video format) can help staff as they create fundraising and marketing materials (annual reports, email campaigns, website updates, etc.).
Literally Say “Thank You”
They say gratitude is contagious. Volunteers can help foster a culture of gratitude in nonprofit orgs by openly expressing appreciation to their fellow volunteers and staff. Saying the words is the easiest way to kickstart (and energize) an ecosystem of gratitude.
Written thank-you notes and gratitude letters also have a place in closing the Thank You Gap. Consider giving the nonprofit permission to publicly share your words of gratitude when appropriate.
Participate in Feedback Loops
Complete post-shift forms, surveys, and other feedback requests. These feedback methods exist to help nonprofits gather data about their work, volunteers, constituents, and staff. Nonprofits use data (as all businesses do) to refine their offerings, improve processes, and ensure continuous improvement. Though it may not seem obvious to the everyday volunteer, data is essential to storytelling for nonprofits and directly impacts their ability to apply for grants, solicit donors, recruit volunteers, and complete reporting requirements.
Help Document Invisible Work
Take it upon yourself to assist nonprofits in creating (or updating) robust and well-documented processes and procedures. This helps nonprofits with succession planning, ensuring that the next batch of volunteers can pick up where you left off. It also allows you to bring a different lens to the work, identifying potential blind spots that the staff may have missed or not have time to streamline. On the backend, this also helps nonprofits quantify the work being done (more data!), which in turn they can use for fundraising, marketing, and other storytelling endeavors.
Advocate for the Mission Publicly
Share your experiences as a volunteer publicly (on social media, in conversation, at work, on Subustack, wherever). Why do you choose to volunteer with your chosen organization? How do you connect to their mission? Why do you continue to dedicate your valuable time to furthering their mission? What unseen or behind-the-scenes work can you highlight and publicly show gratitude for?
A Note About Donors
So far, I have written mostly about the gratitude gap that exists between volunteers and nonprofit staff. I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that the Thank You Gap exists between donors and nonprofits, too. The relationship between nonprofits and donors is (in my opinion) even more complex and deserves its own close examination.
Let’s Get To Work
Tell me, during this season of giving, how do you plan to show gratitude to your nonprofit staff partners? To their support staff? To your volunteer manager? I would love to hear what you have planned (or what you have done in the past).
Part 2 Preview
When I started thinking about The Thank You Gap, I was immediately reminded of an article I read in graduate school by Zeynep Ton on frontline workers (retail, hospitality, food & beverage service, childcare) and employee engagement and retention. I’m curious about exploring her Good Jobs Framework through a volunteer and volunteer management lens, which is what we’ll dive into in Part 2.