How can you use public speaking to recognize and reward volunteers?

The first rule of public speaking that I taught my students is: "Don't speak because you have to say something. Speak because you have something to say." Your first and most important concern as a speaker is NOT writing a speech. It is to answer the question: "What am I trying to say" In a volunteer recognition event, the message is not "Look how successful our agency's volunteer program is!" It is not about the organization. It is about THEM, the volunteers. Tell their stories. Don't talk generally about "volunteers". Say their names. Talk about them as human beings with struggles and burdens. Use their examples to inspire others to see volunteers are all ordinary people, coming together to accomplish extraordinary things.

To harness the power of public speaking as a means of acknowledging and honoring volunteers, initiate by thoroughly preparing your address, contemplating four crucial factors: objective, listeners, theme, and context, defining your objective as conveying appreciation and acknowledgement for volunteers' dedication, identifying your listeners, crafting a theme conveying the significance, worth, or mission of your volunteer initiative, and determining the context's setting and format, thereby ensuring harmony of content, tone, and delivery with your goals and anticipations, and maximizing the efficacy of your acknowledgement and appreciation endeavors.

The second step in leveraging public speaking to acknowledge and honor volunteers is to thoroughly prepare your address through investigation, composition, and practice, involving compiling precise data, such as metrics, narratives, or tributes, that validate your theme and showcase attainments, organizing information into a clear outline, and refining presentation skills, including tone, nonverbal cues, facial expressions, and mannerisms, to enhance assurance and authority, ultimately ensuring a captivating and impactful address that effectively recognizes and rewards volunteers.

Delivery is tricky, as this largely is based on your vocal and physical capacity, and what training you have had to be engaging. Anyone can learn to be an engaging speaker. Though most people struggle with this, not out of anxiety, but out of lack of training. In this case, when working with volunteers, it is important to really speak to the values of your organisation and to the great work the volunteers have done.

The third step in utilizing public speaking to recognize and reward volunteers is to deliver your speech effectively by adapting to your audience's feedback and reactions, engaging them with techniques like humor, anecdotes, and rhetorical questions, and inspiring them with powerful language, emotions, and calls to action, thereby adjusting your content, tone, and style to capture their attention, motivate them to take action, and leave a lasting impact.

In my experience, it has been extremely helpful that I practice my speech and practice the timing. If I want a speech for 10 minutes then that’s the way the speech should be written making sure you get your points across. Practice it and time it until you get it down to the 10 minutes, or whatever minutes you decide the length should be.

By delivering a good public speech you can recognize, and appreciate your volunteers. This is also a great opportunity for you to create further engagement by having a good emotionally driving speech. A good speech should help to move your audience towards your goal, regardless of industry or employee/volunteer. In this case you would likely won't volunteers want to engage their core values so that they feel appreciated and accomplished.