Burnaby Village Museum in the City of Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada has
about 100 volunteers. Some of them have been with us for over 20 years. We
have found that it worked best to have two separate events - one for adults
and one for teens.

We have an annual Volunteer Appreciation Dinner in December for the adult
volunteers at which staff serve. It is held in our on-site restaurant which
is decorated for Christmas at that time. Our vaudeville troupe puts on a
show for them. Sometimes we have an entertainer that we have hired during
the season come in as well. We give everyone a ticket when they come in the
door and then draw prizes (donated tickets, flowers, etc.) later in the
evening after eating and all of the volunteers get a prize. The first drawn
gets to chose from the widest assortment of prizes.

For our teen volunteers we tried an annual pizza party but this proved to be
time consuming and expensive especially as there were lots of no shows", so
next year we plan to give teens (who have over a certain number of hours of
volunteer work in that year) tickets to a movie.

Our volunteers have now linked up with volunteers from other museums,
galleries and attractions in the Greater Vancouver area and now have special
passes good during volunteer week to visit these other facilities - and for
their volunteers to come to ours (their passes are specially dated as our
public season is not until May 1).

Our City offers volunteer pins in 5 year increments.

Colin Macgregor Stevens
Museum Curator
Burnaby Village Museum
City of Burnaby,  BC,  CANADA
(604) 293-6500
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Museum Webpage:
http://www.burnabyparksrec.org/villagemuseum/villagemuseum.html
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