The Right and Wrong Way to Appreciate Volunteers

Becky Abrams
Apr 16, 2023
4 min read

Updated: Jan 5

**Updated Jan 5, 2026

Your volunteers work hard! Well, most of them do. :) And like many program leaders, maybe YOU are a volunteer. And YOU work harder than anyone else! Can an organization say "thank you" to your volunteers (including yourself)?? Yes, and it should! But before you write them a check, hand them a stack of cash, or give them a gift card, take a minute to understand what is acceptable when it comes to appreciating volunteers.

This is a complex issue with a lot of nuance. This blog post is a summary on the topic and I have linked a number of more in-depth articles at the end for you to dig deeper if desired. Keep in mind...I'm not an attorney and this is not a substitute for legal advice.

Giving cash or gift cards to a volunteer--especially if it's tied to their service to the organization--looks a lot like employment and is often considered a "taxable event." Even if it's not tied to their service, a gift can still look like taxable income in many cases.

If you want to give a gift to a volunteer for their service, consider the following, better alternatives:

You may appreciate the volunteer with small "in kind" gifts including flowers, food, catered meals, "swag," priority registration, etc. Consider sending them to a leadership training conference, paying for a (reasonable) board retreat, etc. Recognizing the volunteer(s) at public events or in publications is another meaningful way to say thank you. Send thank you cards!
Cover their expenses. It is acceptable to cover a volunteer's expenses as long as they are directly related to their volunteer work for your organization. If a volunteer is printing materials at home, you can provide a reasonable amount of paper and ink. You can also cover necessary equipment, and possibly travel expenses to/from volunteer location (research that one, first!), etc... Be sure you receive proper documentation of each expense before reimbursement.
You may consider giving board members fee discounts on membership/program fees. This amount would need to be fairly small in order to be considered "insignficant" to the IRS and if it applies to the entire board, then keep in mind that the board cannot vote themselves a discount. That would be a conflict of interest and is considered self-dealing. Board member discounts would need to be determined by a separate committee or perhaps by the program participants as a whole and subsequently documented.
The members of the group may collectively decide that they would like to pool funds or gift cards for a volunteer director or teacher. In this case, the funds would need to be solely organized by the members and not the board or program staff. The funds collected cannot flow through the nonprofit and would need to be given from the members directly to the recipient.
There are possible ways to give a volunteer a small stipend, however, these can be murky waters. See the additional links below for more information.

I hear from many of you who ARE these hard-working volunteers. I know you're happy to do the work and you're not looking to get paid very much, but it would sure be nice if it paid a little something! Well... this is one of many cases where there's unfortunately not a lot of grey area. You can't PAY someone for their service to your organization--not even a little bit, without it being considered employment. If you're looking for a loophole to this, then I strongly recommend you seek the detailed advice of an attorney. But, as you can tell, avoiding it altogether is by far the best approach.

In addition to the ideas listed above, I urge volunteer program leaders to do the following:

Delgate...Train others to do as much of what you do as possible. It is possible to pass MOST of what you do off to individual volunteers and have your role simply be mostly an oversight role to ensure each volunteer is doing their delegated task(s) as desired.
Rotate...Consider partnering with a co-leader to rotate responsibilities. Find a way to share the leadership role with at least one other person to allow you to take regular, rotational time off.
Appreciate...Make a concerted effort to show your appreciation to the volunteers you have in acceptable ways in order to retain volunteers as much as possible.

A note to those of you that are not nonprofits:

If you are a NOT a nonprofit and are here looking to appreciate your volunteers, please note that nonprofits are the ONLY organizational type that can use volunteer labor. With that in mind, you may have bigger issues than appreciating your volunteers (hint, hint: email me about becoming a nonprofit asap!)

If you're struggling with these complex issues, I offer private consultations and would be happy to discuss your unique situation with you! Visit www.nonprofitedsolutions.com/book-online to schedule a consult. Keep up the good work, Leaders! You are a hero in my book.