We have our annual Volunteer Appreciation Party coming up. It's usually a
Halloween party. We've also got a board in the main hallway that highlights
the volunteers that put in a lot of hours (we have one woman who put in
something like a literal thousand hours in a single month... she's the lead
dog walker, trains other dog walkers, and works with the girl scouts and
brownies that come in on their pet care badges). The lead volunteers are
also invited to attend the all-staff meetings, to get them and keep them
involved in what's going on with the shelter. We also try to open other
opportunities for them. We have volunteers who do "looks," bringing animals
out to meet potential adopters, walking public through to look for lost
animals, working on behavioral programs with dogs which otherwise would
likely not be made available for adoption, and giving tours of the shelter.
We're working on setting up a "socialization team" for volunteers in cats,
for vols with more behavioral experience, so that the particularly terrified
cats (and hissy, semi-feral kittens) can get the socialization and positive
attention that they need. We're lucky enough to have volunteers who are
willing to clean the cages in the special needs annex once it's all set up
and ready to go (and would you want to clean out ringworm positive cages?),
and vet techs that are doing the lime-sulfur dipping for those positive cats
in-building right now.

The HS I was involved with the most held an annual volunteer picnic in
the summer.  It was run-of-the mill, but fun.

-L.