Volunteers in non-profit groups are a valuable workforce that contributes to economic development and supports people in need in the U.S. However, many non-profit groups face challenges including engaging and sustaining volunteer participation, as well as increasing visibility of their work in the community. To support non-profit groups' service, we explored how engaging community members in the volunteer-acknowledgment process may have an impact. We set up workstations and invited community members to write thank-you cards to volunteers in non-profit groups. We conducted 14 interviews with volunteers and community members, collected and analyzed 25 thank-you cards. We found that the acknowledgment activity can help circulate social goods through multiple stakeholders, that authenticity was valued in the acknowledgment process, and that non-profit groups intended to distribute, reuse, and publicize the acknowledgments to utilize them to a fuller extent. Our contributions include expanding knowledge on experiences, needs, and impact of community acknowledgment from different stakeholders, as well as presenting design opportunities.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.