The Recognition module lets your organization create custom awards to recognize your volunteers. You can design awards with specific criteria, automatically grant them when volunteers meet goals, manually award standout contributors, and let volunteers track their progress toward upcoming awards.
This module is available on Enterprise and Ultimate plans. Creating, editing, and granting awards all require one of these plans.
This is different from Vome Achievements, which are platform-level badges and challenges (such as total hours milestones, shift milestones, and tenure badges) managed by Vome and available to all volunteers regardless of plan. Awards you create through the Recognition module are specific to your organization and fully customizable.
There are two types of awards you can create:
Manual-only: You grant these individually or in bulk from the admin panel. There are no automatic eligibility rules. Use this for special recognitions, one-time awards, or situations where you want full control over who receives the award.
Rule-based: The system automatically grants these when a volunteer meets the criteria you define (for example, completing 50 volunteer hours or attending 20 shifts). You set the rules, and Vome handles the rest.
Navigate to the Recognition page in your admin panel. Click New Award and fill in the following:
Title (required) and Description (optional, supports rich text formatting)
Folder to organize your awards into categories
Icon or Custom Image to give the award a visual identity. You can choose from 15 built-in icons (trophy, medal, star, ribbon, badge, crown, fire, heart, handshake, sparkles, leaf, sun, moon, rocket, award) or upload your own image.
Award Method: Choose either Manual-only or Rule-based
If you select Rule-based, configure eligibility rules (see below).
Each rule-based award can have one or more eligibility rules. You define:
Metric type: Hours or Shifts
Threshold: The number required (e.g., 50 hours, 20 shifts)
Window type (how the threshold is evaluated):
- All time: Cumulative across the volunteer's entire history
- Calendar year: Resets on January 1 each year
- Date range: Between specific start and end dates you define
- Rolling window: Within the last N days, weeks, or months (trailing window)
- Consecutive periods: Meet a per-period threshold for N consecutive periods (e.g., 30 hours per month for 3 consecutive months)
If you add multiple rules, a volunteer must satisfy all of them to earn the award.
Yes, but only if the award is set to Repeatable and uses a recurring window type (Calendar year, Rolling window, or Consecutive periods). When enabled, the award can be earned again in each new qualifying period. Awards using the "All time" or "Date range" window types cannot be made repeatable.
The Award Cap lets you limit how many volunteers can earn a specific award. If you set a cap of "First 10," only the first 10 volunteers who qualify will receive the award automatically. Once the cap is reached, the system stops auto-awarding. You can still manually grant the award beyond the cap if needed. If no cap is set, unlimited volunteers can earn it.
Each award has visibility settings with two main modes:
Admin-only: The award is completely hidden from volunteers. Use this for internal tracking or awards you want to prepare before making them visible.
User-visible (default): Volunteers can see the award. You can further restrict visibility using a Visibility Policy with conditions such as: requiring the volunteer to be active in your database, requiring completion of specific onboarding sequences, requiring assignment to specific opportunities (or any opportunity), age-based rules, site association, or tag matching (any or all selected tags).
If no conditions are set, the award is visible to all volunteers.
Yes, if you enable the Show Progress to Users setting on a rule-based award. When enabled, volunteers see a progress bar showing their current count versus the target (e.g., "35 / 50 hours"). If you prefer to keep the target hidden, you can turn this setting off. Manual-only awards never show progress since there are no rules to track against.
Go to the award's detail page and open the People tab. For a single award, find the volunteer in the Eligible sub-tab and click "Award now" next to their name. For bulk awarding, select multiple volunteers using the checkboxes, then choose "Bulk award" from the bulk actions menu.
Yes. Go to the award's detail page, open the People tab, and switch to the Awarded sub-tab. From the row menu next to the volunteer's name, select "Revoke." You can also revoke awards in bulk.
The Recalculate button on the People tab re-runs the eligibility evaluation for all users. This is useful when you have edited the rules of an existing award, when backfilled or corrected hours need to trigger eligibility, or when progress data appears stale.
Only if you enable notifications on that specific award. You can configure who receives the email (the volunteer, designated admin watchers, or both), the time of day it is sent, the subject and body (with variables like $first_name and $award_title), and the email template. Sent notifications can be reviewed in the Admin Emails mailbox under the Award notifications tab.
You can create Folders in the Recognition dashboard to group related awards. You can move awards between folders at any time, either individually or in bulk.
Setting an award to Inactive hides it from volunteers and stops any automatic awarding. However, all existing awards remain in place. You can reactivate the award at any time.
Deleting an award is permanent. It removes the award itself, all granted instances, and all notification settings. This action cannot be undone. If you want to temporarily remove an award from view, consider deactivating it instead.
These are two separate systems:
Organization Awards (Enterprise and Ultimate plans) are custom recognitions that you create and manage through the Recognition module. You define the criteria, visuals, and recipients. Only organizations on Enterprise or Ultimate plans can create and manage these awards. Volunteers see their earned awards and track progress under the "Awards by Organization" tab on their Awards page.
Vome Achievements are platform-level badges and challenges managed entirely by Vome. These include milestones like total volunteer hours, number of shifts, and tenure on the platform. Vome Achievements follow a progression system (Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum) based on Volunteer Points. These are available to all volunteers on any plan and appear under the "Awards by Vome" tab.
In short: Organization Awards are your custom creations tied to your Enterprise or Ultimate subscription. Vome Achievements are built into the platform for everyone.
Yes. Creating, editing, and granting awards all require an Enterprise or Ultimate plan. If you are on a lower plan, you will see an upgrade prompt when attempting to access the Recognition page.
Volunteers can always view awards they have already earned, regardless of your plan. And all volunteers have access to Vome Achievements (platform badges and challenges) on any plan.