National Volunteer Week 2025 - How To Celebrate Your Volunteers
From SES to firefighters, animal shelter workers, and the people who run the footy club down the road, volunteers are absolutely vital, not just to Australia but to communities everywhere. Volunteers truly are the lifeblood of this country.
Day in and day out, they show us that you don't need huge organisations and complicated, drawn-out plans to make a difference. All it really takes is people, ordinary, everyday people, lending a hand, stepping up, and simply doing their bit.
From today, the 19th of May, until this coming Sunday, the 25th of May, it is National Volunteers Week. This is a time to take a moment to celebrate the volunteers who make our clubs and communities run. This year's theme, "Connecting Communities," provides a fantastic opportunity to truly celebrate the more than six million incredible Australians who selflessly volunteer their time to keep our communities thriving.
Member Jungle works with many clubs and associations, which means we work with many amazing volunteers. So we know how incredible and vital these people are. So, firstly, thank you on behalf of the whole Member Jungle team; you're awesome.
Second, let's look at some ways you can celebrate your volunteers this National Volunteer Week.
How To Show Your Organisation's Volunteers That You Appreciate Them
When it comes to celebrating the volunteers who make your club run, you can do a few different things. Volunteering Australia, which runs National Volunteer Week, has a whole page of resources to help with this. On this page, National Volunteer Week Resources has a bunch of editable Canva templates that you can use to help you celebrate your volunteers.
These templates include pre-designed social media posts to shout out your volunteers, certificates of appreciation to give to them, online meeting backgrounds, invites to events and a lot more.
All of these templates can be edited as much or as little as you want, and they make it really easy to show your volunteers how much you appreciate them.
Volunteering Australia also has lapel pins for sale that can be gifted to your volunteers to show your appreciation. They have pins for this year's National Volunteer Week, general appreciation pins, and anniversary pins to help mark how many years they have dedicated to your organisation.
Whether you use any of Volunteering Australia's offerings doesn't matter as long as you show your volunteers how much you care about them and appreciate their hard work. Volunteer rates are down, people are more time-poor, and fewer people are volunteering across the board. Showing your volunteers how valued they are, not just this week but every week, is incredibly important.
Finally, I just want to say once again, on behalf of all of Member Jungle, thank you to all the volunteers out there. You do an amazing job.