A Medal for Volunteer Service - How to Measure Success?

One of the more interesting recent threads on OzVPM has been on formal recognition of volunteers, particularly a discussion on the idea of a national medal to be awarded to all volunteers in Australia after a set number of years' service, regardless of position or type of role filled. (Follow the postings starting with the first one at https://groups.yahoo.com/group/ozvpm/message/151).

Recognition is one of those 'no win' debates in our field. There are as many ways of meaningfully recognising volunteers as there are volunteers themselves. Everyone has their own mix of motivational needs and really valuable recognition takes this into account when saying 'thank you' in an appropriate way. And, of course, formal recognition is only of any value when it is underpinned by the far more important informal, day-to-day recognition of both the value of volunteers and the contribution they make.

With this in mind I warily replied to the post from Ian Foster of Wide Bay Volunteers, the organisation in Australia (Queensland) that is pressing forward the idea of the medal. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Medal_(Australia).  The concept is based on the fact that governments bestow medals on heroes and heroines, particularly for military victories, athletic prowess, and accomplishments of value to the country as a whole. So why not for volunteering?

Whilst I commend their initiative and drive at lobbying Federal upper and lower-house members, and all State politicians, plus all local government representatives, I'd like to propose a better qualifier than length of service. My personal belief is that length of service alone has little meaning without parallel qualifiers.

For example, at my organisation (Royal National Institute of the Blind, www.rnib.org.uk), we recognise fundraising volunteers on the length of service they have given [or] the amount of money they have raised. So, if you give two years service you get a bronze fundraising award but if you raise £5,000 in one year you also qualify for the bronze award.

The problem is that length of service criteria are geared towards more traditional models of volunteering where people give an open-ended, often long-term voluntary commitment to an organisation. This is at odds with the more episodic nature of much of the volunteering going on today. The proposed minimum criteria for the Australian medal of two years service values people who are able and/or willing to give this duration of commitment but fails to recognise those who have given less than two years service but may well have made an equally (or more) valuable contribution. What message does this give to these volunteers or to potential volunteers?

Which leads me to the really critical point. One of the challenges facing our field is to develop formal recognition criteria that are impact and outcome based. Whether two months, two years or two decades, the importance of volunteer service is not time in itself, but what impact the volunteer has had in that time. Surely our recognition would be more meaningful if we could say: "Thank you for making X difference in the lives of Y (number of) young people" than "Thank you for sticking with us for five years"!

Olympic athletes don't get a medal just for showing up. They have to win, or at least to place high enough to be noticed. It's a great idea to want to elevate volunteers to public hero status, but shouldn't the medal be earned by accomplishments?

What do others think? Has anyone had experience with a "medal" awarded by a unit of government? What should be the common measure of success in volunteering?